Instagram has announced the 25 winners of its 2026 Rings Awards, recognising creators whose work makes an impact through originality and creative risk-taking. Three India-linked creators model Bhavitha Mandava, freestyle footballer Muhammed Riswan and comedian Pooja Tripathi feature among the winners. Football star Erling Haaland is also on the list, while Indian chef Vikas Khanna served on the judging panel.
India has a notable presence in Instagram’s 2026 Rings Awards, with three Indian or Indian-origin creators named among the 25 winners of the platform’s creator recognition programme. The honourees are Bhavitha Mandava, known for her growing presence in international fashion; Muhammed Riswan, whose freestyle football videos have attracted a global audience; and Pooja Tripathi, the Indian-American comedian and writer behind the satirical Brooklyn Coffee Shop series.
The winner list also includes Erling Haaland, the Norwegian striker who has become one of football’s biggest global names. Indian chef Vikas Khanna was among the judges who helped select this year’s winners, putting an Indian creative voice on the panel alongside figures from fashion, music, film, sport, food and digital culture.
Bhavitha Mandava’s inclusion in the Instagram Rings 2026 winners list adds another milestone to the Indian model’s remarkable rise in international fashion. Originally from Hyderabad, Mandava studied architecture in India before moving to New York University to pursue a master’s degree in interactive design and media. Her career took an unexpected turn after she was noticed on a New York City subway by Matthieu Blazy, who was then the creative director of Bottega Veneta. She soon made her runway debut at Bottega Veneta’s Spring/Summer 2025 show. In December 2025, she made history by opening Chanel’s Métiers d’Art show in New York, becoming the first Indian model to open a Chanel show. The setting made her journey particularly striking: the runway was staged in a disused subway station, echoing the place where she had first been discovered. Chanel subsequently appointed her a House Ambassador in 2026, further cementing her position in the global fashion industry. Her Rings recognition celebrates a creative journey that moved from studying design to becoming one of the most prominent Indian faces on international runways.
Muhammed Riswan, who represents India’s freestyle football community through his handle @riswan_freestyle, has a story that began far from the world’s major sporting arenas. The footballer from Areekode in Kerala’s Malappuram district attracted worldwide attention through an extraordinary freestyle video filmed at Keralamkundu waterfall in November 2023. The clip showed him executing a football trick around the cascading water, turning a local landscape into the backdrop for a viral sporting moment. According to The New Indian Express, the video had amassed more than 554 million views and was recognised by Guinness World Records on January 8, 2024, as the most-viewed Instagram Reel at that time. His growing profile later took him to Buenos Aires, where the Argentina Football Association invited him as a VIP guest for an event associated with Lionel Messi in September 2025. Riswan’s story demonstrates how a distinctive skill, captured creatively and shared online, can take an Indian athlete from a small-town setting to an international audience. His selection for the Rings Awards recognises a form of sporting creativity that sits outside the conventional structure of professional football.
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Pooja Tripathi, known online as @winnie_thepooj, brings an Indian-American perspective to the 2026 honourees through her character-driven comedy. A first-generation Indian-American actor, writer and content creator based in New York City, Tripathi studied at Carnegie Mellon University and began developing satirical social-media videos around the characters and behaviour associated with cities such as New York and Los Angeles. One of her best-known projects is the “Brooklyn Coffeeshop” series, which follows two disgruntled baristas interacting with a parade of recognisable customers in a hipster café. The sketches poke fun at urban habits, lifestyle trends and the sometimes absurd language of contemporary café culture. According to Tripathi’s official website, the series has accumulated more than 50 million views across Instagram and TikTok. Her other recurring characters include the person who has just moved to Manhattan, the American tourist and the French tourist. Rather than relying on a single viral joke, she has developed a repeatable comedy format with its own characters and world. Her Rings win brings recognition to a creator whose work uses familiar everyday behaviour as the raw material for original satire.
Erling Haaland is one of the most instantly recognisable names among this year’s Rings winners. The Norwegian forward, who plays for Manchester City and represents Norway internationally, has built his reputation on extraordinary goal-scoring output, athleticism and a direct style of attacking play. His football credentials are backed by records: he scored 36 goals in his debut Premier League season in 2022–23, setting the competition’s record for goals in a single 38-match-season format, and won the Premier League Golden Boot again in 2025–26 after finishing with 27 league goals. Yet Haaland’s online appeal is not limited to football statistics. Away from the pitch, his goofy expressions, playful videos, candid posts and self-deprecating humour have helped make him a social-media personality in his own right. The contrast between a towering, physically imposing striker who can unsettle defenders and a star who is happy to joke about himself has become part of his public appeal. His inclusion among the Rings winners shows how an established sports celebrity can also resonate with audiences through personality and entertaining digital content.
Indian representation also extends to the judging panel through Vikas Khanna, the celebrated chef, restaurateur, author and filmmaker from Amritsar. Known to Indian television audiences through “MasterChef India”, Khanna has built an international career that combines culinary craft with storytelling, cultural advocacy and humanitarian work. His New York restaurant Junoon received a Michelin star for three consecutive years, according to his publisher Bloomsbury’s biography. His place on the Rings 2026 judging panel is notable because the awards are not confined to one creative discipline: the panel brings together people associated with fashion, music, cinema, sport, digital platforms, dance, beauty and food. Khanna’s participation places an Indian culinary voice among the figures selecting creators whose work demonstrates originality, cultural relevance and a willingness to take creative risks.
Instagram introduced Rings in 2025 to recognise creators who take creative chances and make a distinct impact on culture, rather than rewarding only one format, category or follower count. The award returned for a second edition in 2026, with 25 winners selected through nominations and voting by a panel of judges. Along with a physical ring, winners receive special profile recognition, including a gold ring around their Stories profile image. Instagram’s stated idea is that creativity involves experimentation, persistence and the willingness to explore ideas that may not fit familiar formulas. The 2026 ring was developed with judge and designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla and features a four-leaf clover cut from Connemara marble, a symbol linked by the designers to luck and the idea of creating opportunities through curiosity and exploration. With Mandava’s fashion breakthrough, Riswan’s freestyle football artistry, Tripathi’s comedy and Haaland’s sporting celebrity among the recognised work, this year’s list reflects the broad range of ways creators can build an audience and influence culture online.
