The Kashmir Club That Just Reached the International Emmys

Sony LIV’s Real Kashmir Football Club earned a Drama Series nomination at the 2026 International Emmys on September 23. Vir Das took a third Comedy nod the same morning for Fool Volume, which is the line most roundups will print.

The drama slot sits on a Srinagar club that started with 100 footballs after the 2014 floods, and on a hotelier who died before the series aired.

India Lands Two International Emmy Nominations

The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences posted 64 nominees across 16 categories from 22 countries. Winners will be named at the 54th International Emmy Awards Gala in New York City on Monday, November 23, 2026, after nominee panels from November 20 to 22.

India is on the board twice, and in both marquee races. Real Kashmir Football Club is up for Drama Series. Fool Volume, listed to Zazu Production Inc and Netflix, is up for Comedy. The United Kingdom, Argentina, and India are the three territories with work in both of those races.

Bruce L. Paisner, the academy’s president and CEO, called the field as competitive as ever and said the academy looks forward to gathering the global television community around the nominated programs and performances.

THE 2026 INTERNATIONAL EMMY FIELD

• The ballot: 64 nominees, 16 categories, 22 countries, announced in New York on September 23, 2026.
• India’s two slots: Drama Series for Real Kashmir Football Club on Sony LIV, Comedy for Vir Das: Fool Volume on Netflix.
• The gala: Monday, November 23, 2026, in New York City, after festival events from November 20 to 22.
• The producers on the drama card: Sony LIV, Jaya Entertainment, and Oshun Entertainment.

That is the official sheet. What the sheet does not say is who built the football club the drama is based on, or that one of those men is already gone.

The Club the Nomination Forgot to Name

Real Kashmir FC still plays. The series that now sits beside a Steven Knight boxing drama and a French period piece about a chef is drawn from that club, the first professional side out of Jammu and Kashmir, nicknamed the Snow Leopards.

Newspaper editor Shamim Meraj and hotelier Sandeep Chattoo founded it in 2016. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub plays Sohail Meer, a journalist who has stopped believing his copy can change anything. Manav Kaul plays Shirish Kemmu, a Kashmiri Pandit businessman who comes back to fund the idea. The names on screen are close to the men who actually bought the balls.

Zeeshan Ayyub did not dedicate the nomination to a streamer or a jury. He pointed it at the valley the club still represents.

It is always special to see our labour of love reach people and receive recognition. This was an important and relevant story for us to tell, a story of resilience, courage and hard work. We dedicate this recognition to the people of Kashmir, their resilience and the struggles they have endured. I hope this nomination helps the story travel further and reach a wider audience.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, actor, statement on the nomination

Congratulatory posts that moved on September 23 named Kaul and Ayyub. Almost none named Meraj, Chattoo, or the side that still trains in Srinagar. The academy shortlisted a drama. The people who lived the plot are not on the call sheet.

Two Friends, 100 Footballs, Then a League Place

After the 2014 floods, Meraj was editing The Kashmir Monitor and watching playgrounds stay empty. Chattoo’s Hotel CH2 stood in the wreckage. They walked a silted neighbourhood, saw boys with nowhere to go, and came back with 100 footballs. A week later the same boys were kicking them.

The step from that drop-off to a registered club was ugly. Meraj has said he mortgaged his wife’s jewellery and treated the early months as a beg-borrow-steal job. Players still had day work. Danish Farooq, then a banker, later an India cap and a Kerala Blasters midfielder, has said the staff hid the money panic from the dressing room.

“They never let us know the financial issues,” Farooq said. “We always felt like a top club. Fresh towels, bottles, things that were not common back then. Shamim bhai treated us like family. He’d say: ‘This is my part. Now you do yours.’”

FROM THE FLOODS TO AN EMMY BALLOT

1. 2014: After the Kashmir floods, Meraj and Chattoo hand out 100 footballs in Srinagar.
2. 2016: Real Kashmir FC is formed and enters the Durand Cup, finishing last.
3. January 2017: Former Rangers and Leeds defender David Robertson arrives as head coach.
4. May 30, 2018: The club wins I-League 2nd Division without losing a match and becomes the first side from Jammu and Kashmir promoted to the I-League.
5. 2018-19: It finishes third in its first I-League season and draws 12,000 for a home match at TRC Ground.
6. December 2020: It wins the 123rd IFA Shield.
7. December 31, 2023: Chattoo, 57, dies of a heart attack in Gurugram.
8. December 2025: The eight-episode Sony LIV series premieres.
9. September 23, 2026: The series lands on the International Emmy Drama Series list.

