Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (IAST: Saṅgīta Nāṭaka Akādamī Puraskāra), also known as the Akademi Puraskar, is an award given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama. It is the highest Indian recognition given to people in the field of performing arts.
In 2003, the award consisted of 50,000, a citation, an angavastram (a shawl), and a tamrapatra (a brass plaque). Since 2009, the cash prize has been increased to ₹1,00,000. The awards are given in the categories of music, dance, theatre, other traditional arts and puppetry, and for contribution/scholarship in performing arts.
Award recipients The recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in various categories of performing arts arelisted below:
Music
Hindustani music
Vocal
1952 – Mushtaq Hussain Khan 1953 – Kesarbai Kerkar 1954 – Rajab Ali Khan 1955 – Anant Manohar Joshi 1956 – Rajabhaiyya Poonchhwale 1957 – Rasoolan Bai 1958 – Ganesh Ramachandra Behere 1959 – Krishnarao Shankar Pandit 1960 – Altaf Hussain Khan 1961 – Y. S. Mirashi Buwa 1962 – Bade Ghulam Ali Khan 1963 – Omkarnath Thakur 1964 – Rahimuddin Khan Dagar 1965 – Hirabai Barodekar 1966 – Siddheswari Devi 1967 – Amir Khan 1968 – Mogubai Kurdikar 1969 – Ramchatur Mallick 1970 – Nisar Hussain Khan 1971 – Mallikarjun Mansur 1972 – Begum Akhtar 1973 – Gangubai Hangal 1974 – Kumar Gandharva 1975 – Bhimsen Joshi 1975-76 Gavri Devi (Vocal) (Jodhpur, Rajasthan) 1976 – Narayanrao Vyas 1977 – Girija Devi 1978 – Khadim Hussain Khan 1979 – Sarachchandra Arolkar 1980 – Nivruttibua Sarnaik 1981 – Basavaraj Rajguru 1982 – Vasantrao Deshpande 1983 – Mahadev Prasad Mishra 1984 – Sharafat Hussain Khan 1985 – Kishori Amonkar, Aminuddin Dagar 1986 – Gavri Devi (Vocal) (Jodhpur, Rajasthan) 1986 – Asgari Bai, Firoz Dastur, Manik Varma 1987 – C. R. Vyas, Shobha Gurtu, Pandit Jasraj, 1988 – Padmavati Gokhale Shaligram 1989 – Jitendra Abhisheki 1990 – K. G. Ginde, Dhondutai Kulkarni 1991 – N. Zahiruddin Dagar, Prabha Atre 1992 – Ramarao V. Naik, Shiv Kumar Shukla 1993 – Bala Saheb Poochwale, Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar 1994 – Sulochana Brahaspati, Zia Fariddudin Dagar 1995 – A. Kanan 1996 – Dinkar Kaikini, Hafeez Ahmed Khan 1997 – L. K. Pandit 1998 – Puttaraj Gawaigalu, Parveen Sultana, Rajan and Sajan Mishra 1999–2000 – Ajoy Chakraborty, Rita Ganguly, Malabika Kanan 2001 – Abhay Narayan Mallick, Sangameshwar Gurav, Malini Rajurkar 2002 – Sushila Rani Patel, Sharayu Kalekar 2003 – Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Yeshwant Balkrishna Joshi 2004 – Balwant Rai Bhatt, Tejpal Singh and Surinder Singh 2005 – S. C. R. Bhat, Ramashreya Jha 2006 – Vijay Kumar Kichlu, Rashid Khan 2007 – Vidyadhar Vyas, Govardhan Mishra 2008 – Ulhas Kashalkar, M.R. Gautam 2009 – Abdul Rashid Khan, Vasundhara Komkali 2010 – Chhannulal Mishra, Yashpaul 2011 – Shruti Sadolikar, Pandit Venkatesh Kumar 2012 – Shankar Lal Mishra, Rajashekhar Mansur, Ajay Pohankar 2013 – Ritwik Sanyal, Veena Sahasrabuddhe 2014 – Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, Iqbal Ahmad Khan, Nathrao Neralkar 2015 – Mashkoor Ali Khan 2016 – Prabhakar Karekar 2017 – Lalith J. Rao, Umakant and Ramakant Gundecha - Gundecha Brothers 2018 – Mani Prasad, Madhup Mudgal 2019 – Vinayak Torvi, Prem Kumar Mallick 2020 – Sumitra Guha, Arati Ankalikar-Tikekar 2021 – Uday Bhawalkar, Subhra Guha 2022 – Devaki Pandit, Harvinder Singh 2023 – Kalapini Komkali, Vinod Kumar Dwivedi
