The Bharatiya Jnanpith Award, which is one of the most prestigious literary awards of India, was instituted on 22nd May, 1961, the 50th birthday of late Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, the founder of the Bharatiya Jnanpith – a literary and cultural organisation founded in 1944, by his wife Rama Jain. This annual award is given for the best creative writing by an Indian citizen in any of the languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The award carries a cash price of Rs 7 lakh, a citation and a bronze replica of Goddess Saraswati. The first award was given in 1965 to G. Sankara Kurup, the renowned Malayalam writer.
The complete list of awardees is given below:
| Year | Awardees | Language |
| 1965 | G. Sankarakurup | Malayalam |
| 1966 | Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1967 | K. V. Puttappa | Kannada |
| Umashankar Joshi | Gujarati | |
| 1968 | Sumitrananthan Pant | Hindi |
| 1969 | Firaq Gorakhpuri | Urdu |
| 1970 | Dr. V. Satyanarayana | Telugu |
| 1971 | Bishnu Dey | Bengali |
| 1972 | Ramdhari Singh Dinkar | Hindi |
| 1973 | D. R. Bendre | Kannada |
| 1974 | V.S Khandekar | Marathi |
| 1975 | P.V. Akhilan | Tamil |
| 1976 | Ashapoorna Devi | Bengali |
| 1977 | K. Sivaram Karanth | Kannada |
| 1978 | S.H. Vatsyayan | Hindi |
| 1979 | B.K. Bhattacharya | Assamese |
| 1980 | S.K. Pottekkatt | Malayalam |
| 1981 | Amrita Pritam | Punjabi |
| 1982 | Mahadevi Varma | Hindi |
| 1983 | Dr. Masti Venkatesha Iyengar | Kannada |
| 1984 | Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai | Malayalam |
| 1985 | Pannalal Patel | Gujarati |
| 1986 | Sachidananda Routray | Oriya |
| 1987 | V.V Shirwadkar | Marathi |
| 1988 | Dr. C. Narayana Reddy | Telugu |
| 1989 | Qurratulain Hyder | Urdu |
| 1990 | V. K. Gokak | Kannada |
| 1991 | Subhas Mukhopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1992 | Naresh Mehta | Hindi |
| 1993 | Sitakant Mahapatra | Oriya |
| 1994 | Dr. U. R. Ananthamurthy | Kannada |
| 1995 | M. T. Vasudevan Nair | Malayalam |
| 1996 | Mahasweta Devi | Bengali |
| 1997 | Ali Sardar Jafri | Urdu |
| 1998 | Girish Karnad | Kannada |
| 1999 | Nirmal Verma | Hindi |
| Gurdial Singh | Punjabi | |
| 2000 | Indira Goswami | Assamese |
| 2001 | Rajendra Shah | Gujarati |
| 2002 | D. Jayakanthan | Tamil |
| 2003 | Vinda Karandikar | Marathi |
| 2004 | Abdul Rehman Rahi | Kashmiri |
| 2005 | Kunwar Narayan | Hindi |
| 2006 | Ravindra Kelekar | Konkani |
| Satya Vrat Shastri | Sanskrit | |
| 2007 | O. N. V. Kurup | Malayalam |
| 2008 | Akhlaq Mohammed Khan ‘Shahryar’ | Urdu |
| 2009 | Amar Kant | Hindi |
| Lal Shukla | Hindi | |
| 2010 | Chandrashekhara Kambara | Kannada |
| 2011 | Pratibha Ray | Oriya |
| 2012 | Ravuri Bharadhwaja | Telugu |
| 2013 | Kedarnath Singh | Hindi |
| 2014 | Bhalchandra Nemade | Marathi |
| 2015 | Raghuveer Chaudhari | Gujarati |