BharatNotes RPSC's sports questions have a distinct fingerprint, and it is worth knowing before you read anything else. Across its actual past papers the Commission has asked for Rajasthan's exact medal count at a national championship ("How many gold and bronze medals has Rajasthan won in the 5th National Para Shooting Championship held at Pune in November 2024?" — the answer was 16 gold and 7 bronze), for the host state of a Khelo India edition (2024 Prelims: Khelo India Youth Games 2025 → Bihar), for the specific stadium a final was played in, for which sport an unfamiliar name belongs to (a 2024 question hinged on an eight-year-old winner of the World Cadet Under-8 chess championship), and for the exact round in which a player lost (Bhavani Devi's semi-final opponent was Uzbekistan; Japan, her quarter-final opponent, sat in the options as a trap).
So: exact numbers, host cities, stadium names, player-to-sport matching, and Rajasthan's own tally. This chapter covers calendar years 2025 and 2026 on that basis. Sports awards — Khel Ratna, Arjuna, Dronacharya, Dhyan Chand — are covered separately in the National Sports Awards chapter and are not repeated here.
Read this before the tables. The RAS 2026 Prelims falls on 6 December 2026, and several major events sit awkwardly around that date. Some have concluded and are fully examinable; one concludes just weeks before; one is still being played as this chapter is written; and one straddles the exam date itself. Each section below states plainly which category an event falls into. Never answer a question with a result for an event that has not finished — and be equally wary of any coaching material that supplies one.
Rajasthan Hosts the Khelo India University Games 2025
This is the single most exam-likely Rajasthan sports fact in the current window, and it is exactly the kind RPSC has already shown it asks (its 2024 paper asked which state would host the Khelo India Youth Games).
Rajasthan hosted the 5th Khelo India University Games from 24 November to 5 December 2025 — the first time the state has hosted the University Games. The event was spread across seven cities: Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kota and Bharatpur, with 200-plus universities competing across 23 medal sports.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Edition | 5th Khelo India University Games |
| Host | Rajasthan (first time) |
| Dates | 24 November – 5 December 2025 |
| Host cities | Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kota, Bharatpur (seven) |
| Sports | 23 |
| Universities | 200+ |
| Champion | Chandigarh University — 42 gold, 14 silver, 11 bronze (67 medals); the first university to retain the KIUG title |
| Runners-up | Lovely Professional University (32G, 79 medals); Guru Nanak Dev University (32G, 72) |
| Mascots | "Khamma" and "Ghani" — a pair of camels, named for the Rajasthani greeting Khamma Ghani |
| Torch | The "Viksit Rajasthan" smart torch — solar-powered, with a built-in camera |
| Opened / closed | Opened 24 Nov at Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur by CM Bhajanlal Sharma; closed 5 Dec at Poornima University, Jaipur |
The logo drew on the Hawa Mahal, Ranthambore Fort, windmills and sand dunes in a pink palette, and was unveiled at Amer Fort by state sports minister Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. The torch was handed over by two Rajasthan athletes — boxer Arundhati Choudhary and archer Rajat Chauhan. The Games' most successful athlete was swimmer Srihari Nataraj of Jain University, with 9 golds.
Exam angle: the mascots Khamma and Ghani are the highest-probability single detail in this whole section — a Rajasthani greeting turned into a camel mascot pair for a national Games hosted by the state. RPSC has asked mascot and motto questions before (a 2016 paper asked the Rio Paralympics motto).
Exam angle: The Khelo India University Games are contested university-wise, not state-wise — so there is no "Rajasthan rank" at KIUG, only a Rajasthan hosting role. A question asking "where did Rajasthan finish at KIUG 2025" is malformed; a question asking "which university topped the KIUG hosted by Rajasthan" (Chandigarh University) is the sound version. Learn the seven host cities as a set — a "which of the following was NOT a host city" question writes itself.
