IFTA 2026, India’s only people’s choice film and television awards — voting open

Saiyaara’s Two Newcomers Took 83% of the Debut Vote. Aneet Padda Won

By Sneha Arora

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:24 am

Aneet Padda beat her Saiyaara co-star Ahaan Panday by 184 votes. The other six debutants shared 17%.

A race between co-stars

Eight debutants were on the ballot for Most Popular Bollywood Debut at IFTA 2026.

Aneet Padda (Saiyaara) won with 1,202 of 2,681 verified votes, 44.8%. The runner-up, Ahaan Panday (Saiyaara), got 38.0%. The winning margin was 184 votes.

Between them, Aneet Padda and Ahaan Panday got 2,220 of the 2,681 votes. Simran Mangeshkar (Sitaare Zameen Par) was a distant third with 7.8%.

Aneet Padda, winner of Most Popular Bollywood Debut at IFTA 2026

Who decided it

Every IFTA vote is OTP-verified, one per WhatsApp number per category, and every voter’s age and gender is recorded at sign-up. So this is not a survey sample. It is the full count of who voted.

Women cast 2,142 of the 2,681 votes (80%). Aneet Padda won 45.7% of women’s votes and 41.2% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 76% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (1,472 votes).
Women aged 12–17 were Aneet Padda’s strongest group: 56.5% of their 487 votes went to Aneet Padda.
66% of Aneet Padda’s votes came from women under 25 (795 of 1,202).

The youngest voters made the difference: 55.9% of voters aged 12–17 picked Aneet Padda. Voters aged 25–34 narrowly preferred Ahaan Panday.

Same winner, different second choices

Aneet Padda won with women (45.7%) and with men (41.2%). Both put Ahaan Panday second (38.5% of women, 35.9% of men).

Simar Bhatia: 1.7% of women’s votes, 4.0% of men’s, 2.4 times as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

Aneet Padda also won Most Popular Bollywood Actress in a Lead Role with 35.3%, making her one of only two nominees to win two individual IFTA 2026 categories; the other is Akshaye Khanna. Ahaan Panday came second in Most Popular Bollywood Actor in a Lead Role, 58 votes behind Ranveer Singh.

In the voters’ own words

Voters could add a reason with their vote. A few of them:

“In a debut her acting was amazing 😻 and too muchhh fun to see her”
“She has given an amazing performance”
“Loved his acting skills 👍”

This is not a ratings chart or a critics’ list. It measures which audience turned up to vote, and how hard.

See the full results

IFTA 2026 voting has closed and the results are in. No jury, no award fixing: every winner was decided by India’s votes. See the full Most Popular Bollywood Debut result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Bollywood Debut results on PolBol (2,681 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.