Overview
- Vice President C P Radhakrishnan attended as Chief Guest at the January 2 event hosted by The New Indian Express in Chennai.
- Dr Chandrashekhara Kambara received the Lifetime Achievement award for his pioneering contributions to Kannada literature and theatre.
- Sudeep Chakravarti won Best Non-Fiction for Fallen City: A Double Murder, Political Insanity, and Delhi’s Descent from Grace, while Subi Taba took Best Fiction for Tales from the Dawn-Lit Mountains: Stories from Arunachal Pradesh.
- Neha Dixit was named Best Debut for The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian.
- Winners were finalized at an October jury meeting in New Delhi chaired by Pavan Varma with Githa Hariharan and Sanjeev Sanyal, following a July longlist of books published from July 2024 to June 2025 and a shift to a unified debut category proposed by TNIE chairman Manoj Kumar Sonthalia.