Rajasthan at National Multi-Sport Events, 2025
Khelo India Youth Games 2025 — third on the standings
The 7th Khelo India Youth Games were held in Bihar, 4–15 May 2025, across Patna, Rajgir, Gaya, Bhagalpur and Begusarai — with gymnastics, shooting and cycling held in New Delhi because of hosting constraints. Rajasthan finished third on the medal standings.
| Rank | State | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maharashtra | 58 | 47 | 53 | 158 |
| 2 | Haryana | 39 | 27 | 51 | 117 |
| 3 | Rajasthan | 24 | 12 | 24 | 60 |
| 4 | Karnataka | 17 | 26 | 15 | 58 |
| 5 | Delhi | 16 | 20 | 32 | 68 |
Common mistake — a precision trap worth internalising. Khelo India standings are ordered gold-first, not by total medals. Rajasthan is third by gold count (24) but only fifth by total medals — both Delhi (68) and Tamil Nadu (65) won more medals overall than Rajasthan's 60. Write and think "third on the medal standings," never "third-most medals." RPSC's habit of asking for exact counts makes this distinction genuinely answerable in a question.
Rajasthan's campaign was driven by its cyclists, who swept all the medals in the boys' 30 km cycling time trial. One named gold worth knowing, since RPSC asks "who" questions: Mayank Choudhary and Prachi won the 10m air rifle mixed team gold at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range, New Delhi, beating Uttar Pradesh 16–15 on 5 May 2025, with Prachi's decisive 10.6 after a 15–15 tie.
38th National Games 2025 — fifteenth place
The 38th National Games were held in Uttarakhand, 28 January – 14 February 2025, with the mascot "Mauli" (the Himalayan monal). Rajasthan finished 15th with 43 medals — 9 gold, 11 silver, 23 bronze.
| Position | Team | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Services Sports Control Board | 68 | 26 | 27 | 121 |
| 2 | Maharashtra | 54 | 71 | 76 | 201 |
| 3 | Haryana | 48 | 47 | 58 | 153 |
| 15 | Rajasthan | 9 | 11 | 23 | 43 |
The Services Sports Control Board took the Raja Bhalindra Singh Trophy for the best-performing contingent. Two Rajasthan gold medallists are reported by name — Anantjeet Singh Naruka (shooting; the Jaipur skeet shooter who won Asian Games silver at Hangzhou) and Rajat Chauhan (archery) — with wushu accounting for four of Rajasthan's nine golds, its strongest discipline at these Games.
Verification note: a variant tally of 22 bronze / 42 total / 16th place circulates online. Three independent sources give 9/11/23 = 43 and 15th place, and this chapter uses those. The official results portal is JavaScript-rendered and could not be read directly, so the official figure remains unread rather than contradicted.
The 39th National Games have not been held. They were awarded to Meghalaya by the Indian Olympic Association on 11 February 2025, tentatively for February or March 2027 — after the RAS 2026 Prelims. For any "most recent National Games" question on 6 December 2026, the answer remains the 38th (Uttarakhand, 2025).
Likewise, no Khelo India Youth Games edition is confirmed as falling between the Bihar Games of May 2025 and the exam. The Sports Ministry named Telangana as host of the 8th edition on 8 July 2026, but sources differ on timing — some report November 2026, others 11–23 December 2026. Treat the dates as unsettled, and note that on exam day the most recent completed KIYG is very likely still Bihar 2025, where Rajasthan finished third. Check this one again in November.
Exam angle — a naming trap worth knowing. Khelo India Youth Games editions carry an official year label that runs a year behind the calendar year they were actually held in: the Panchkula Games of June 2022 are officially "KIYG 2021", the Madhya Pradesh Games of Jan–Feb 2023 are "KIYG 2022", and the Tamil Nadu Games of January 2024 are "KIYG 2023". The label realigned only with Bihar 2025. Media and coaching sites routinely use the calendar year instead, so the same edition appears under two different years depending on the source. If a question gives a year, check whether it matches the official label or the year of holding. The full edition-by-edition table is in the sports archive.
Rajasthan's Athletes, 2025–26
Arundhati Choudhary — Commonwealth Games gold
Arundhati Choudhary, a boxer from Kota (born 5 September 2002), won gold in the women's 70 kg at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on 1 August 2026, beating England's Chantelle Reid by unanimous decision in the final. She had earlier won gold at the 2021 AIBA Youth World Championships and at the 2025 World Boxing Cup Finals in New Delhi, and is a three-time Khelo India Games gold medallist. She joined the Indian Army in 2022 under the Mission Olympic Programme.
