Navi Mumbai has been named India’s cleanest city at the Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025-26, bringing Indore’s eight-year run at the top to an end. Surat in Gujarat secured second place, while Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh came third.

More than 4,700 urban local bodies participated in the Centre’s annual cleanliness survey. The results were announced on Wednesday at a ceremony in New Delhi, where President Droupadi Murmu presented the awards. Here’s how cities across India ranked.

Who else made it to the top of the list?

There were plenty of winners across several categories.

In the 10 lakh-plus population category, Greater Visakhapatnam came out on top, followed by Jabalpur and Lucknow. For cities with populations between three and 10 lakh, Ujjain claimed first place, with Chandigarh and Guntur taking second and third, respectively.

Smaller cities weren't left out of the game. Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas topped the 50,000-to-three-lakh population category, followed by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Sagar.

In the 20,000-to-50,000 category, Maharashtra’s Vita took the top spot, while Odisha’s Aska and Goa’s Panaji came second and third.

There were some other interesting categories, too, celebrating cities along the water. Rewa in Madhya Pradesh was named the country's cleanest riverfront town, ahead of Bilaspur and Varanasi. For coastal cities, Odisha’s Puri took the crown, followed by Kerala’s Alappuzha and Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri.

And up in the mountains, Uttarakhand’s Rudrapur was named the cleanest Himalayan city, with Jammu and Shopian rounding off the top three.

What’s Indore's scorecard for 2026?

Don't mistake a change of crown for a fall from grace.

Indore secured second place in the newly introduced Mentor City category, alongside its partner town, Depalpur. This comes under a new addition to the cleanliness survey: the Swachh Shehar Jodi initiative.

Launched under the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, the initiative pairs cities with impressive cleanliness records (like Indore) with towns that could benefit from a little guidance. Besides Indore, there are 71 other mentor cities and around 200 mentee cities.

For instance, Ahmedabad is paired with mentee Sanand, which together claimed first place, followed by Indore and Depalpur. Tirupati and Kuppam secured third.

And the mentorship seems to be making a difference. According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, visible cleanliness improved from 48 to 70 per cent, while door-to-door waste collection jumped from 52 to 74 per cent. Source segregation rose from 16 to 30 per cent, access to sanitation climbed from 11 to 38 per cent, and used-water management increased from 32 to 53 per cent.

How was the cleanliness survey conducted?

More than 3,000 trained assessors, backed by real-time GPS-enabled monitoring, carried out on-the-ground evaluations across the country.

The entire process was digital, from submitting evidence to verifying it, with quality checks at every stage.

What’s Delhi’s NDMC celebrating?

The capital has reason to celebrate, too. The New Delhi Municipal Council secured second place in the 50,000-to-three-lakh population category.

Now, why is this a notable result? Because NDMC has remained quite consistent. It was named the cleanest small city in the country in 2022, recognised as the cleanest Union Territory in 2023 and crowned the cleanest capital city in 2020. It also topped the one-to-three-lakh population category in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

And what exactly is it doing to keep things spick and span? According to the council, it's a combination of mechanised cleaning, scientific waste management and a healthy dose of public participation. It has also stepped up night-time cleaning operations, allowing teams to tackle the day's rubbish without disrupting traffic or commercial activity.

NDMC has deployed 11 mechanical road sweepers and 20 gobbler machines, alongside specialist jetting equipment to clean roads, footpaths and public spaces. It also operates eight Micro Material Recovery Facilities and a network of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle centres to encourage waste segregation and recycling.