Every Artist Performing at the Earthshot Prize 2026 in Mumbai: The Four Sounds of the Night.

Last updated: 8 November 2026. We will update this page as further performers are announced.

Four musical traditions share one stage in Mumbai on 17 November: British chart pop, Hindi film playback, contemporary cinematic scoring and world-fusion piano. Read together, the lineup is a fairly precise map of how India now sounds to itself and to the world.

The lineup at a glance

• Take That (British pop). Their first ever performance in India, three days before their tenth album, Dreamers.
  

  

• Shreya Ghoshal (Hindi film playback). The voice of two decades of Bollywood romance.
  

  

• Shashwat Sachdev (cinematic scoring). Two-time National Award winner, closing the night with music from his catalogue, Shades of Cashmere.
  

  

• Music Director Merlin D'Souza (world fusion, film and theatre). Four decades across K3G, Disney's Hindi The Lion King, the Taj Mahal and performances for heads of state.
  

Take That: the export

Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald are one of the most successful bands in British chart history. Their presence carries the Prize's British origins into the room. It is also a commercial moment: the performance lands just ahead of Dreamers on 20 November.

Shreya Ghoshal: the voice

Few singers are as recognisable across Indian households. Her performance for 5,000 guests anchors the evening in the playback tradition that defines Hindi cinema for most of its audience.

Shashwat Sachdev: the finale

Sachdev has been chosen to close the Awards Night, performing music from his catalogue, Shades of Cashmere. His cinematic register, built on large-scale arrangement, suits a finale meant to send a global audience out on a high.

Music Director Merlin D'Souza: the bridge

If the other three represent distinct worlds, Music Director Merlin D'Souza has worked in nearly all of them. She is classically trained, with a Trinity College London Performer's Licentiate. She played, arranged and conducted for Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. She led the Hindi music for Disney's The Lion King, toured from Australia to New York's Blue Note, and served as Hennessy X.O.'s Asian jazz ambassador. Her album Soul Yatra fused raga-led melody with jazz piano, with guests including Taufiq Qureshi and Rakesh Chaurasia.

That is why her place on the bill is more than local colour. She is the performer most fluent in the language the evening is trying to speak: Indian at the root, global in reach.

Around the music

Karan Johar hosts. Sachin Tendulkar, Alia Bhatt and Rami Malek present awards, alongside Sonam Kapoor, Simone Ashley and Earthshot Ambassadors Robert Irwin and Nomzamo Mbatha. The ceremony streams exclusively on Prime Video worldwide.

Kenneth Hopkins is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AltBollywood. Indofuturist, posthumanist and unapologetically Indocentric, he describes himself as an epimemeticist, a swaraji, a freakonomist, a lexicographer and a cartochronicler, mapping the ideas, words and quiet shifts that shape Indian entertainment. Follow him on Instagram at @kennethhopkins