The Rajasthan government paid her ₹1 crore at a felicitation on 9 August 2026 — a figure that matches the state's Commonwealth-gold slab exactly (see the governance chapter for the full cash-award structure).
A second Rajasthan medallist at the same Games: Yashvir Singh took bronze in the men's javelin throw on 31 July 2026, and received ₹30 lakh from the state. (His Rajasthan connection rests on the state felicitation rather than an independent biographical source — treat the medal as certain and the state link as reported.)
Avani Lekhara, Mona Agarwal, Sundar Singh Gurjar
All three are Paris 2024 Paralympic medallists from Rajasthan — Avani Lekhara of Jaipur (gold, 10m air rifle standing SH1), Mona Agarwal of Sikar (bronze in the same event, the same podium) and Sundar Singh Gurjar of Karauli (bronze, javelin F46). Their 2025–26 results:
| Athlete | 2025–26 result |
|---|---|
| Avani Lekhara (Jaipur) | Three medals at the WSPS World Cup, Al Ain, UAE, Oct–Nov 2025 — gold in R2 10m air rifle standing SH1 (249.6), silver in R8 50m rifle 3 positions, and silver in the R10 mixed team with Ishank Ahuja |
| Sundar Singh Gurjar (Karauli) | Silver, men's javelin F46 (64.76m), at the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi, 29 September 2025 — behind India's Rinku Hooda, an all-Indian one-two |
| Mona Agarwal (Sikar) | Silver, 10m air rifle standing SH1, WSPS World Cup Changwon, May–June 2025 |
Common mistake — two of them, both about Avani Lekhara. First, she did not win two medals at Paris 2024; she won gold in the 10m air rifle and finished fifth (420.6) in the 50m rifle 3 positions. Her two-medal Paralympics was Tokyo 2020. Second, her 2025 World Cup medals were won at Al Ain, in the emirate of Abu Dhabi — several Indian outlets reported the venue as "Dubai," and they are wrong.
Avani Lekhara also serves as an Assistant Conservator of Forest in the Rajasthan Forest Service, a detail RPSC could plausibly use.
Khelo India Para Games 2025 — Rajasthan fourth, and a Rajasthan one-two
The 2nd Khelo India Para Games were held in New Delhi, 20–27 March 2025, across six sports with 1,200-plus athletes and the mascot "Ujjwala". Rajasthan finished 4th with 64 medals — 22 gold, 18 silver, 24 bronze — behind Haryana (104), Tamil Nadu (74) and Uttar Pradesh, which also finished on 64 medals but placed third on golds (23 to Rajasthan's 22).
Rajasthan took a one-two in the women's 10m air rifle standing SH1: Avani Lekhara gold, Mona Agarwal silver.
Exam angle: Rajasthan climbed from 6th at the 2023 Para Games (43 medals, 10 gold) to 4th in 2025 (64 medals, 22 gold) — gold count more than doubled. That is the sharpest improvement Rajasthan has recorded in any Khelo India vertical, and para-sport is where the state is genuinely strongest.
The other Khelo India verticals in 2026
Three verticals held editions in 2026 before this chapter's cut-off — any material still calling 2025 "the latest edition" is stale.
| Vertical | 2026 edition | Topped by | Rajasthan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beach Games (2nd) | Diu, 5–10 January 2026 | Karnataka, on a three-way tie-break — Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Manipur all finished on 3 gold and 2 silver, split by bronze (6/3/2) | No medals |
| Winter Games (6th) | Leh, 20–26 January and Gulmarg, 23–26 February 2026 | Army (9 gold, 23 medals); figure skating newly introduced | Competed — fielded a women's ice hockey team at Leh — but won no medal |
| Tribal Games (1st) | Chhattisgarh, 25 March – 3 April 2026 | A brand-new fourth vertical | — |
Rajasthan has never won a medal at any Khelo India Winter Games edition, which is unsurprising for a desert state — but it does participate, and "Rajasthan fielded a women's ice hockey team at Leh" is the kind of specific, verifiable detail that makes a good answer.
