National Youth Festival
Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue (NYF-VBYLD) 2026

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has been celebrating 12th January, the birthday of Swami Vivekananda, the great philosopher, thinker and the greatest patron of the youth in India as National Youth Day and the week, commencing from that day, as the National Youth Week. As part of the celebration, holding of National Youth Festival began in the year 1995 as a major activity under the programme of National Integration Camp (NIC). The idea behind a Youth Festival is to organize a gathering of the youth and to take up various programmes so that the concept of National Integration, spirit of communal harmony, brotherhood, courage and adventure may be propagated. Like the National Youth Festival, States are also encouraged to hold State level and district level youth festivals in the same line as that of National Youth Festival and the State Governments are assisted for holding State Youth Festivals. The National Youth Festival is a major activity under the Promotion of National Integration component of National Programme for Youth and Adolescent Development (NPYAD) Scheme of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

The last edition of National Youth Festival was restructured as Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue 2025 (VBYLD-2025) and held on 10th-12th January, 2025, at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. The event was formally inaugurated by Hon’ble Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports, Government of India on 11th January, 2025. It was graced by the presence of the Hon’ble Prime Minister on 12th January, 2025. The VBYLD-2025 was an effort to break away from the 27-year-old tradition of the National Youth Festival by aligning it with the Prime Minister’s Independence Day vision of engaging 1 lakh youth in politics, providing them with a national platform to create a meaningful sphere of national development and leadership for a developed India.