The Sultan Padamsee Playwriting Awards are named for the founder of the Theatre Group, one of India’s most important theatre institutions started in Bombay in 1941, which has played a pioneering role in Indian English-language theatre, staging landmark productions and nurturing generations of theatre practitioners.

The awards are held every two years, with submissions invited from playwrights of Indian origin anywhere in the world, for original plays written in the English language. The jury for 2026 awards was Akarsh Khurana, Devika Shahani Punjabi and Isabella Qureshi.

The session will see staged readings of excerpts from the three shortlisted plays by some of Mumbai's finest actors, including Shabana Azmi, Anahita Uberoi, Edward Sonnenblick, Deven Khote, Mahesh Dattani, Kunal Vijaykar, Rayo Noble, Sufiyan Junaid, Shivam Khuaran, Rahul Makwana, Chakori, Rhea Amin, and Sumantra Ghosal.

The session will culminate in the presentation of the awards.