Rajasthan's Khelo India infrastructure — the honest picture
Rajasthan has 60 Khelo India Centres, of which 48 are operational, and is one of the few states with KICs in all 41 of its districts. Its designated Khelo India State Centre of Excellence (KISCE) is at SMS Stadium, Jaipur, covering three disciplines — archery, athletics and boxing — on a proposal from the Rajasthan State Sports Council.
Write this carefully. The Ministry's own live dashboard records the Jaipur KISCE as non-operational, with 0 athletes enrolled and none of its 8 sanctioned staff positions filled. It is designated and approved but not yet functioning as of August 2026 — Rajasthan is one of eight states/UTs in that position, alongside Delhi and Punjab. A statement that Rajasthan "has an operating Khelo India centre of excellence" would be wrong. Separately, the widely-quoted figure of "33 Khelo India Centres in Rajasthan" refers to a dedication event held in Jaipur on 23 August 2023, not the present count.
Major International Events — Concluded and Examinable
Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics
| Item | Winter Olympics | Winter Paralympics |
|---|---|---|
| Dates | 6–22 February 2026 | 6–15 March 2026 |
| Hosts | Milan & Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy | Same |
| Scale | 92 NOCs, 116 events, 8 sports | 55 NPCs, 79 events, 6 sports |
| Mascot | Tina (a stoat) | Milo, Tina's younger brother |
| Medal leader | Norway — 18 gold, 41 total | China — 15 gold, 44 total |
India sent two athletes, both male, and won no medal. Arif Khan (alpine skiing) finished 39th in the men's slalom — India's best-ever finish in the event — and was the opening-ceremony flag bearer; Stanzin Lundup (cross-country skiing) finished 104th in the 10 km freestyle and was the closing flag bearer. India has still never won a Winter Olympic medal, and has never participated in a Winter Paralympics at all — a clean contrast with India's strong Summer Paralympic record that makes good statement-question material.
Norway topped the table for a fourth successive Winter Games and set records for most golds and most total medals at a single Winter Olympics.
Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games — India 4th, with a caveat
Glasgow, Scotland, 23 July – 2 August 2026. The defining fact of this edition is its drastically reduced programme — only 10 sports and 215 events, the fewest since 1994, after Victoria (Australia) withdrew in 2023 on cost grounds and Glasgow stepped in with three years' notice.
The 10 sports: athletics, swimming, artistic gymnastics, track cycling, weightlifting, boxing, judo, netball, lawn bowls, 3x3 basketball. Dropped: hockey, cricket, badminton, wrestling, table tennis, squash, diving, rugby sevens and more. Shooting remained out, as at Birmingham 2022.
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | 70 | 45 | 56 | 171 |
| 2 | England | 29 | 45 | 36 | 110 |
| 3 | Canada | 19 | 21 | 23 | 63 |
| 4 | India | 13 | 17 | 9 | 39 |
| 5 | Scotland | 13 | 9 | 17 | 39 |
Common mistake: do not call this India's best-ever Commonwealth showing. India also finished 4th at Birmingham 2022 — but with 61 medals. The rank held; the medal count fell by more than a third, purely because the reduced programme excluded shooting, wrestling, badminton, table tennis and hockey, which are India's medal-rich sports. Rank and haul move independently here.
India's campaign was carried by boxing — 10 medals including 7 golds, the most by any nation in boxing at a single Commonwealth Games, with Arundhati Choudhary of Kota among the champions. Eight of India's 13 golds came from women. India also recorded its best-ever Commonwealth para campaign with 7 medals. Neeraj Chopra took silver in the javelin (85.83m).
Ahmedabad will host the 2030 Commonwealth Games — the centenary edition, 100 years after the inaugural 1930 Games, and only the second time India hosts after Delhi 2010.
FIFA World Cup 2026 — Spain champions
11 June – 19 July 2026, hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico. Two firsts, both verified: the first World Cup with 48 teams (104 matches) and the first hosted by three countries. Mexico also became the first country to host three World Cups (1970, 1986, 2026).
