Chetak Screen Awards 2026 Nominations: Who decides, and what’s the process

The vast pool of knowledge and experience of the members helps in strengthening the integrity of the awards’ selection process.

The Chetak Screen Awards 2026 follows a robust, carefully curated selection process for nominees and winners that blends data driven shortlisting with a critics’ panel’s judgment.

Also Read – Screen Academy unveils Chetak Screen Awards: Here are the nominees for the finest in film and OTT

Priyanka Sinha Jha, COO, Screen Academy, explains the rigorous process followed in determining this year’s award nominations, “Films, performances, and technical achievements were first shortlisted using a mix of box office performance, viewership, audience and critics’ responses. This core team consisted Priyanka Sinha Jha, Shubhra Gupta, Jyoti Sharma Bawa and Nikhil Taneja. These were then evaluated by the Screen Academy through structured voting, ensuring that the final nominees and winners truly reflected excellence across categories.”

To bring some structure to the art of film appreciation, Dr. Priya Jaikumar, Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Los Angeles, and scholar-in-residence at Screen Academy, developed detailed grading guidelines for the Screen Academy members to follow while scoring. Across all categories in the Chetak Screen Awards 2026 rubrics, four core criteria appear consistently:

1) Creativity and Overall Experience — asking whether the work offers a powerful, cohesive viewing or listening experience that aligns form with content.

2) Technical Excellence — evaluating whether all craft elements are executed at the highest level and work in harmony.

3) Viewer Connectivity — assessing the work’s ability to forge a deep, lasting connection with audiences and leave an enduring imprint on cinema or culture.

4) Innovation — examining whether the work articulates a fresh zeitgeist, introduces something genuinely new, or expands the audience’s appreciation of the medium.

5) For performance-based categories, a fifth shared criterion — Authenticity — is added, probing whether the artist makes every aspect of their role believable and fully inhabited, regardless of whether the premise is realistic or fantastical.

EY were the process advisors for the awards. The statistics show that the evaluation process witnessed over 95 per cent participation of the Screen Academy members across categories, with an average of 38-40 Academy members scoring each category, ensuring a highly robust and representative selection process. For most categories, 38-40 valid scores were considered after applying the trimmed mean (Olympic) scoring methodology, ensuring fairness and neutrality.

Here is the list of the illustrious Screen Academy members:

1. Abhishek Chaubey – Director & Screenwriter
2. Amit Ray- Production Designer
3. Amritpal Singh Bindra – Film producer, Director & Writer
4. Anand Mahindra – Patron of arts, Chairman of the Mahindra Group
5. Anil Mehta – Cinematographer
6. Atul Mongia – Casting Director, Acting Coach
7. Bishwadeep Chatterjee – Sound Designer
8. Deepa Bhatia – Film editor , writer
9. Deepa Mehta – Director & Writer
10. Feroz Abbas Khan – Director & Screenwriter
11. Gaurav Gandhi—Head of Amazon Prime Video, APAC.
12. Goutam Ghose – Director, Cinematographer
13. Guneet Monga Kapoor – Film Producer
14. Jaideep Sahni – Screenwriter & lyricist
15. John Abraham – Actor -Producer
16. Kabir Khan – Director
17. Karan Johar – Director, Producer, Talk Show Host
18. Kausar Munir – Lyricist & Screenwriter
19. Manish Malhotra — Fashion Designer & Producer
20. Manohar Verma – Action Director
21. Maxima Basu –Costume and fashion Designer
22. Mukesh Chhabra – Casting Director
23. Nagesh Kukunoor – Director & Screenwriter
24. Namit Malhotra – Film Producer, Global CEO of DNEG
25. Namrata Rao – Director and Producer
26. Niharika Bhasin – Costume Designer
27. Payal Kapadia – Director
28. Pooja Ladha Surti – Film Editor & Writer
29. Pritam Chakraborty – Music Director and Composer
30. Prosenjit Chatterjee – Actor & Producer
31. R. S. Prasanna – Director
32. Rahul Dholakia – Director, Producer & Screenwriter
33. Rajiv Menon – Cinematographer & Director
34. Rajkumar Hirani – Film editor, Screenwriter & Director
35. Ram Madhvani – Director
36. Ramesh Taurani – Film & Music Producer
37. Ravi Chandran – Cinematographer
38. Resul Pookutty – Sound Designer & Producer
39. Rima Das – Writer, Director & Editor
40. Ronnie Screwvala -Film Producer & Entrepreneur
41. Sabu Cyril – Production Designer
42. Sameer Nair – Managing Director, Applause Entertainment
43. Shiamak Davar -Choreographer
44. Shoojit Sircar – Director & Film Producer
45. Siddharth Roy Kapur – Film Producer
46. Sriram Raghavan – Director and Screenwriter
47. Subhash Ghai – Director, Producer & Educationist
48. Subrata Chakraborty – Production Designer
49. Sujoy Ghosh – Screenwriter & Director
50. Swapnil Sonawane – Cinematographer & producer
51. Tanuj Garg – Film Producer
52. Vidya Balan – Actor
53. Vinay Kumar – Actor, Director & Theatre Researcher

To know more about the Screen Academy and its members, visit https://screen-academy.org/

Watch Chetak Screen Awards 2026 LIVE on YouTube, Sony Entertainment Television, and Sony LIV on April 5 at 8 pm.