The stage is set. The world’s finest gymnasts will converge in Jakarta, Indonesia, from October 19–25, 2025, for the 53rd FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships and for India, this year’s competition marks both a renewal of ambition and a test of strategy.
The Indian contingent, featuring five men and four women, heads into the championships with a blend of experience, rising talent, and focused goals, aiming not just for participation but meaningful progress on the world stage.
This year’s World Championships carry a distinctive post-Olympic format there will be no team events, only individual All-Around and Apparatus Finals. For India, this plays directly into their strengths. The absence of team competition allows nations with limited depth but strong individual performers to concentrate resources where their athletes are most competitive. For India, that apparatus is undoubtedly the Women’s Vault, where Pranati Nayak, the country’s most accomplished active gymnast, stands at the cusp of a potential final appearance.
With competition scores consistently hovering in the 13.4–13.5 range, she is within striking distance of the 13.5 benchmark typically required to qualify among the world’s top eight. The Jakarta edition, hosted at the Indonesia Arena, also provides a regional familiarity for the Indian squad a psychological boost in a competition where confidence and composure matter as much as skill.
Women’s Artistic Gymnastics: Pranati Leads, Youth Follows
India’s women’s team is spearheaded by Pranati Nayak, a Tokyo 2020 Olympian and multiple Asian Championships medalist. At 29, Pranati’s career is defined by resilience. Her bronze at the 2025 Asian Championships in Jecheon, where she scored 13.466 on the Vault, reaffirmed her position as one of Asia’s top performers in the discipline.
Pranati’s first vault consistently scoring above 13.6 places her comfortably within the international top tier. The gap lies in her second vault, where execution consistency can dip below 13.0. A fractional improvement of even 0.2–0.3 points on that attempt could lift her average beyond 13.5, giving India a genuine shot at the Vault final and possibly the nation’s first World Championships final appearance in four years.
Alongside Pranati, the women’s contingent features promising names ready to gain invaluable exposure:
- Swastika Ganguly, who impressed at the 2024 Indian Championships with a 45.300 All-Around score, brings elegance and expression to the floor routines.
- Bidisha Gayen, consistent on Balance Beam and Vault, adds balance and poise to the lineup.
- Anoushka Patil, the youngest member, represents the program’s long-term investment. Her inclusion fast-tracks her development from junior-level success like her Vault silver at the Khelo India Youth Games into elite competition.
The women’s program, once dependent on isolated brilliance, now shows early signs of a sustainable ecosystem. With Dipa Karmakar’s pioneering legacy and Pranati’s sustained international success, this new generation competes with a clearer pathway and better structural support than ever before.
Men’s Artistic Gymnastics: Building Foundations
On the men’s side, India’s focus remains on exposure and long-term technical growth. The five-member squad features Yogeshwar Singh, Tapan Mohanty, Harikrishnan Jayan Sandhya, Tapeshwaranath Das, and Shayan Sharma all strong domestic performers, each with a story of perseverance through India’s growing but still under-resourced gymnastics framework.
Veteran Yogeshwar Singh anchors the men’s team. A four-time World Championships participant, he remains India’s most reliable All-Around gymnast. His top domestic Vault score of 13.500 which earned him the National Games title is competitive nationally but still a full point below the international qualification range of 14.5 or higher.
Tapan Mohanty, India’s top Floor Exercise gymnast, brings flair and energy, having clinched national gold with a 13.033 routine. On Rings, his strength elements and clean execution stand out, but his Difficulty score (D-score) the global currency of success in modern gymnastics remains roughly 1.5–2 points below international finalists. Harikrishnan Jayan Sandhya, the Pommel Horse specialist, faces a more formidable climb. His national-best score of 12.600 is well short of the world standard of 15.000, where difficulty-heavy routines dominate. Raising his D-score from the current 4.5–5.0 range to around 6.5 will be essential for future contention.
Rounding out the team, Tapeshwaranath Das and Shayan Sharma add depth, both looking to gain first-hand experience against the world’s best as part of a broader developmental strategy for India’s men’s program.
If India’s men’s team has one defining hurdle, it’s the D-score gap the measurable difference in routine difficulty between domestic champions and international medal contenders. Where Indian routines average around 5.0 in difficulty, the world’s elite routinely operate between 6.5 and 7.0.
This isn’t a problem of talent; it’s one of system and exposure. The solution lies in structured international training integration, giving athletes access to high-performance camps in Japan, Ukraine, or Europe, where they can internalize the standards and technical nuances of elite gymnastics.
Such exposure is not optional it’s essential. For Indian men to be competitive globally, the transition from clean, medium-difficulty routines to complex, high-risk sequences must become the national priority.
The FIG’s “Move to Inspire” vision for Jakarta 2025 goes beyond sport emphasizing physical culture and healthy living as societal investments. For the Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI), aligning with this philosophy presents a chance to attract new funding models through health and wellness initiatives, corporate partnerships, and government grants.
Gymnastics, as a discipline, embodies physical literacy strength, flexibility, balance that aligns perfectly with national health missions. By positioning gymnastics not only as a competitive sport but as a cornerstone of youth and community fitness, India can unlock resources critical for its long-term sporting ecosystem.
India’s best chance of immediate success at the Jakarta World Championships lies with Pranati Nayak’s Vault, a discipline that has consistently delivered India’s biggest international breakthroughs from Dipa Karmakar’s Produnova to Aruna Reddy’s World Cup bronze. Pranati stands as the next in line to extend that legacy. For the men, the focus shifts from podiums to progress benchmarking, learning, and building toward the 2026–27 cycle with a renewed technical foundation.
When Team India marches into Jakarta, they’ll do so not as outsiders, but as emerging contenders gymnasts who have endured challenges, embraced evolution, and now carry the nation’s hopes onto one of gymnastics’ grandest stages. As they take flight on the bars, beam, and vault, they embody the true spirit of sport discipline, courage, and the relentless pursuit of excellence.
Here’s to the Indian Artistic Gymnastics Team ready to leap, twist, and inspire at Jakarta 2025.