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Final | 19 July 2026, MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey |
| Result | Spain 1–0 Argentina (after extra time) |
| Winning goal | Ferran Torres, 106th minute |
| Golden Ball | Rodri (Spain) |
| Golden Boot | Kylian Mbappé (France), 10 goals |
| Golden Glove | Unai Simón (Spain) |
Spain's second World Cup title, after 2010. Argentina, the defending champions, failed to retain it.
Common mistake: several summaries circulating online credit Messi with the Golden Boot. He finished second on 8 goals; Mbappé won it with 10, becoming the first player to win the Golden Boot at two World Cups (2022 and 2026).
Cricket — two India titles
ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026 — co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka, 7 February – 8 March 2026, 20 teams.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Final | 8 March 2026, Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad |
| Result | India beat New Zealand by 96 runs (India 240/5; NZ 144) |
| India's captain | Suryakumar Yadav |
| Player of the Match & Tournament | Sanju Samson |
| Most wickets | Jasprit Bumrah and Varun Chakravarthy, 14 each |
Three records in one result: India became the first team to win back-to-back Men's T20 World Cups, the first country to win the title at home, and the first to win it three times (2007, 2024, 2026).
Two traps here. First, Rohit Sharma did not captain this side — he retired from T20Is in June 2024; the captain was Suryakumar Yadav. Second, and trickier: Suryakumar Yadav won the World Cup as captain in March 2026 but was replaced as T20I captain by Shreyas Iyer on 6 June 2026. A question asking for "India's current T20I captain" and one asking "who captained India to the 2026 T20 World Cup" have different answers.
ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2025 — India's maiden title. Co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka; in the final at the DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai on 2 November 2025, India beat South Africa by 52 runs (India 298/7; South Africa 246). Captain Harmanpreet Kaur; Shafali Verma was Player of the Match with 87; Deepti Sharma was Player of the Tournament and the tournament's leading wicket-taker with 22. It was the first Women's World Cup final featuring neither Australia nor England, and India beat defending champions Australia in the semi-final.
Events Not Yet Concluded — Handle With Care
This is where most published sports material for the 2026 cycle will go wrong. Four major events sit at or beyond this chapter's cut-off.
| Event | Status as of 15 August 2026 | Examinable on 6 Dec 2026? |
|---|---|---|
| FIH Hockey World Cup 2026 (Belgium & Netherlands, 15–30 Aug 2026) | In progress — began today. First co-hosted hockey World Cup; men's and women's tournaments run simultaneously, 32 teams | Yes — concludes 30 August. Revise in September |
| BWF World Championships 2026 (New Delhi, 17–23 Aug 2026) | Not started — begins two days after this chapter's cut-off. India hosting | Yes |
| 2026 Asian Games (Aichi–Nagoya, Japan, 19 Sep – 4 Oct 2026) | Not held. 43 sports, 469 events. Japan's third host region after Tokyo 1958 and Hiroshima 1994 | Yes — concludes roughly two months before the exam. Any Asian Games 2026 medal tally circulating now is fabricated |
| World Chess Championship 2026 (Geneva, 25 Nov – 15 Dec 2026) | Not started. D. Gukesh (champion since December 2024) defends against Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan | Partially — the match starts 11 days before the exam and ends 9 days after it. The examinable fact is that Gukesh is champion and is defending; the outcome cannot be on the paper |
India's men's hockey squad at the World Cup is captained by Harmanpreet Singh under coach Craig Fulton, in Pool D with England, Pakistan and Wales; the women are captained by Salima Tete, her first World Cup as captain. India qualified by winning the 2025 Asia Cup and is chasing a second title — the last was in 1975.
