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

Aditya Dhar led with women, men and every age group, beating Saiyaara’s Mohit Suri by 521 votes.

A two-horse race

Thirteen directors were on the ballot for Most Popular Bollywood Director at IFTA 2026.

Aditya Dhar (Dhurandhar) won with 1,324 of 2,869 verified votes, 46.1%. The runner-up, Mohit Suri (Saiyaara), got 28.0%. The winning margin was 521 votes.

Aditya Dhar (Dhurandhar) and Mohit Suri (Saiyaara) took 74.1% of the vote between them. No other director passed 8%.

Aditya Dhar, winner of Most Popular Bollywood Director 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 2,257 of the 2,869 votes (79%). Aditya Dhar won 44.6% of women’s votes and 52.2% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 76% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (1,588 votes).
Men aged 25–34 were Aditya Dhar’s strongest group: 54.1% of their 133 votes went to Aditya Dhar.
60% of Aditya Dhar’s votes came from women under 25 (793 of 1,324).

Aditya Dhar led in every age group with at least 30 voters.

Same winner, different second choices

This result is the reverse of Most Popular Bollywood Film, where Saiyaara beat Dhurandhar. Even women, who preferred Saiyaara as a film, put Aditya Dhar first as director: 44.6% to Mohit Suri’s 30.4%.

R. S. Prasanna: 2.2% of women’s votes, 4.5% of men’s, about twice as popular with men.
Anurag Singh: 3.9% of women’s votes, 2.0% of men’s, about twice as popular with women.
Tarun Mansukhani: 3.1% of women’s votes, 2.0% of men’s, 1.6 times as popular with women.
Karan Singh Tyagi: 1.9% of women’s votes, 3.0% of men’s, 1.6 times as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

Dhurandhar won five Bollywood categories at IFTA 2026: Director, Actor in a Lead Role (Ranveer Singh), Actor in a Supporting Role and Negative Role (both Akshaye Khanna) and Dance Track (Shararat). Its sequel, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, won a sixth: Actress in a Supporting Role (Sara Arjun).

In the voters’ own words

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

“I’ll vote to Mohit Suri just because I love Saiyaara movie and this movie omg 😳❤️”
“Loved the way he direct the new comers and made a great movie”
“Brilliant man”

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 Director result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Bollywood Director results on PolBol (2,869 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.