Current Affairs 2025-26

Current affairs is the most volatile part of any exam, and the smart way to study it is to lock down the positions, milestones, and awards that examiners convert into one-mark questions — this snapshot covers events through mid-2026, but always re-verify names close to your exam date.

Definition: Current affairs are recent national and international events — appointments, schemes, awards, space missions, and milestones — typically from the last 6–12 months, tested in the general-awareness section of competitive exams.

Heads of major Indian institutions (mid-2026)

• President of India: Droupadi Murmu (since July 2022) — first tribal woman President.
• Vice-President: Jagdeep Dhankhar (since August 2022).
• Prime Minister: Narendra Modi — third consecutive term began June 2024.
• Chief Justice of India: B. R. Gavai (from May 2025); preceded by Sanjiv Khanna (Nov 2024 – May 2025), and D. Y. Chandrachud (until Nov 2024).
• Lok Sabha Speaker: Om Birla (re-elected June 2024 for a second term).
• RBI Governor: Sanjay Malhotra (from December 2024; replaced Shaktikanta Das).
• Chief Election Commissioner: Gyanesh Kumar (after Rajiv Kumar's tenure).
• Key cabinet ministers: S. Jaishankar (External Affairs), Nirmala Sitharaman (Finance), Rajnath Singh (Defence), Amit Shah (Home Affairs).

Global leaders (2026)

• USA: Donald Trump — 47th President, sworn in January 2025 (second, non-consecutive term; the first such case since Grover Cleveland).
• UK: Keir Starmer — PM since July 2024, Labour Party.
• Russia: Vladimir Putin — re-elected 2024 for a sixth term.
• China: Xi Jinping.
• Bangladesh: Muhammad Yunus leads an interim government after Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August 2024 following mass protests.
• Pakistan: PM Shehbaz Sharif; President Asif Ali Zardari.
• UN Secretary-General: António Guterres (since 2017; second term from 2022).

India's space milestones

• Chandrayaan-3 (August 2023) — Vikram lander and Pragyan rover; India became the 4th nation to soft-land on the Moon and the first ever to land near the lunar south pole. Previous attempts by Russia's Luna-25 crashed days before.
• Aditya-L1 (September 2023) — India's first solar observation mission, successfully parked at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point in January 2024 to study solar winds and coronal mass ejections.
• Gaganyaan — India's human-spaceflight programme managed by ISRO; uncrewed test missions ongoing through 2025–26; first crewed flight planned for 2026.
• SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) — now operational for lightweight commercial payloads.

National milestones and schemes

• India became the world's most populous nation in 2023, overtaking China (UN estimates put India at ~1.43 billion).
• India's nominal GDP crossed $4 trillion (5th largest economy globally).
• India hosted the G20 Summit (New Delhi, September 2023) — theme: "One Earth, One Family, One Future". The African Union was admitted as a permanent member. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) was announced.
• New Parliament building inaugurated by PM Modi on 28 May 2023 (Sansad Bhavan).
• Vande Bharat trains expanded to 50+ routes across the country by 2026.
• 5G rollout completed across all districts.
• PM Vishwakarma Yojana launched 2023 — skill development for traditional artisans.

Sports milestones (2024–25)

:::compare India's Paris Olympics 2024 medals

India won 6 medals total at Paris 2024 (1 silver, 5 bronze). Manu Bhaker became the first Indian to win two medals at a single Olympic Games.

• T20 World Cup 2024: India defeated South Africa in the final (Barbados, June 2024) to win their second T20 World Cup (first since 2007).
• D. Gukesh — became the youngest World Chess Champion in history at age 18 (December 2024), defeating Ding Liren of China.

Major awards (2024–25)

Bharat Ratna 2024 (5 recipients — the highest single-year count in decades):

• L. K. Advani (living); P. V. Narasimha Rao (posthumous); Charan Singh (posthumous); M. S. Swaminathan (posthumous); Karpoori Thakur (posthumous).

Nobel Prizes 2024:

• Physics: John Hopfield & Geoffrey Hinton — foundational work enabling machine learning.
• Chemistry: David Baker, Demis Hassabis & John Jumper — computational protein structure prediction.
• Literature: Han Kang (South Korea) — "intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas."
• Peace: Nihon Hidankyo — a Japanese organisation of Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic-bomb survivors (hibakusha).
• Economics: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson — how institutions shape national prosperity.

