When Indian badminton comes up in conversation, the names that surface first are usually PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen, and the world doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.
But when the BWF World Championships get underway at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Arena from August 17 to 23, it will do so with four Indians walking into the tournament for the very first time.
Ayush Shetty, Unnati Hooda, Simran Singhi and Kavipriya Selvam arrive on the back of breakthrough seasons, and their debut coincides with badminton’s biggest event returning to Indian soil for only the second time, after Hyderabad hosted it in 2009.
Ayush Shetty
Ayush Shetty’s progress over the past two seasons has been one of the more striking stories in Indian men’s singles.
The Karnataka shuttler, who trains out of the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in Bengaluru, first drew attention with a bronze medal at the 2023 BWF World Junior Championships before making the switch to the senior circuit.
His breakthrough arrived in June 2025 at the US Open Super 300 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he beat Canada’s Brian Yang 21-18, 21-13 in the final to claim his maiden BWF World Tour title, a run that also included a comeback win over top seed Chou Tien Chen in the semi-final.
His biggest statement, though, came this April at the Badminton Asia Championships in Ningbo.
Shetty stunned world No. 7 Li Shi Feng in the first round, then knocked out Olympic silver medalist Jonatan Christie in the quarter-final and world No. 1 Kunlavut Vitidsarn in the semi-final, becoming the first Indian men’s singles finalist at the event since Dinesh Khanna in 1965.
He eventually finished runner-up to Shi Yuqi, but the run marked only the eighth medal an Indian man has won at the tournament.
The 2026 World Championships will be Shetty’s first appearance at badminton’s biggest stage, and he arrives as India’s second-ranked men’s singles player.
He now faces Shi Yuqi in the first round of the World Championships this year.
Unnati Hooda
At 17, Unnati Hooda is already one of Indian badminton’s most closely watched prospects, and New Delhi will mark her first World Championships.
The Haryana shuttler first made national headlines in January 2022 when, aged 14, she won the Odisha Open Super 100 in Cuttack, becoming the youngest Indian to claim a BWF World Tour title.
She beat Samiya Imad Farooqui in the quarter-final and Malvika Bansod in the semi-final before defeating Smit Toshniwal 21-18, 21-11 in the final.
The biggest result of her career so far came at the China Open Super 1000 in July 2025, where she beat two-time Olympic medalist PV Sindhu 21-16, 19-21, 21-13 in the pre-quarterfinals, her first win over her senior compatriot in an international meeting.
Hooda added the Polish Open title earlier this year, continuing her rise into the World Championships.
Simran Singhi and Kavipriya Selvam
India’s women’s doubles pairing of Simran Singhi and Kavipriya Selvam will also make its World Championships debut in New Delhi, having climbed to a career-high world ranking of 38.
Mumbai-born Singhi began her career under coach Uday Pawar at the Goregaon Sports Club, the academy that also produced Chirag Shetty, before moving through India’s junior and senior international setup.
Selvam, from Puducherry, came through Tamil Nadu’s competitive doubles circuit before the two paired up.
Together, they have become regulars on the Super 300 and Super 500 circuits and have represented India at the Badminton Asia Championships.
For a pairing that has built its rise steadily rather than through a single breakout result, a home World Championships is the clearest marker yet of how far they have come.
As the tournament returns to India for the first time since 2009, the attention will inevitably gravitate toward Sindhu, Sen, and Satwik-Chirag.
But four debutants will be making history of their own, on a stage none of them has stood on before.
