New Delhi. After getting mixed results in the year 2024, Indian shuttlers will be ready for the new year with enthusiasm as the season has started with the Malaysia Open and India Open. But the main focus will be on the most prestigious All England Open Badminton Championships and World Championships along with other big events. Indian shuttlers have won a total of five titles in the 2024 BWF World Tour. Out of the five titles, one each is in men's and women's singles, two in men's doubles and one in women's doubles.

The new season will begin with the Asian swing as the Super 1000 tournament, the Malaysia Open, will begin in Kuala Lumpur on January 7, followed by the Indian Open, a Super 750 event, scheduled in the country's capital from January 14-19. The Indonesia Masters Super 500 (January 21 to 26) and the Thailand Masters Super 300 (January 28 to February 2) will conclude the Asian circuit, after which the competition will begin in Europe.

The European leg will begin with the All England Open, the world's oldest and most prestigious badminton tournament, to be held from March 11 to 16 at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham. Indian shuttlers have been participating in the All England Open for a long time but have won only two titles so far, reaching five finals between 1980 and 2024.

Badminton legend Prakash Padukone is the only Indian to have reached the All England Open finals twice, the first time in 1980, when he created history by becoming the first Indian to win the prestigious title. The following year, he played his second final in the tournament but could not succeed in defending his men's singles title. After a long wait of 21 years, Pullela Gopichand became the second Indian to win the All England Open in 2001.

London Olympics bronze medallist Saina Nehwal became the first Indian woman to reach the All England final in 2015 and finished runner-up, while Lakshya Sen became the first Indian male shuttler to reach the men's final in 21 years after Gopichand.

Star shuttlers including the recently married PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen, the dynamic men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and the promising women's doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, who reached consecutive semi-finals in 2022 and 2023, will be looking to win the title and end the 24-year wait.

Former champions Satwik and Chirag will aim to retain the men's doubles title at the Badminton Asia Championships to be held from April 8 to 13 in Ningbo, China after bowing out of the tournament in 2024. The star pair were the first Indian pair to win a gold medal at the continental event in 2023.

Satwik and Chirag, who became the first Indian men's doubles pair to reach the summit clash of the BWF rankings in 2023, failed to have a stellar 2024 as they managed just one title, the French Open, their second win at the tournament, after losing two finals at the Malaysia Masters and India Open.

However, they started their Paris Olympics campaign strongly and made it to the quarterfinals but failed to progress beyond the last-eight stage. On the other hand, in the mixed team event, the shuttlers will look to change the colour of the bronze medal they won in 2023 at the Badminton Asia Mixed Team Championships to be held from February 11-16 in Qingdao, China. The BWF World Championships will be held in Paris, France from August 25 to 31. India has won 14 medals at the championships from 1983 to 2023.

Sindhu is the most successful Indian shuttler at the World Championships with five medals. She is the second woman in the world to win five or more singles medals at the competition after China's Zhang Ning. Two-time Olympic medalist Sindhu faced a challenging phase after winning the women's singles gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Struggling to regain her form after being sidelined due to injury, she suffered multiple early exits that saw her drop out of the top 10 world rankings in March 2023 – a position she had maintained since November 2016. To add to her woes, Sindhu missed out on a chance to secure a third Olympic medal after she crashed out in the pre-quarterfinals of the Paris Olympics.

But in early December, Sindhu won her first title in more than two years when she defeated China's Wu Luo Yu in the final of the Syed Modi International women's singles. The former world champion last won the title at the Singapore Open in July 2022. In the ongoing 2024 season, she participated only in the Malaysia Masters Super 500 Finals before ending her title drought in Lucknow.

Apart from Sindhu, Kidambi Srikanth (silver 2021), Lakshya (bronze 2021), Satwik-Chirag (bronze 2022) and HS Prannoy (bronze 2023) are active players who have won World Championship medals. It is noteworthy that since 2017, India has won at least one medal in every edition of the World Championships. With many top Indian shuttlers aiming to win major titles including the prestigious All England Open and World Championships in 2025, this year is going to be important for Indian badminton.