Grammy season has come around again, and this time, an Indian film franchise is making a fairly aggressive push for recognition. The team behind Dhurandhar: The Revenge confirmed on October 9 that its soundtrack has officially entered the race for the 69th Grammy Awards, submitting across nine separate entries.
B62 Studios, the production banner run by director Aditya Dhar and his brother Lokesh, announced the campaign on social media with a simple message: “DHURANDHAR THE REVENGE for your GRAMMY consideration.” Behind that short post is a fairly wide-ranging set of entries.
Arijit Singh’s “Phir Se” leads the pack, submitted in the Best Song Written for Visual Media category, one of the more high-profile categories a film song can compete in at the Grammys. The full soundtrack, composed by Shashwat Sachdev, has separately been entered for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.
Beyond those two, the submissions spread across a mix of genres: “Jaiye Sajana” for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, both “Jaan Se Guzarte Hain” and “Kanhaiyya” for Best Global Music Performance, “Aari Aari” for the newly created Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, “Destiny – Mann Atkeya” for Best Rap Performance, “Vaari Jaavan” for Best Dance/Electronic Recording, and “Hum Pyaar Karne Wale” for Best Remixed Recording.
That last one, a nod to the film’s retro-flavored remix tracks, drew some discussion. Industry voices like Sona Mohapatra came out in support of the choice, arguing that submitting the song as a remix entry made practical sense given how narrowly the Grammy’s eligibility rules are structured for this kind of soundtrack work, rather than reflecting any attempt to game the categories.
Dhurandhar: The Revenge, the sequel to last year’s Dhurandhar, became one of the bigger box office stories of the year after its release, with its soundtrack generating buzz well beyond the usual film-music cycle. Songs like “Rambha Ho,” a reworked version of Usha Uthup’s 1981 hit originally from Armaan, picked up attention for blending nostalgia with a modern production style, something that seems to have carried into this Grammy push as well.
Interestingly, this international awards campaign comes not long after the film missed out closer to home. The FFI jury, which selects India’s official entry for the Academy Awards’ International Feature category, did not pick Dhurandhar for Oscar consideration. The Grammy submissions, then, read as something of a parallel track for international recognition, aimed at the film’s music rather than the film as a whole.
It’s worth being clear about what’s actually happened so far. Being “submitted for consideration” means the Recording Academy has deemed the entries eligible to be voted on, nothing more. Academy voters still have to review and vote on submissions within each category before any nominations are finalized.
The road ahead has two concrete dates attached to it. Nominees for the 69th Grammy Awards will be announced on November 16, 2026, and the ceremony itself is scheduled for February 7, 2027, at a venue in Los Angeles. Until that November announcement, there’s no way to know how many, if any, of these nine entries will actually advance.
Indian soundtracks making serious Grammy pushes aren’t entirely new, but a campaign spanning this many categories at once is relatively uncommon. It reflects a broader trend of Indian production houses treating international award campaigns as a real, budgeted part of a film’s release strategy, not just an afterthought once a soundtrack happens to do well commercially.
Photo: Shashwat Sachdev's profile
For Shashwat Sachdev, the composer behind both Dhurandhar films as well as earlier work like Kesari Chapter 2 and Uri: The Surgical Strike, a Grammy nomination would mark a significant career milestone, regardless of whether any of the nine entries ultimately wins. For now, though, the only confirmed fact is that the submissions are in. What happens next is in the Recording Academy’s hands.