Instrumental Been/Rudra Veena/Vichitra Veena
1969 – Dabir Khan 1977 – Asad Ali Khan 1981 – Zia Mohiuddin Dagar 1994 – Pandit Gopal Krishan 2012 – Bahauddin Dagar
Flute 1983 – Pt. Hari Prasad Chaurasiya 1986 – Devendra Murdeshwar 1994 – Raghunath Seth 2010 – Nityanand Haldipur 2014 – Ronu Majumdar 2017 – Pt. Rajendra Prasanna 2019 – Chetan Joshi
Guitar 2005 – Brij Bhushan Kabra
Harmonium 2000 – Appa Jalgaonkar 2005 – Tulsidas Vasant Borkar 2022 – Dharamnath Mishra
Pakhavaj
1955 – Govind Rao Burhanpurkar 1965 – Sakharam Tavde 1967 – Ayodhya Prasad 1978 – Purushottam Das 1988 – Ramshankardas Pagaldas 1991 – Chatrapati Singh 1993 – Gopaldas Panse 1995 – Ram Ashish Pathak 2003 – Bhavani Shankar 2011 – Totaram Sharma 2020 – Dal Chand Sharma
Santoor 1986 – Shivkumar Sharma 1993 – Bhajan Sopori 2018 – Tarun Bhattacharya
Sarangi
1966 – Shakoor Khan 1975 – Ram Narayan 1976 – Gopal Misra 1986 – Sabri Khan 1988 – Hanuman Prasad Mishra 1990 – Abdul Lateef Khan 1992 – Sultan Khan 1996 – Inderlal Dhandra, Ramchandra Mishra 2008 – Ramesh Mishra 2013 – Dhruba Ghosh 2023 – Moinuddin Khan
Sarod *1952 – Allauddin Khan 1953 – Hafiz Ali Khan 1963 – Ali Akbar Khan 1971 – Radhika Mohan Maitra 1986 – Sharan Rani Backliwal 1988 – Zarin Sharma 1989 – Amjad Ali Khan 1993 – Buddhadev Das Gupta 1999–2000 – Rajeev Taranath 2004 – Aashish Khan 2018 – Tejendra Majumdar 2022 – Basant Kabra
Shehnai 1956 – Ustad Bismillah Khan 1985 – Ali Hussain Khan 1989 – Pt. Anant Lal 1996 – Pt. Raghunath Prasanna 2008 – Krishna Ram Chaudhary 2009 – Ali Ahmad Hussain 2017 – Rajendra Prasanna
Sitar
1958 – Yusuf Ali 1960 – Wahid Khan 1962 – Pt. Ravi Shankar 1968 – Mushtaq Ali Khan 1974 – Nikhil Banerjee 1987 – Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan, Imrat Khan (also Surbahar) 1989 – Balaram Pathak 1992 – Uma Shankar Mishra 1994 – Shamim Ahmed Khan 1996 – Debu Chaudhuri 2001 – Manilal Nag 2003 – Arvind Parikh 2006 – Shahid Parvez 2010 – Budhaditya Mukherjee 2015 – Karthick Kumar 2019 – Manju Mehta 2020 – Kushal Das 2023 –Harvinder Kumar Sharma
Surbahar 1991 – Annapurna Devi 2011 – Pushparaj Koshti
Tabla
1954 – Ustad Ahmed Jan Thirakwa 1959 – Ustad Jahangir Khan 1961 – Pt. Kanthe Maharaj 1970 – Masit Khan 1976 – Karamatulla Khan 1979 – Pt. Samta Prasad 1982 – Ustad Alla Rakha 1984 – Pt. Kishan Maharaj 1990 – Ustad Zakir Hussain 1991 – Shaikh Dawood 1997 – Swapan Chaudhuri, Lalji Gokhale 1998 – Pandharinath Gangadhar Nageshkar 1999–2000 – Shankar Ghosh 2001 – Ishwar Lal Mishra 2002 – Suresh B. Gaitonde, Anindo Chatterjee 2004 – Pt. Suresh Talwalkar 2006 – Kumar Bose 2007 – Nandan Mehta 2009 – Lachman Singh Seen 2012 – Sabir Khan (Tabla) 2013 – Hashmat Ali Khan 2014 – Pt. Nayan Ghosh 2016 – Arvind Mulgaonkar 2017 – Pt. Yogesh Samsi 2021 – Ravindra Yavagal
