Indian Idol (Hindi TV series) season 15

The fifteenth season of Indian Idol premiered in late 2024, on Sony Entertainment Television. After being replaced for a year, Aditya Narayan returned as host, while Shreya Ghoshal and Vishal Dadlani returned as judges, along with Badshah replacing Kumar Sanu.
The grand finale aired on 5th-6th April 2025, with Manasi Ghosh declared as the winner and Subhajit Chakraborty became the first runner-up
Remote auditions took place from 18 August to 31 August 2024, as well as a number of open-call auditions, and from these, the producers selected the contestants who were then invited to audition in front of the judges.
Filming does not take place until the judges' audition round. The year, the auditions were filmed at the Mukesh Mills warehouse.
To mark 20 years of Indian Idol, the platinum mic was introduced that guarantees the contestant a position in Top 15. Each judge could give only 1 platinum mic. Golden tickets were continued, and were given 31 in total, but the golden mic was discontinued. The platinum mics were given to Srijan Porail, Mayuri Saha and Sneha Shankar by Dadlani, Ghoshal and Badshah respectively.
Also, during the judges' audition, the traditional "sticker" of contestant's serial number was replaced with a new "identity card" as shown in the promo. This season the judges were also given headphones to hear the raw voice of singers, without any instruments and processing.
The Theatre round featured the top 31 golden ticket holder contestants performing for the judges. This round was filmed on X, at the Lata Mangeshkar Auditorium, and aired on 9 and 10 November 2024. The judges then narrowed the number of contestants down to 15, including the platinum mic holders.
This year the contestants performed in batches, as picked by the judges according to genre. The batch maybe of two, three or even one and their fate depends on the judges' verdict.
Neeti Mohan served as the guest judge and mentor in absence of Badshah, and Pawandeep Rajan and Mohd. Danish served as guest hosts in absence of Aditya Narayan.
The following is a list of the contestants and the song they performed. Contestants are listed in the order they performed.
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The contestant who made past the theater round or got the platinum mic in the auditions, are listed below as follows:
After the theater round, every week all the contestants performing in the gala and are eliminated on a weekly basis.
The gala rounds were filmed at the P3 Infotech Film Studio.
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Special guests: Usha Mangeshkar, Sanjeev Kapoor, Manoj Tiwari, Asees Kaur, Goldie Sohel, Bhagyashree, Arjun Kanungo, Divyansh Kacholia, Sanjay B Jumani, Kunal Ganjawala
Ragini Shinde, who was eliminated in the theatre round, when Badhshah was absent, joined as wild card contestant in Gala 1, on request of Badshah, to make it Top 16.
There was no public voting this week and the performance did not count in the competition. Contestants are listed in the order they performed.
This week was divided into two themes, dedicated to directors Subhash Ghai and Mahesh Bhatt. The above said were the special guests and guest mentor for respective nights. The contestants performed on the songs which were in the films directed by them, in the two nights respectively, and this week was the first public voting week of the season.
Shreya Ghoshal was absent this week, due to her live show tour.
This week was the first judges' score week and the first elimination took place on basis of last week's votes and this week's scores.
The special guests for first night were Fardeen Khan, his sister Laila Khan Furniturewala and Zeenat Aman celebrating Feroz Khan, and Nana Patekar for the second night. All the contestants performed on the songs of Feroz Khan on the first night. And Vishal Dadlani was absent for this week.
The director of the movie Vanvaas, Anil Sharma, and lead cast, Utkarsh Sharma and Simrat Kaur joined for a while to promote the said film.
Contestants are listed in the order they performed.
To celebrate an year of the movie Animal, its director Sandeep Reddy Vanga joined as a special guest on the first night. And the second night was dedicated to celebrate Vishal Mishra's birthday. He himself joined the night and served as guest mentor. Also, for Vastav's performance, Bhupinder Babbal joined the sets. This week was the second public voting week of the season.
Contestants are listed in the order they performed. Sneha was performer of the week.
Both nights of this week were dedicated to celebrate Raj Kapoor's 100th birth anniversary. Karisma Kapoor, Padmini Kolhapure and Anees Bazmee joined as special guests for the week.
Contestants are listed in the order in which they performed.