India's Other 2025–26 Achievements
Chess — two landmark Indian firsts
| Achievement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Divya Deshmukh wins the Women's Chess World Cup | Batumi, Georgia, 28 July 2025 — beat Koneru Humpy in an all-Indian final on rapid tiebreaks. India's first female World Cup champion and the youngest ever at 19; the win awarded her the Grandmaster title directly, making her India's 4th woman GM |
| R. Vaishali wins the Women's Candidates | Cyprus, 16 April 2026 — the first Indian ever to win the Women's Candidates Tournament, and the lowest-rated player in the field. She will challenge Ju Wenjun for the world title |
| India hosted the FIDE Chess World Cup | Goa, 31 October – 27 November 2025 — the first time India has hosted it. Won by Javokhir Sindarov, who thereby earned the right to challenge Gukesh |
| R. Praggnanandhaa wins Norway Chess | June 2026 — the first Indian to win Norway Chess, and the first player since Topalov in 2008 to beat Magnus Carlsen twice in classical games in one tournament |
| Pranav V wins the World Junior Championship | Montenegro, March 2025 — only the 4th Indian ever, after Anand (1987), Harikrishna (2004) and Abhijeet Gupta (2008) |
Athletics — the 90-metre throw
Neeraj Chopra became the first Indian to throw the javelin beyond 90 metres, recording 90.23m at the Doha Diamond League on 16 May 2025 — his personal best and the national record.
Common mistake: he crossed 90m but did not win that meet — Julian Weber of Germany won it with 91.06m. An option saying Chopra "won the Doha Diamond League with 90.23m" is wrong.
He also hosted and won the inaugural Neeraj Chopra Classic (Bengaluru, 5 July 2025, 86.18m) — the first World Athletics Continental Tour Gold event ever held in India. At the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, however, the defending champion finished 8th (84.03m) and India won no medal; India's best was Sachin Yadav, fourth in the same event.
At the 2025 Asian Athletics Championships (Gumi, South Korea), India finished second overall with 24 medals (8 gold), with Gulveer Singh winning both the 5000m and 10,000m. Gulveer later became the first Indian to run a half marathon under one hour (59:42, NYC Half, 15 March 2026), and Animesh Kujur became the first Indian to break 10.2 seconds in the 100m.
Para-sports — India hosts the World Championships
India hosted the World Para Athletics Championships for the first time, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi, 27 September – 5 October 2025, winning 22 medals (6 gold, 9 silver, 7 bronze). Rajasthan's Sundar Singh Gurjar took silver there.
Sheetal Devi, the armless archer from Kishtwar, became the first armless woman ever crowned a world para-archery champion at Gwangju on 28 September 2025.
Domestic cricket — a maiden Ranji title
Jammu & Kashmir won the Ranji Trophy 2025-26, its first ever, beating eight-time champions Karnataka in the final at Hubballi on first-innings lead. Captain Paras Dogra, aged 41, had become only the second batter after Wasim Jaffer to pass 10,000 Ranji runs during the same campaign.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru won IPL 2026, beating Gujarat Titans by 5 wickets at Ahmedabad on 31 May 2026 — a second consecutive title under Rajat Patidar. Rajasthan Royals finished fourth and lost the Eliminator to Sunrisers Hyderabad on 27 May 2026; Riyan Parag captained the side after Sanju Samson was traded to Chennai Super Kings.
Common mistake — the Rajasthan Royals trap. The franchise is not a state-origin marker. Ravindra Jadeja is from Gujarat, Deepak and Rahul Chahar were born in Agra, Sanju Samson is from Kerala and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is from Bihar — none of them is a "Rajasthan player" in the sense a Rajasthan-focused question would mean. The genuinely Rajasthan-born India internationals of this period are Ravi Bishnoi (Jodhpur) and Khaleel Ahmed (Tonk).
