MasterChef India: Who Judges Every Season?

MasterChef India, the Hindi-language flagship of the franchise, has rotated its judging panel almost every season since 2010, more than any other national version covered on this site, while one name has stayed close to the center of the table for most of the show's run. Here is who judged each season.

The judging panel, season by season

Chef Vikas Khanna has judged every season since season 2, the closest thing the Indian version has to Gordon Ramsay's constant presence on MasterChef US. Kunal Kapur has also had an unusually long run, judging seasons 1 through 3 and returning again for season 9, while Ranveer Brar has anchored the panel since season 4. Season 4 is also notable on its own terms: it introduced a pure vegetarian format, the first time any MasterChef edition worldwide ran that way, and was won by 21-year-old Nikita Gandhi.

Why the panel keeps changing

Unlike the Australian version, where judging changes were driven by a pay dispute and a judge's death, MasterChef India's rotating third chair looks more like a deliberate production choice: bringing in a different high-profile chef every season or two to keep the panel feeling fresh across nine years of episodes. Vikas Khanna and Ranveer Brar's long tenures give the show continuity that a fully rotating panel would lack, while the changing third seat, from Ajay Chopra in the earliest seasons to Kunal Kapur's season 9 return, lets the show bring in a new perspective without disrupting the core dynamic between its two most established judges.

Winners worth knowing

Season 6 was won by Abinas Nayak, an engineer from Odisha, and season 9 crowned a brother duo, Vikram and Ajinkya Gandhe from Nagpur, one of the few team wins across the entire international franchise. Season 8's winner, Mohammed Ashiq, was a 24-year-old entrepreneur from Mangalore. Season 4's all-vegetarian format was a genuine first for the global MasterChef franchise, and it reflected a deliberate choice to adapt the show's rules to Indian dietary norms rather than import the international format unchanged, a decision that shaped how later seasons approached regional and dietary variety in their challenge briefs. The franchise also produced a single-season junior edition in 2013, Junior MasterChef: Swaad Ke Ustaad, judged by Vikas Khanna and Kunal Kapur alongside Chef Jolly, with ten contestants aged 9 to 12 and a win for Sarthak Bhardwaj of Dehradun. It has not returned for a second season.

The scale of the audition process

MasterChef India's casting draws from across a country of well over a billion people, and the show has repeatedly emphasized the scale of its open auditions in press coverage, with home cooks traveling from small towns and rural areas to regional casting calls hoping for a spot in front of the judges. That scale is part of why winners have come from such a wide range of backgrounds, from engineers to entrepreneurs to home cooks with no professional training at all, a pattern shared with most national versions of the format but especially pronounced given the sheer size of the applicant pool each season draws from.

How it compares

Where MasterChef Australia went through panel changes triggered by a pay dispute and a judge's death, and MasterChef Canada ran the same three judges for seven straight seasons, MasterChef India rotates its third chair almost every season while keeping Khanna as the constant thread. It is a useful contrast if you are used to the American version's format, covered in our MasterChef US fan guide, where Gordon Ramsay has never missed a season.

If you like this, watch these next

MasterChef India does not have a compiled season hub on this site, so the shows directory is the place to browse the wider franchise, and our guide to MasterChef Australia covers the version with the most dramatic judging history of the three. For the full genre picture beyond MasterChef's savory focus, see our roundup of the best baking shows to stream.