Both nights of the week they celebrated Christmas. Paradox, Rishabh Rikhiram Sharma, Papon, Priyank Sharma, Nikhita Gandhi, Meiyang Chang were the guests. For the promotion of CID Season 2 Shivaji Satam, Aditya Shrivastava and Dayanand Shetty came to support Ragini Shinde Indian Idol Contestant and came for the promotion of the same.
Manasi sings "Akh Ladh Jave" with Badshah and Paradox.
This was the elimination week, where judges had to give scores to the duet performing collectively. The lowest scoring duet will be in the bottom and one of them will be elimination on the basis of last week public votes.
Sangeeta Bijlani and Ayesha Jhulka joined for each night respectively while Badshah was again absent.
In this week Indian Idol celebrated the greatest love songs with singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya and his wife Sumati Bhattacharya, music composer Lalit Pandit of the duo Jatin-Lalit, singer Sadhana Sargam and actress Preeti Jhangiani.
This was the fourth elimination week of the season. For night 1, the crew and cast of upcoming film Azaad, namely, Rasha Thadani, Amaan Devgan, Abhishek Kapoor and Amit Trivedi joined for the promotions. And in night 2, the cast of upcoming film Emergency, Kangana Ranaut and Anupam Kher joined for the promotion.
In this Episode Aparajita Singh (Badshah's Sister) will join the sets for Bhai-Behen Special.
In this Episode Vikas Khanna and Ranveer Brar joined the sets with Rajiv Adatia, Archana Gautam, Tejasswi Prakash, Faisal Shaikh, Gaurav Khanna and Abhijeet Sawant contestants of Celebrity Masterchef India
In next Episode Akshay Kumar and Veer Pahariya joined the sets for the promotion of their film Sky Force.
In Part 1 contestants sang evergreen songs and Junaid Khan and Khushi Kapoor joined the sets for the promotion of their movie Loveyapa
In Part 2 Megastar Jeetendra joined the sets to celebrate evergreen songs.
In this Episode Sooraj Barjatya joined the sets with Rithik Ghanshani and Ayesha Kaduskar for the promotion of their new movie on OTT platform Bada Naam Karenge along with Karishma Kapoor and Mohnish Bahl to celebrate 25 years of Hum Saath Saath Hain.
In the 2nd Part Bada Naam Karenge director Palash Vaswani and music Composer Anurag Saikia also joined the sets. The participants sang song of various movies produced by Rajshri Production.
In this episode Neelam Kothari and Govinda Ahuja joined the sets and the participants sang songs from the flims where both the actor and actress had acted.
The first double elimination of the season happened this week. Hema Malini joined as the guest for both nights. In the second night, the lead crew of The Waking of a Nation joined for its promotion. This week also marked the return of Vishal Dadlani, who was absent for a few weeks due to his motor accident.
This episode was dedicated to the judge Shreya Ghoshal to celebrate her birthday. Her father and mother joined to celebrate along. Voting for all the contestants were opened that night.
Sunny Deol joined as the special for the night to promote his film Jaat. This episode was shot the same as Shreya's birthday episode but was telecasted in two different parts and themes where all contestants performed on each night. Voting lines for all the contestants were again open that night.
This was the judges scoring night with the season's second double elimination on the basis of public votes of both nights from the last week and the judges scores of this night. All the contestants performed the songs from the movies of Karan Johar.
This was the final voting night of the season to decide the season's winner next week. The top 6 again sang the songs from the movies of Karan Johar.
Out of the top 6 finalist, judges had to pick top 5 based on their performace, by placing the platinum mic on their name's podium.
The top 5 finalists performed for the judges' scores to secure a place in top 3 in combination with the public votes from semi-final 2.
The top 3 finalists performed for the last time and based on the votes from the semi-final 2, the results were announced.
Like last season, this season too, bi-weekly eliminations were held. One week public votes, next week, judges' scores. The bottom contestants are decided according to the judges' scores from that week, and the person with lowest votes from last week is eliminated.
The season's premiere episode was reviewed by Pinkvilla, and Gujarat Samachar.
The project head for the season was Chitra Langeh, and Akash Tiwari once again joining as the head of production. Pratyush Prakash was once again the writer of the series. Music guidance and music band were headed by Anand Sharma and Randeep Bhaskar. Aradhana Bhola, the managing director of FremantleIndia was once again the executive producer of the series. The season was directed by Saahil Chhabria.