The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the appointment of the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows for 2026. The prestigious Fellowship this year includes , 223 distinguished individuals working across 55 disciplines. At least five of the Fellows are of Indian, part Indian, or other South Asian origin.
Chosen from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, the Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellows was tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise, the April 14, 2026, press release said. Established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”
“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship,” Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation, is quoted saying in the press release. “As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”
The five individuals of Indian or other South Asian heritage and the category in which they received the Fellowship, include the following:
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Amitav Ghosh, General Nonfiction, Brooklyn, NY
Megha Majumdar, Fiction, CUNY Hunter College, Brooklyn, NY
Kris Manjapra, Intellectual & Cultural History, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
Vivek Narayanan, Poetry, George Mason University, Arlington, VA
Vinod Vaikuntanathan, Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Somerville, MA
Since its founding in 1925, the Foundation has awarded nearly $450 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 Fellows. This year, applications in the Creative Arts and Humanities were up by 50% and applications in the Sciences were up by 86%. In all, 55 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 97 academic institutions, 33 US states and the District of Columbia, three Canadian provinces, and eight countries beyond the United States and Canada are represented in the 2026 class, the press release noted.
