Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025-26 Presented by President Murmu

The Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025-26 were handed out at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on 11 November 2026. President Droupadi Murmu honoured the towns and cities judged cleanest in the tenth round of the country's urban sanitation survey. The ceremony was convened by the Department of Urban Development in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Union Minister Manohar Lal, who holds the Housing and Urban Affairs and Power portfolios, and Minister of State Tokhan Sahu were present as the winners were felicitated.

Sixty awards in five groups

Sixty national awards were announced this year. They fall into five groups: Swachh Shehar Jodi, Clean Cities of the Super Swachh League, Swachh Shehar across five population bands, the new town and city categories, and State First Swachh City. For the first time the survey picked out a Swachh River Front Town, a Swachh Coastal Town and a Clean Himalayan City.

Who topped which list

• Super Swachh League: Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra, Surat in Gujarat and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
• Million-plus population band: GVMC Visakhapatnam, Jabalpur and Lucknow.
• Swachh Shehar Jodi: Ahmedabad with Sanand, Indore with Depalpur, and Tirupati with Kuppam.
• Clean Himalayan City: Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, followed by Jammu and Shopian.
• River front towns: Rewa, Bilaspur and Varanasi. Coastal towns: Puri, Alappuzha and Ratnagiri.

How far the survey has grown

Manohar Lal told the gathering that the survey took in 73 cities in 2016 and now reaches 4,751 cities. Feedback this year came from 2.70 crore citizens. Since 2014 the share of urban waste that is processed has risen from 16 per cent to 80 per cent, and door-to-door collection from 44 per cent to more than 96 per cent. Clearing old dumpsites has freed close to 11,000 acres of city land. More than 350 urban local bodies climbed over 500 ranks, and over 1,700 bodies in towns of fewer than 50,000 people did better than in 2024-25.

How cities were scored

Urban local bodies were marked on 43 indicators spread over 10 domains, among them waste segregation, solid waste handling, visible cleanliness, used-water management, the welfare of sanitation workers, and citizen feedback and grievance redressal. More than 3,000 trained assessors did the field checks, aided by GPS-enabled monitoring, and the whole process from evidence to verification ran on a digital platform.

New programmes announced

Under the Swachh Shehar Jodi plan, 70 mentor cities have been paired with 191 mentee cities so that stronger performers can hand-hold weaker ones. The PRAGATI-50 initiative will build up 50 cities as model clean cities through technology and continuous monitoring. The State First Swachh City award was conferred on 30 cities, and Union Territories were split into two groups for awards. The minister also urged states to run their own Swachh Survekshan rankings.