Why it matters: General-awareness marks are won by recall alone with no working out — a candidate who has revised the latest office-holders and headline events answers in seconds while others guess. Current-affairs questions are among the most reliable easy marks in any recruitment exam.

Real-world example: When you read "RBI keeps repo rate unchanged", you instantly know the decision sits with Governor Sanjay Malhotra and the Monetary Policy Committee. Connecting an event to the person in office is exactly the link exams test.

Common misconception: That current-affairs facts, once memorised, stay valid. They don't — office-holders rotate. The Chief Justice of India changed three times between 2024 and 2025 alone. Never rely on a note more than 3–4 months old; re-verify the most recent name close to your exam.

:::keypoints Key points

• President: Droupadi Murmu; PM: Narendra Modi (3rd term); CJI: B. R. Gavai; RBI Governor: Sanjay Malhotra.
• Chandrayaan-3 made India the 4th Moon-lander and the first at the south pole.
• India is the world's most populous nation (2023) and holds the 5th-largest economy.
• Paris 2024: 6 medals; Manu Bhaker won two (unique); Neeraj Chopra won silver.
• D. Gukesh (age 18, December 2024) — youngest-ever World Chess Champion.
• Nobel 2024 Literature: Han Kang; Peace: Nihon Hidankyo.
• Bharat Ratna 2024 went to 5 recipients, including L. K. Advani and M. S. Swaminathan.
• Trump returned as 47th US President in Jan 2025; Keir Starmer became UK PM in July 2024.
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:::memory
"CMCR-Space" — Chandrayaan-3 (south pole), Manu Bhaker (2 medals Paris), Chess Gukesh (youngest champion), RBI Malhotra — the four most exam-favourite India-specific milestones of 2024–25.
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:::recap

• Focus on who holds which post plus the headline events of the past year.
• Pair each scheme, mission, or award with its date and significance.
• Sports section: Paris Olympics 2024, T20 WC 2024, and Chess WC 2024 are the three pillars.
• Re-verify names close to exam day — appointments change without notice.
• Nobel 2024 is heavily testable: pin the Physics (Hinton/Hopfield-ML) and Literature (Han Kang) winners.
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Current affairs is the most dynamic section of any government exam, and the highest-scoring slice is government schemes, landmark legislation, and significant national and international events — because these are factual, unambiguous, and directly tested with named-date questions. This lesson organises the key 2023–2025 developments into an exam-ready structure.

Definition: A government scheme (yojana) is a structured programme through which the state delivers a specific benefit — financial assistance, skill training, infrastructure, or services — to a targeted group of citizens.

Flagship schemes — know the beneficiary and benefit

:::compare Key Government Schemes 2023–25

Why it matters: Exam questions frame schemes as "which scheme targets artisans?" or "which scheme provides free solar electricity?" — you must know both the name and the specific beneficiary-benefit pair.

Real-world example: A village potter from Odisha enrolling under PM Vishwakarma receives a ₹15,000 toolkit grant, collateral-free credit of up to ₹3 lakh, and digital-transaction incentives. Visualising one real artisan makes the scheme stick far better than a bare name in a list.

Landmark laws (2023–2024)

The three new criminal laws — the most examined legislative event of 2024:

The British-era criminal codes were replaced by three new Acts and came into force on 1 July 2024:

Also know:

• Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 (Women's Reservation Act): 33% seats reserved for women in Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies; takes effect after delimitation (expected post-2026 Census).
• Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: India's first comprehensive data-protection legislation; establishes "Data Fiduciaries" and citizens' rights over personal data.
• Telecommunications Act, 2023: replaces the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.
• Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, 2023: establishes an apex body to fund and promote R&D.

Common misconception: Many candidates lump the three new criminal laws together as "a new IPC." They are three separate statutes replacing three separate codes — BNS (criminal offences, replacing IPC), BNSS (criminal procedure, replacing CrPC), BSA (evidence rules, replacing the Evidence Act). Exam questions frequently test which new law maps to which old code, so keep the pairs distinct.

International developments (2023–2025)

Ongoing conflicts:

• Russia–Ukraine war: continues since February 2022; ceasefire negotiations under the new US Trump administration in early 2025 remain inconclusive as of mid-2025.
• Israel–Hamas conflict: began 7 October 2023 with the Hamas attack on southern Israel; a phased ceasefire deal was reached in January 2025.

Leadership changes:

• Bangladesh (Aug 5, 2024): Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India amid a student-led uprising; Muhammad Yunus heads the interim government.
• Pakistan elections (Feb 2024): coalition government — PML-N and PPP — with Shehbaz Sharif as Prime Minister.

