President of India Droupadi Murmu will confer the Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025-26 at a ceremony scheduled for November 11, 2026, at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. The event, organized under the Department of Urban Development, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, will honor India's cleanest cities for their contributions to the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban. Union Minister Manohar Lal and Minister of State Tokhan Sahu will also be present at the awards ceremony.
The 10th edition of Swachh Survekshan, conducted under the theme 'Swachhata Ki Nayi Pehel- Badhayein Haath, Karein Safai Saath', represents the program's largest scale to date, having expanded from 73 Urban Local Bodies in 2016 to 4,751 cities in the current edition. This year's assessment introduced enhanced focus areas including citizen feedback, expanded coverage of urban river fronts, coastlines and water bodies, and specific indicators addressing open defecation prevention, cleanliness of tourist and heritage spots, and behavior change initiatives in schools.
Urban Local Bodies were evaluated across 43 indicators spanning 10 key assessment areas: segregation, collection and transportation of waste, solid waste management, visible cleanliness, access to sanitation, mechanization of desludging services, ecosystem strengthening and institutional parameters, used water management, advocacy for Swachhata, and overall welfare of sanitation workers including citizen feedback and grievance redressal. The assessment process involved more than 3,000 trained assessors who conducted extensive on-ground evaluations with real-time GPS-enabled monitoring, maintaining a fully digital and transparent verification process with rigorous quality checks.
A significant component of this year's awards is the recognition of top performers from the 'Swachh Shehar Jodi' initiative, launched on September 27, 2025, as the first-ever urban waste management mentorship program. This initiative fostered peer learning between 70 mentor cities and 191 mentee cities across 33 States and Union Territories, with a Memorandum of Understanding signed between all participating cities at the launch event.
Mentee cities demonstrated substantial performance improvements between Swachh Survekshan 2024 and 2025-26. Visible cleanliness metrics improved from 48% to 70%, while door-to-door collection rates increased from 52% to 74%. Other notable improvements include source segregation (from 16% to 30%), access to sanitation (from 11% to 38%), used water management (from 32% to 53%), and advocacy for Swachhata (from 48% to 66%). These improvements reflect strengthened sanitation systems and enhanced service delivery outcomes achieved through dedicated mentorship from high-performing cities.