Swachh Survekshan 2025-26 Awards: President to Honour Cleanest Cities

The Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025-26 will be given away by President Droupadi Murmu at a ceremony at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on 11 November 2026. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs announced the ceremony on 9 November 2026. Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs and Power Manohar Lal and Minister of State Tokhan Sahu will be present as the awards go to the country's cleanest cities under the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban.

The tenth edition and its theme

This is the 10th edition of the cleanliness survey, and it has been completed on the theme 'Swachhata Ki Nayi Pehel- Badhayein Haath, Karein Safai Saath'. The survey is run by the Department of Urban Development in the ministry. Its reach has widened enormously since it began: from 73 urban local bodies in 2016 to more than 4,751 cities in the latest round.

How cities were marked

Urban local bodies were scored on 43 indicators grouped into 10 assessment areas. These covered visible cleanliness, access to sanitation, solid waste management, the segregation, collection and transport of waste, used water management, mechanisation of desludging services, institutional parameters and ecosystem strengthening, advocacy for Swachhata, the welfare of sanitation workers, and citizen feedback with grievance redressal. More than 3,000 trained assessors visited cities on the ground, tracked in real time through GPS. From the filing of evidence to its verification, the process was kept fully digital, with quality checks at each stage. New features of this round include a heavier weight for citizen feedback, wider coverage of urban river fronts, coastlines and water bodies, and separate indicators on preventing open defecation and open urination, on the cleanliness of tourist and heritage spots, and on changing habits in schools.

Swachh Shehar Jodi

The awards will also recognise the best performers under Swachh Shehar Jodi, the first mentorship and peer-learning programme for urban waste management, launched by Manohar Lal on 27 September 2025 with a memorandum of understanding signed between the paired cities. It links 70 mentor cities with 191 mentee cities across 33 States and Union Territories. Mentee cities improved sharply between the 2024 round and the present one.