Multilateral developments:

• BRICS expansion (2024–25): Iran, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia joined as full members; Saudi Arabia holds partner status.
• IMEC (India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor): announced at G20 New Delhi Summit, 2023 — a proposed rail-and-ship corridor connecting India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Europe.
• India–Canada tensions: diplomatic strain over the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar; Canada expelled an Indian diplomat; India reciprocated.
• India–Maldives: early-2024 tensions after President Muizzu's pro-China stance led to an "India Out" campaign; relations thawed by mid-2024.

Economic developments (2024–2026)

• RBI repo rate: held at 6.5% through all of 2024; cut to 6.25% in February 2025; further cut to 6.0% by mid-2025.
• GST collections: crossed ₹2 lakh crore in a single month multiple times (a milestone).
• UPI transactions: crossed 16 billion transactions in a month (early 2025) — the world's largest real-time payments volume.
• India GDP growth (FY 2024–25): approximately 7.2% (advance estimate), among the fastest large economies globally.

Science and technology milestones

• Gaganyaan (India's first crewed space mission): uncrewed test flights ongoing in 2025–26; crewed mission planned for 2026–27.
• JWST (James Webb Space Telescope): NASA/ESA mission continues releasing deep-field and exoplanet atmosphere data.
• CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapy — Casgevy: first approved CRISPR therapy (by Vertex/CRISPR Therapeutics), cleared in late 2023 for sickle-cell disease and beta-thalassaemia.
• AI/LLM milestones: GPT-4 (2023) and GPT-5 (2024) released by OpenAI; Gemini by Google (2023–24); AI governance discussions at G7, GPAI, and India's AI mission.
• NVIDIA: briefly became the world's most valuable company by market capitalisation (early 2025).

Climate and environment (2024–2025)

• 2024 was the warmest year on record globally, the first calendar year to exceed +1.5°C above the pre-industrial average — the threshold set by the Paris Agreement.
• COP29, Baku (Nov 2024): set a new climate finance goal of $300 billion per year by 2035 from developed to developing nations (critics called it insufficient).
• India at COP: India pushed for differentiated responsibilities and continued its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets — 50% non-fossil electricity by 2030 and 1 billion tonnes of carbon-equivalent reduction by 2030.

Positions and appointments to track

For RRB and SSC exams, keep a running list of who currently holds these posts: President and Vice-President of India, Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India, RBI Governor, Election Commissioner, CAG, NITI Aayog CEO, service chiefs (Army, Navy, Air Force), and heads of major international bodies (UN Secretary-General, WTO, IMF, World Bank, WHO).

Why it matters: Current-affairs questions reward candidates who can match a scheme to its target group, a new law to the old code it replaced, and an event to its exact date. These are binary, decisive marks — unlike analytical questions where partial knowledge risks a wrong answer. Systematic revision close to the exam has the highest per-hour return of any topic.

:::keypoints Key points

• Match each scheme to its specific beneficiary and benefit — name alone is not enough.
• Three new criminal laws replaced three old codes from 1 July 2024: BNS → IPC, BNSS → CrPC, BSA → Evidence Act.
• Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam: 33% women's reservation in Parliament/Assemblies, post-delimitation.
• Israel–Hamas conflict started 7 Oct 2023; Hasina ousted Bangladesh on 5 Aug 2024.
• BRICS expanded to include Iran, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia in 2024–25.
• RBI cut repo rate to 6.25% in February 2025 (first cut after a long hold at 6.5%).
• 2024 was the warmest year on record, first to breach +1.5°C; COP29 set $300 bn/yr climate finance goal.
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:::memory
"BNS–BNSS–BSA replaces IPC–CrPC–Evidence" — match each new name to its old pair: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita = IPC; Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita = CrPC; Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam = Evidence Act.
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:::recap

• Schemes: learn the beneficiary and the main benefit — questions test both.
• Three new criminal laws: keep the three pairs (new → old) distinct in memory.
• International events: anchor key ones to exact dates (7 Oct 2023, 5 Aug 2024, 1 Jul 2024).
• Economy: RBI repo rate trajectory; GST and UPI milestones; GDP ~7.2% FY25.
• Climate: 2024 first year over +1.5°C; COP29 in Baku.
• Read a current-affairs digest daily in the 3–4 weeks before your exam date for the most recent appointments and events.
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