Science & Technology Current Affairs 2026 for Government Exams

The Union Cabinet, chaired by PM Narendra Modi, approved the Semicon 2.0 programme — a new semiconductor incentive scheme with a total budget outlay of Rs 1,27,500 crore — to deepen India's semiconductor design and manufacturing ecosystem. It builds on Semicon 1.0 (the India Semiconductor Mission, ISM 1.0) and reaffirms India's goal of becoming a global hub for chip design, manufacturing and innovation. Semicon 2.0 is structured around six pillars: Design; Machines & Materials; Setting up more Fabs; ATMP/OSAT (assembly, testing, marking & packaging); Research & Development (R&D); and Talent development. Under ISM 1.0, the government has approved 12 semiconductor manufacturing projects with cumulative investment of over Rs 1.64 lakh crore, plus 24 design projects from startups/MSMEs, and provided EDA-tool access to 105 startups and MSMEs.

<b>India</b> recorded its best-ever performance at the <b>56th International Physics Olympiad (IPhO 2026)</b>, held in <b>Bucaramanga, Colombia</b> (4-12 July 2026), with all <b>five</b> Indian participants winning <b>gold medals</b>. India secured <b>joint first place</b> in the overall medal tally alongside Russia, China, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Taiwan. The gold medallists were Kanishk Jain, Riddhesh Anant Bendale, Rishit Garg, Shresth Suraiya and Svarit Joshi. It was India's <b>27th participation</b>; the team was trained by the <b>Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE)</b>, a centre of TIFR under the Department of Atomic Energy. IPhO was established in <b>1967</b>.

China's 'LineShine' was named the world's fastest supercomputer at the 2026 ISC High Performance conference, displacing the US-based 'El Capitan' from the top spot. LineShine achieved the leading double-precision performance on the High-Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, the standard test used to rank supercomputers by floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). Global supercomputer rankings are tracked by the biannual TOP500 list. The Linpack benchmark measures a computer's raw mathematical processing speed.

In July 2026, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) released the second edition of the Digital Threat Report 2025-26 for the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) and payments ecosystem. It was jointly released by MeitY, CERT-In, CSIRT-Fin and SISA. The report sets an 18-month roadmap for financial institutions and introduces a new Anatomy of Cyber Failure — 4-Layer Gap Archetype Framework explaining how a cyberattack progresses from initial weakness to a full-scale breach.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) signed an MoU with the Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) during the 9th TSDSI Technical Deep Dive 2026, under the TDIP Scheme (outlay ₹203 crore for 2026–31) supporting the Bharat 6G Mission. DPIIT-recognised startups/MSMEs get up to 98% support, plus travel assistance for participation in global bodies like 3GPP, ITU and oneM2M.

China successfully recovered the first-stage booster of its new Long March-10B (CZ-10B) carrier rocket during its maiden flight on 10 July 2026, becoming only the second nation after the United States to recover an orbital-class rocket. Launched from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site at Wenchang, the booster was caught at sea using a novel wire-arrestment 'net-capture' system rather than SpaceX-style landing legs - the world's first net-based recovery of a carrier rocket. Built by CASC (China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation), the reusable Long March-10B can lift about 16 tonnes to low-Earth orbit and supports China's crewed lunar programme (a Moon landing is targeted before 2030). Reusable first stages sharply cut the cost of reaching orbit.

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk launched Awiqli (insulin icodec) in India - the world's first once-weekly basal (long-acting) insulin approved for clinical use - for adults with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. It reduces injections from 365 to 52 per year. India is the seventh country to launch the drug (after the US, EU, Canada and others). A 70-unit weekly dose is priced at about Rs 261. India has over 101 million people living with diabetes and another 136 million with prediabetes. A single weekly injection replaces a full week of daily basal insulin doses.

Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda launched Aarogya Setu 2.0 and linked digital health initiatives at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, upgrading the citizen health platform first launched during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Panacea Biotec, overseen by ICMR, advanced Phase III clinical trials of its indigenous dengue vaccine candidate DengiAll, enrolling over 10,000 volunteers across India.

ICMR's indigenous multi-stage malaria vaccine AdFalciVax - developed at RMRC Bhubaneswar to target Plasmodium falciparum - was licensed to five companies: Indian Immunologicals, TechInvention Lifecare, Panacea Biotec, Biological E and Zydus Lifesciences.

The 79th WHA met under the theme 'Reshaping global health', adopting 13 resolutions and over 20 decisions. Dr Victor Elias Atallah Lajam of the Dominican Republic was elected President of the Assembly.

Countries approved the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance (GAP-AMR) 2026-2036, using a One Health approach to preserve effective antimicrobials worldwide.

WHA79 adopted a first-of-its-kind resolution on precision medicine with health equity at its core, calling on WHO to develop a global strategy so genomics and personalised therapies benefit all nations.

Member states approved the first-ever World Health Assembly resolution on stroke, calling for integrated prevention, acute care and rehabilitation, noting one in four adults is expected to suffer a stroke in their lifetime.

Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda chaired the national World TB Day launch at Greater Noida (theme 'Yes! We Can End TB!'). The intensified 100-day TB Mukt Bharat campaign covers 1.58 lakh villages and urban wards; TB incidence has fallen 21% since 2015.

The Government launched a nationwide HPV vaccination programme for cervical-cancer prevention, offering the vaccine free at government facilities to about 1.15 crore girls aged 14 across all States/UTs.

Telangana CM A. Revanth Reddy inaugurated the 23rd BioAsia 2026, Asia's premier life-sciences forum, at the HITEX Exhibition Centre, Hyderabad.

The WHO reiterated the case for coordinated financing and equitable access for the first new tuberculosis vaccines in over a century, now in advanced clinical trials.

The report estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 deaths globally in 2024 and flagged growing artemisinin resistance; India cut cases and deaths by over 80% (2015-2023) and exited WHO's High Burden to High Impact group in 2024.

The CSIR RISE Conclave (Research, Industry, Start-up and Entrepreneurship) was held at the HAL campus, Bengaluru, covering aerospace technologies, AI ethics, the agri-food nexus and lab-to-market commercialisation.

ICMR invited Expressions of Interest for technology transfer and commercialisation of SHetA2, an investigational drug candidate for HPV-induced cervical dysplasia and cervical cancer, with a 20 May applications deadline.

On National Technology Day, CSIR-Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee transferred 13 indigenous technologies to industries and start-ups, targeting fire safety, green construction and energy-efficient infrastructure.

Merck Life Science India signed an MoU with CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, to strengthen collaboration in scientific research, innovation and academia-industry engagement.

A collaboration between IIT Delhi and Optimist announced an air conditioner that delivers full performance at 50 degrees C ambient heat, entering pilot testing for India's extreme summers.

IIT Bombay scientists reported (in the journal Nature) a new catalytic strategy converting fatty acids into complex molecules for drug development, enabling faster synthesis of compounds with potential anticancer activity.

Scientists from Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London reported creating the first lab-grown oesophagus, showing it could replace a full section of the organ and restore swallowing without immunosuppression in an animal model.

Around the AI Impact Summit, India set a Guinness World Record for the most pledges received for an AI-responsibility campaign in 24 hours, with over 2.5 lakh validated pledges.

CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology developed 'BIRSA 101', India's first indigenous CRISPR-based gene therapy for sickle cell disease, with technology transferred to industry for affordable deployment.

Meta announced it will lease an AI-enabled data centre in India with 168 MW capacity from Reliance Industries. The government has announced a 20-year tax exemption for hyperscalers using Indian data centres to serve global clients.

India's aggregate supercomputing capacity reached about 44 petaflops, with IndiaAI targeting beyond 200 petaflops; a shared compute facility with over 45,000 GPUs forms the national AI backbone for startups and researchers.

Indian AI startup Sarvam raised $234 million in its Series B round, pushing its post-money valuation to about $1.5 billion, underscoring India's sovereign-AI push under the IndiaAI Mission.

The government signed an MoU between IndiaAI (MeitY) and the Indian Council of Medical Research to integrate AI into healthcare delivery, biomedical research and public-health management.

Over 38,000 GPUs had been onboarded to the IndiaAI common-compute facility (rising toward 45,000+), offered to startups and academia at subsidised rates, with a target of 100,000 public GPUs by December 2026.

Under MeitY, the IndiaAI Mission ran the IndiaAI Innovation Challenge 2026 to develop deployment-ready AI solutions for public service delivery, with selected solutions eligible for a two-year contract of up to Rs 1 crore.

Gnani.ai unveiled a 5-billion-parameter voice-to-voice foundational model, 'Inya VoiceOS', for natural spoken interaction across Indian languages, launched at the AI Impact Summit.

The Amaravati Quantum Valley was inaugurated at Uddandarayunipalem, Andhra Pradesh, with IBM, TCS and L&T as partners. It is anchored by an IBM Quantum System Two, described as India's largest quantum computer to date.

Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda launched SAHI (Safe and Accountable Healthcare AI) and BODH, a health-AI benchmarking platform developed by IIT Kanpur and the National Health Authority.

At the Summit, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced 20,000 additional GPUs for the national AI compute pool under the IndiaAI Mission (sanctioned outlay Rs 10,371.92 crore).

Sarvam AI open-sourced two foundation models under the IndiaAI Mission - Sarvam 30B (32-billion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts) and Sarvam 105B (106-billion-parameter) - trained on Indian compute and optimised for 22 Indian languages.

The IndiaAI Innovation Centre's call for proposals drew 67 submissions from startups, researchers and entrepreneurs for building indigenous foundation models across healthcare, education and finance.

Under the IndiaAI Mission (Rs 10,371.92 crore outlay), more than 38,000 GPUs were onboarded via the AI compute portal, offered to Indian startups and academia at affordable rates.

The IndiaAI Mission (under MeitY) launched the IndiaAI Innovation Challenge 2026 in collaboration with the Ministry of AYUSH and the Ministry of MSME to build deployment-ready AI solutions.