Important for RAS
Prelims Focus
- Rajasthan hosted the 5th Khelo India University Games, 24 Nov – 5 Dec 2025, across seven cities (Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kota, Bharatpur); Chandigarh University topped the tally
- Rajasthan finished 3rd on the KIYG 2025 standings (24 gold, 60 medals) — third by gold, fifth by total medals
- Rajasthan finished 15th at the 38th National Games (9 gold, 43 medals); Services won the Raja Bhalindra Singh Trophy
- Arundhati Choudhary of Kota won boxing gold at the 2026 Commonwealth Games; Yashvir Singh took javelin bronze
- India finished 4th at Glasgow 2026 with 39 medals — same rank as 2022, far fewer medals, because only 10 sports were contested
- India won the T20 World Cup 2026 (captain Suryakumar Yadav, final at Ahmedabad) and the Women's World Cup 2025 (captain Harmanpreet Kaur, final at Navi Mumbai)
- Spain won the FIFA World Cup 2026, beating Argentina 1–0; Mbappé took the Golden Boot
- India won no medal at Milano-Cortina 2026 and has never contested a Winter Paralympics
- The Asian Games (Sept–Oct 2026) and Hockey World Cup (Aug 2026) conclude before the exam; the World Chess Championship does not
Interview Angles
- Rajasthan hosted a national multi-sport event across seven cities in 2025 while its own state sports awards had gone unconferred for seven years, and its designated Khelo India centre of excellence remains non-operational — a fair question about whether hosting capacity and athlete-development capacity are the same thing.
- Rajasthan's medallists cluster heavily in shooting, para-sports and boxing rather than team sports. What does that concentration say about where the state's sporting pipeline works and where it does not?
This topic sits in RPSC's Prelims-only "Current Affairs & Issues" block, so no cross-paper box is forced here — though Rajasthan's sporting record is natural interview material.
Practice — Quick Self-Check
1. Rajasthan hosted the 5th Khelo India University Games in 2025. Across how many cities were they held?
Answer: (c) Seven — Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kota and Bharatpur, from 24 November to 5 December 2025.
2. Which university topped the medal tally at the Khelo India University Games 2025 hosted by Rajasthan?
Answer: (b) Chandigarh University, with 42 gold and 67 medals in all.
3. Arundhati Choudhary, who won boxing gold at the 2026 Commonwealth Games, is from which city of Rajasthan?
Answer: (c) Kota. She won the women's 70 kg gold at Glasgow on 1 August 2026, beating England's Chantelle Reid.
4. How many medals did Rajasthan win at the 38th National Games (Uttarakhand, 2025), and what was its position?
Answer: (a) 43 medals (9 gold, 11 silver, 23 bronze), 15th place. Option (b) is Rajasthan's Khelo India Youth Games 2025 record — a deliberately close distractor from a different event in the same year.
5. Who captained India to victory in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026?
Answer: (c) Suryakumar Yadav. Rohit Sharma retired from T20Is in June 2024; Shreyas Iyer replaced Suryakumar as T20I captain in June 2026, after the World Cup win.
6. India finished 4th at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Why was its medal haul (39) so much lower than at Birmingham 2022 (61)?
Answer: (b) Glasgow staged only 10 sports and 215 events — the fewest since 1994 — and the dropped sports were precisely India's medal-rich ones.
7. Which Indian became the first to throw the javelin beyond 90 metres, and at which event?
Answer: (a) Neeraj Chopra, 90.23m at the Doha Diamond League on 16 May 2025 — though he finished second in that meet, behind Julian Weber's 91.06m.
8. Where is Rajasthan's designated Khelo India State Centre of Excellence, and which three disciplines does it cover?
Answer: (b) SMS Stadium, Jaipur, covering archery, athletics and boxing — though the Ministry's dashboard records it as non-operational, with no athletes enrolled as of August 2026.
Practice — Statement-Based (RPSC Style)
1. Consider the following statements about Rajasthan at the Khelo India Youth Games 2025. 1. Rajasthan finished third on the medal standings. 2. Rajasthan won more total medals than any state placed below it in the standings. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: (a) 1 only. Statement 2 is false — the standings rank by gold, and both Delhi (68 medals) and Tamil Nadu (65) finished below Rajasthan while winning more medals than its 60.
2. Consider the following statements about the 2026 Winter Olympics. 1. They were held in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. 2. India won its first-ever Winter Olympic medal at these Games. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: (a) 1 only. India sent two athletes and won no medal; Arif Khan's 39th in the slalom was India's best-ever finish in that event, but India has still never won a Winter Olympic medal.