Violin
1972 – Gajananrao Joshi 1980 – V. G. Jog 1990 – N. Rajam 1995 – D. K. Datar 1996 – Annavarapu Rama Swamy 1997 – Sisir Kana Dhar Chowdhury 2007 – Ramoo Prasad Shastri 2016 – Kala Ramnath 2021 – Sangeeta Shankar 2023- H.K Venkatram
Carnatic music
Vocal
1952 – Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar 1953 – Semmangudi R. Srinivasa Iyer 1954 – Mysore K. Vasudevacharya 1955 – Maharajapuram Vishwanatha Iyer 1956 – M. S. Subbulakshmi 1957 – Musiri Subramania Iyer 1958 – Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar 1959 – G. N. Balasubramaniam 1960 – Madurai Mani Iyer 1961 – Mudikondan C. Venkatarama Iyer 1962 – D. K. Pattammal 1963 – B. Devendrappa 1964 – Chittoor S. Subramanyam 1965 – T. Brinda 1966 – Madurai Srirangam Iyengar 1967 – C. Venkata Rao 1968 – Alathur Srinivasa Iyer 1969 – Dandapani Desikar 1970 – M. L. Vasanthakumari 1971 – N. Channakeshaviah 1972 – T. Muktha 1973 – B.S. Raja Iyengar 1974 – M. D. Ramanathan 1975 – M. Balamurali Krishna 1976 – K.V.Narayanaswamy 1977 – Sripada Pinakapani 1978 – Madurai S. Somasundaram 1979 – R K Srikanthan 1980 – Seerkhazhi S. Govindarajan 1981 – Radha and Jayalakshmi 1982 – T. M. Thiagarajan 1983 – D. K. Jayaraman 1984 – Maharajapuram V. Santhanam 1985 – Voleti Venkatesvarulu 1986 – B. Rajam Iyer 1986 – Nedunuri Krishnamoorthy 1987 – Madurai N. Krishnan 1987 – Mani Krishnaswami 1988 – Nookala Chinna Satyanarayana 1989 – Titte Krishna Iyengar 1990 – T. V. Sankaranarayanan 1991 – S. Rajam 1992 – K. R. Kumaraswamy Iyer 1993 – Trichy Swaminathan Iyer 1994 – C. S. Krishna Iyer 1995 – R. Vedavalli 1996 – T. K. Govinda Rao 1997 – M. S. Balasubramanya Sarma 2000 – S. R. Janakiraman 2001 – B. V. Raman 2002 – T. R. Subramaniam 2003 – Trichur V. Ramachandran, M. A. Narasimhachar 2004 – Thiruvengadu A. Jayaraman, C. Saroja & C. Lalitha 2005 – S. V. Parthasarrathy, P. S. Narayanaswamy 2006 – D. Pasupathi, Chingleput Ranganathan 2007 – B. Krishnamoorti 2008 – Puranam Purushottama Sastri 2009 – Parassala B Ponnammal 2010 – Suguna Purushothaman, Mysore Nagamani Srinath 2011 – J. Venkataraman 2012 – O. S. Thyagarajan 2013 – Aruna Sairam, D. Seshchari & D. Raghavachari (Hyderabad Brothers) 2014 – Neyveli Santhanagopalan 2015 – R.N. Tharanathan, Suguna Varadachari, R.N. Thiagarajan 2016 – Neela Ramgopal, K. Omanakutty 2017 – M. S. Sheela 2018 – Alamelu Mani, Malladi Suribabu 2019 – Charumathi Ramachandran, Palai C.K. Ramachandran 2020 – R. K. Padmanabha, G. Balakrishna Prasad 2021 – Sudha Ragunathan, Radha Namboodiri 2022 – Maharajapuram S. Ramachandran, Manda Sudharani 2023 – Bombay Jayashri, Shankar Sastry
Instrumental Clarinet 1994 – A. K. C. Natarajan
Flute
1954 – Palladam Sanjiva Rao 1961 – T. N. Swaminatha Pillai 1965 – T. R. Mahalingam 1984 – Natesan Ramani 1987 – T. Viswanathan 1989 – Sikkil Sisters - Kunjumani & Neela 1997 – Kesi Narayanaswamy 1999–2000 – T.S Sankaran 2004 – Prapancham Sitaram 2017 – Shashank Subramanyam 2019 – Sikkil Mala Chandrasekar
