India fell to 157th rank out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index

India fell to 157th rank out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontières said on Thursday. In 2025, the country was ranked 151st.

It remains in the “very serious” category, said the non-government organisation that has been publishing the World Press Freedom Index since 2002.

The organisation said that “legal frameworks are increasingly being weaponised to silence newsrooms” even in democratic countries.

“In India, judicial harassment of independent media is intensifying, driven by the growing use of criminal statutes – defamation and national security laws among them – directly targeting journalists,” said the organisation, which is known as Reporters Without Borders in English.

The global media watchdog added that, for the first time since the index started, more than half of the countries are in the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. Only 13.7% of the countries were in this category when the index started in 2002.

The average press freedom score of the 180 countries and territories that had been studied had never been so low, it further said.

The expansion of increasingly restrictive legislative tools, “particularly those linked to national security policies”, have been steadily eroding the right to information, even in democratic countries.

The 2026 World Press Freedom Index. Source: Reporters Sans Frontières
Reporters Without Borders evaluates press freedom in countries on the basis of five indicators – economic, legal, security, political and social environments for journalists.

The legal indicator had declined most severely in the year and was a “clear sign that journalism is increasingly criminalised worldwide”, it added.

The score deteriorated in more than 60% of the countries. “This is the case in India, Egypt, Israel and Georgia,” said the organisation.

“The criminalisation of journalism, which is rooted in circumventing press law and misusing emergency legislation and common law, is proving to be a global phenomenon,” it added.


Among its neighbours, India ranks below Nepal (87th), the Maldives (108th), Sri Lanka (134th), Bhutan (150th), Bangladesh (152nd) and Pakistan (153rd). It fares better than Myanmar (166th), Afghanistan (175th) and China (178th).

Norway, the Netherlands and Estonia hold the top three spots.

The United States fell seven places in the ranking to 64.

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