3. Consider the following statements about the 2026 Asian Games. 1. They are being held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. 2. As of August 2026 they have concluded, and India's medal tally is known. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: (a) 1 only. The Games run 19 September – 4 October 2026 — after this chapter's cut-off but before the 6 December Prelims. Any medal tally circulating before they are played is fabricated; revise the actual results in October.
4. Consider the following statements about the 39th National Games. 1. They have been awarded to Meghalaya. 2. They will have been held before the RAS 2026 Prelims on 6 December 2026. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: (a) 1 only. Meghalaya was awarded the 39th Games in February 2025, tentatively for February or March 2027 — so the most recent National Games at exam time remains the 38th (Uttarakhand, 2025).
Practice — "Which Is/Are NOT Correct" (Inverted Phrasing)
1. Which of the following statements about Avani Lekhara is NOT correct?
Answer: (c) is NOT correct — she won one medal at Paris 2024 (gold) and finished fifth in the 50m rifle 3 positions. Her two-medal Games was Tokyo 2020.
2. Which of the following (Event – 2025/26 winner) pairs is NOT correctly matched?
Answer: (d) is NOT correctly matched — the 2026 World Chess Championship match (Gukesh v Sindarov, Geneva) runs 25 November – 15 December 2026 and had not been played. Gukesh is the reigning champion from December 2024, but the 2026 match has no winner yet.
Key Terms
- Khelo India University Games — the university-level vertical of the Khelo India scheme, contested university-wise rather than state-wise; the 5th edition was hosted by Rajasthan across seven cities in Nov–Dec 2025.
- KISCE — Khelo India State Centre of Excellence; Rajasthan's is at SMS Stadium, Jaipur (archery, athletics, boxing), designated but non-operational as of August 2026.
- Raja Bhalindra Singh Trophy — awarded to the best-performing contingent at the National Games; won by the Services Sports Control Board in 2025.
- Mauli — mascot of the 38th National Games (Uttarakhand, 2025), the Himalayan monal.
- Tina and Milo — mascots of the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympics respectively.
- Finnie — mascot of the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games.
More in This Series
- National Sports Awards — Khel Ratna, Arjuna, Dronacharya, Dhyan Chand and their Rajasthan recipients
- Sports Governance, Institutions & GK — the National Sports Governance Act, Khelo India's structure, Rajasthan's sports policy and durable sports general knowledge
- International Events of 2026 — BRICS Chairship, summits and Rajasthan's diplomatic calendar
- Civilian & National Honours — Bharat Ratna, Padma Awards and Rajasthan's recipients
Sources & Verification
All facts in this chapter were checked as of 15 August 2026 against the official Khelo India portals (youth.kheloindia.gov.in medal tally, dashboard.kheloindia.gov.in KIC and KISCE lists), Sports Authority of India documents, PIB-adjacent government reporting (NewsOnAir/Akashvani, DD News), Olympics.com, the official Booker-equivalent governing-body sites for each sport, and cross-checked news coverage — each material claim corroborated across at least two independent sources.
Points explicitly flagged rather than smoothed over: (1) Rajasthan's 38th National Games bronze count is given as 23 (three independent sources) against a circulating variant of 22 — the official results portal is JavaScript-rendered and could not be read directly; (2) Rajasthan's third place at KIYG 2025 is stated as its finish, not as a historic best, because the 2018–2024 editions were not checked; (3) Yashvir Singh's Rajasthan origin rests on the state's felicitation rather than an independent biography; (4) the Jaipur KISCE is recorded non-operational on the Ministry dashboard, which carries no internal date stamp, so the as-of date is the retrieval date; (5) direct automated access to pib.gov.in returned HTTP 403 throughout, so PIB-derived figures rest on government-adjacent outlets rather than a primary-document read.
Two errors were caught and corrected during verification and are worth recording: a source summary credited Messi with the FIFA 2026 Golden Boot (it was Mbappé, 10 goals), and another credited Rohit Sharma with captaining India in the 2026 T20 World Cup final (it was Suryakumar Yadav; Rohit retired from T20Is in June 2024). Both originated in automated page summarisation rather than the underlying sources — a reminder that a citation is only evidence when the source itself is read.