IIT Delhi researchers (with Denmark and Germany) unveiled AILA, an autonomous AI system that designs, runs and interprets experiments and directly controls instruments such as an atomic force microscope.

By December, the IndiaAI Mission had onboarded over 38,000 high-end GPUs (about Rs 65/hour), and 12 startups (including Sarvam AI, Soket AI, BharatGen and Fractal) were selected to build indigenous foundation models.

As BRICS Chair, India (ISRO and the Department of Space) hosted the BRICS Heads of Space Agencies Meeting in Bengaluru with all 11 BRICS members participating, and India proposed a 'BRICS Space Economy' concept.

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla - India's first astronaut to visit the ISS via Axiom-4 in 2025 - authored his memoir 'The Second Orbit' recounting his space experience.

For the first time in 16 years, the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel was updated, now explicitly including care workers and clarifying rules during emergencies.

India's full immunisation coverage rose from 62% in 2015 to 98.4% by January 2026, alongside plans for a nationwide HPV vaccination drive and an indigenous Td (tetanus-diphtheria) vaccine in 2026.

Jupiter reached opposition on 10 January 2026, appearing at its brightest for the year, while the Quadrantid meteor shower peaked on 3 January (visibility limited by a near-full Moon).

As of June 2026, 12 projects worth around Rs 1.64 lakh crore had been approved under the Semicon India Programme, including one fabrication unit, two compound-semiconductor fabs and nine packaging units.

The government approved an outlay of Rs 1.25 lakh crore for ISM 2.0, a sharp rise from Rs 76,000 crore under ISM 1.0, to deepen India's chip fabrication, design and packaging ecosystem.

Tata Electronics and Netherlands-based ASML signed a strategic agreement under which ASML supplies advanced lithography technology for Tata's first front-end semiconductor fab; Tata plans to invest about $11 billion in the fab at Dholera, Gujarat.

India held the groundbreaking of its first advanced 3D semiconductor packaging unit in Odisha, aimed at boosting AI, 5G and defence technology applications.

Under the India Semiconductor Mission, 12 chip projects worth ~Rs 1.64 lakh crore had been approved (one fab, two compound-semiconductor fabs, nine packaging units); 'ISM 2.0' was announced in Union Budget 2026-27.

PM Modi inaugurated the Kaynes Semicon plant at Sanand, Gujarat, advancing the India Semiconductor Mission; as of March 2026, 10 semiconductor units had been approved, including two fabs.

PM Modi inaugurated Micron Technology's semiconductor Assembly, Test and Packaging facility at Sanand, Gujarat - India's first operational semiconductor facility - which handed over its first shipment of made-in-India memory modules to Dell.

The foundation stone was laid for a Rs 3,700 crore semiconductor unit, 'India Chip Private Ltd' - a Foxconn (Taiwan)-HCL Group joint venture - at Jewar, Uttar Pradesh.

The Budget announced the launch of India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 to strengthen domestic chip manufacturing and supply chains, building on ISM 1.0.

As of January 2026, the Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme supported 24 semiconductor design startups; 122 designs were taped out with 56 chips fabricated at 180 nm at SCL Mohali, alongside advanced-node tape-outs.

MeitY announced DHRUV64, India's first fully indigenous 64-bit, 1.0 GHz dual-core microprocessor, developed by C-DAC on the RISC-V open-source architecture and fabricated on a 28 nm node.

India observed its 28th National Technology Day, marking the 1998 Pokhran-II (Operation Shakti) nuclear tests. The 2026 theme was 'Responsible Innovation for Inclusive Growth'.

India observed National Immunization Day (National Vaccination Day) on 16 March, alongside Pulse Polio rounds, reinforcing India's polio-free status.

Observed on 28 February with the theme 'Women in Science: Catalysing Viksit Bharat', commemorating C.V. Raman's discovery of the Raman Effect in 1928.

Observed on 4 February under the multi-year (2025-2027) theme 'United by Unique', centring people and their stories in cancer care.

MeitY notified the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, specifying the Online Gaming Authority's composition, criteria to identify 'online money games' and a 10-year registration certificate for e-sports.

India outlined a plan to expand nuclear power capacity more than tenfold - from about 8.8 GW to 100 GW by 2047 - as part of its clean-energy and net-zero roadmap.

SKUAST-Srinagar successfully cultivated the prized Morchella (morel) mushroom under controlled conditions for the first time, a potential boost for high-value agriculture in Kashmir.

MeitY proposed requiring intermediaries to comply with all MeitY advisories and directions, and extending the rules to news and current-affairs content shared by non-publisher users.

India released a national Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) roadmap to protect critical infrastructure and digital assets against future quantum-computing threats.

The Department of Telecommunications released NFAP-2025 (effective 30 December), governing spectrum from 8.3 kHz to 3000 GHz, identifying the 6425-7125 MHz band for 5G/6G and allocating Ka/Q/V bands for satellite services.