Ghatam 1988 – Thetakudi Harihara Vinayakram 1995 – Umayalpuram K. Narayanaswamy 2011 – E. M. Subramaniam 2014 – Sukanya Ramgopal 2025 – Tripunithura N. Radhakrishnan
Gottuvadhyam 1958 – Budaloor Krishnamurthy Shastri 2006 – N. Ravikiran
Kanjira 2001 – G. Harishankar
Mandolin 2009 – U. Srinivas
Mridangam
1956 – Palghat Mani Iyer 1975 – C.S. Murugabhupathy 1979 – Kolanka Venkata Raju 1983 – Palghat R. Raghu 1987 – T. K. Murthy 1990 – T. V. Gopalakrishnan 1991 – Vellore G. Ramabhadran 1992 – Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman 1994 – Dandamudi Ramamohan Rao 1996 – Guruvayur Dorai 1998 – Karaikudi Mani 1999–2000 – V. Kamalakar Rao 2002 – Yella Venkateshwara Rao 2004 – Madras A. Kannan 2006 – Thiruvarur Bakthavathsalam 2008 – Mannargudi Easwaran 2009 – Dandamudi Sumathi Ram Mohan Rao 2010 – Srimushnam V. Raja Rao 2012 – K. V. Prasad 2013 – Trichy Sankaran 2016 – J. Vaidhyanathan 2017 – Tiruvarur Vaidyanathan 2019 – Trivandrum V. Surendran 2020 – Patri Satish Kumar 2023 – Neyveli Narayanan 2025 – T. S. Nandakumar, Anoor Anantha Krishna Sharma
Nadaswaram
1955 – T. N. Rajarathinam Pillai 1962 – Thiruvengadu Subramania Pillai 1966 – P. S. Veeruswamy Pillai 1972 – T. S. Natarajasundaram Pillai 1976 – Sheik Chinna Moulana 1981 – Namagiripettai Krishnan 1995 – Domada Chittiabbayi 2005 – Ongale N. Rangaiah 2007 – S. R. D. Vaidyanathan 2011 – Seshampatti T Sivalingam 2013 – Thiruvizha Jayashankar 2017 – S.Kasim, S.Babu - Kasim-Babu Brothers
Saxophone 2003 – Kadri Gopalnath
Thavil 1985 – Valangaiman A. Shanmugasundaram Pillai 1988 – Valayapatti A. R. Subramaniam 2001 – Haridwaramangalam A. K. Palanivel 2014 – Thiruvalaputhur T A Kaliyamurthy 2021 – Thanjavur R. Govindarajan 2022 – Vinukonda Subrahmanyam
Veena
1952 – Karaikudi Sambasiva Iyer 1960 – L. Subramanya Sastri 1968 – K. S. Narayanaswamy 1969 – Devakottai A. Narayana Iyengar 1970 – Mysore V. Doreswamy Iyengar 1973 – Emani Sankara Sastry 1977 – S. Balachander 1980 – Thanjavur K. P. Sivanandam 1986 – Rajeswari Padmanabhan 1988 – R. Pichumani Iyer 1990 – Chitti Babu 1992 – M. K. Kalyanakrishna Bhagavathar 1993 – Kalpakam Swaminathan 2001 – R. N. Doreswamy 2002 – E. Gayathri 2007 – Vidya Shankar 2011 – Ayyagari Syamasundaram 2017 – Suma Sudhindra 2021 – D. Balakrishnan 2022 – Jayanthi Kumaresh
Violin
1953 – Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu 1957 – Tirumakudalu Chowdiah 1959 – Kumbakonam Rajamanickam Pillai 1963 – T. K. Jayarama Iyer 1964 – K. N. Chinnaswamy Iyer 1967 – K. S. Venkataramiah 'Papa' 1971 – Madurai S. Subramanya Iyer 1974 – T. N. Krishnan 1978 – Lalgudi Jayaraman 1982 – M. S. Gopalakrishnan 1986 – M. Chandrasekaran 1988 – Chalakudy N. S. Narayanaswamy 1989 – R. K. Venkatarama Sastry 1991 – Kandadevi S. Alagiriswamy 1993 – Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan 1996 – Annavarapu Ramaswamy 1997 – T. Rukmini 1998 – M. S. Anantharaman 1999–2000 – R. R. Keshavamurthy 2003 – A. Kanyakumari 2005 – V. V. Subrahmanyam