Ngoma Awards 2025 Winners 2025

The Ngoma Awards are a prestigious national honour recognising artistic excellence across comedy, creative writing, dance, fashion, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts. Hosted by the National Arts Council of Zambia under the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Arts, the Ngoma Awards have honoured more than 1,000 artists over the past 28 years and remain Zambia’s flagship platform for artistic excellence.

The 2025 edition marks the 20th Ngoma Awards since the inaugural ceremony in 1997. With a continued dedication to artistic excellence and community connection, the 20th Ngoma Awards promise an elevated experience — with exciting surprises, exclusive partnership opportunities, and a night filled with creativity, entertainment, passion, and celebration.

Rich History of Artistic Excellence

• Established in 1997 as the National Honours and Awards Show.
• Originally recognised 10-year achievements across 21 categories.
• 1998: Shift to annual works; associations under NAC organise feeder events.
• “Ngoma” chosen to symbolise communication and cultural heritage (means “drum”).
• Expanded from 21 awards (1997) to ~47 (2022) and 50 in recent editions.
• New categories added over time: Comedy, Media Arts, Fashion, etc.
• Hosted across cities (Lusaka, Livingstone, Kitwe) to reinforce national reach.
• Awards named after fallen arts heroes — a national artistic tribute.

The Zambian Music and Entertainment Industry has grown with the increase of award shows lately. One of the recently showcased award show is the Ngoma Awards where various creative Zambians won awards in various categories. It involved categories such as Best Song of the Year, Best Male Musician, Best Collaboration, Best Online / Social Media Comedian and many others.  Out of all the award shows which have so far taken place in this final quater of the year 2025, the Ngoma Awards has been called the “Most Fair” award show by many fans. Other shows have been called unfair because fans felt the winners never deserved those awards they got. Here is a full list of all the categories and the winners of those awards in case you missed it. 

Fashion — Ngoma Awards 2025 (Winners) Category Winner Best Female Model Faith Bwalya Best Male Model Mr Mulwanda Comedy — Ngoma Awards 2025 (Winners)    Visual Arts — Ngoma Awards 2025 (Winners) Category Winner Best Female Visual Artist Mwamba Chikwemba Best Male Visual Artist Kulu Sikazwe Best Two-Dimension Artist Mulenga Mulenga Best Three-Dimension Artist Chishimba Nyirenda Community Theatre — Ngoma Awards 2025 (Winners)  Creative Writing — Ngoma Awards 2025 (Winners) Category Winner Most Outstanding Male Creative Writer Lt Col Francis Kunda (Too Hard to be True) Most Outstanding Female Creative Writer Chibwe Mulenga (The Silence of Thorns) Most Outstanding Prose Loyalty to the Girl or to the Gang — Richard Sakala Most Outstanding Poetry Crisis@30 — Saviti