Robertson’s spell later drew two BBC Scotland documentaries and a British Empire Medal in the 2021 Birthday Honours. Adidas arrived as kit partner. On the club’s own timeline, that unbeaten second-division season made it the first club from J&K to reach the I-League. In 2024-25 it finished third again.

Meraj left the club in 2020, citing personal reasons, and said the Hindu-Muslim friendship with Chattoo was not the issue. Promoter Arshad Shawl, who had already been in the leadership group, now fronts the operation and talks about youth sides and a longer football culture in the valley, not a television trophy.

WHAT THE SNOW LEOPARDS RUN NOW

• Senior side: Still in the national second tier, with a 2024-25 I-League third-place finish on the books.
• The pathway: Reserve, U-18, U-15, and U-13 teams, plus sessions for children as young as five.
• The ground: Home nights at TRC, where the club once put 12,000 in the stands for an I-League match.

Chattoo did not live to see the series, let alone an Emmy ballot. Vishakha Singh, an executive producer, has said the hardest stretch was holding the project together for six to seven years through delays, funding cycles, rewrites, and the pandemic, then absorbing his death on December 31, 2023 as the emotional blow in the middle of that work.

Why Manav Kaul Says the Series Was Overlooked

Kilian Kerwin, president of Jaya Entertainment, had the idea in development for almost a decade. Buyers told the producers to come back when it was already made. Sony LIV was the interested party early, and former chief Danish Khan closed the deal once episodes existed. Kerwin has said other platforms knew where it was going.

Mahesh Mathai, who directed with Rajesh Mapuskar, has said the images leaving Kashmir were either untrue or locked on militancy and split politics, and that an underdog sports story from the same place was the thing he would not drop. Kerwin put the same point in plainer terms: one founder Hindu, one Muslim, in a region the rest of the country is used to seeing through a security lens.

Kaul was in Paris when the academy list went up. He messaged Mathai, who thought it was a joke until Kaul told him it was on the official Emmy page. The actor’s public remarks were less about champagne than about a show he felt had not travelled.

I feel it’s a personal win, seeing that I always felt that this project did not get its due credit and it deserved much more viewership than what it got. And now I hope it reaches the masses.

Manav Kaul, actor, remarks after the nomination

Sony LIV does not publish view counts. A streamer representative has called the series a complete, self-contained story and said some arcs are stronger in a single season. That is a polite way of saying there is no second season on the table, Emmy nod or not. The writers listed on the series include Simaab Hashmi, Dhruv Narang, Mathai, Danish Renzu, and Umang Vyas. The ensemble around Kaul and Ayyub includes Abhishant Rana, Muazzam Bhat, Priya Chauhan, Anmol Thakeriadhillon, Afnan Fazli, and Shaheem Bhat.

Mathai, as show-runner, treated the nomination as proof that a story held long enough can still surface.

When you come across a great story, don’t let it pass you by. Grab a hold of, nurture it, love it, and push it through that long tunnel. It will find the light. We are honoured that this special series has found global recognition through an Emmy nomination.

Mahesh Mathai, show-runner and co-director, statement on the nomination

Vir Das Makes It Three, This Time for Silence

Fool Volume is the other Indian name on the sheet, and it will dominate the domestic coverage because the history is easy to typeset. Das was nominated in 2021 for Vir Das: For India. He won in 2023 for Vir Das: Landing, sharing Comedy with Derry Girls Season 3, the first International Emmy for an Indian comedian. Fool Volume is his fifth Netflix special and his third nomination, which makes him the first Indian performer nominated three times.

He posted the news himself on September 23, calling it a third nomination for India and signing off as the fool.

A third International Emmy Nomination for India 🇮🇳 This fool, thanks you from the bottom of his heart. 🙏❤️ @netflix @ZazuProduction pic.twitter.com/oHGkV2xI5Z

— Vir Das (@thevirdas) September 23, 2026

The special premiered on July 18, 2025. Netflix says the planned theme was scrapped after he lost his voice two months before the shoot, and that the hour was rewritten in silence and performed without rehearsal in Mumbai, London, and New York. He has said 65 Indian freelancers across those three countries took a first Netflix credit on it.

HOW FOOL VOLUME GOT MADE

• The injury: Das lost his voice two months before a different special was due to shoot.
• The rewrite: He rebuilt the hour in silence and then performed it without rehearsal.
• The map: Stages in Mumbai, London, and New York, with an Indian crew across three continents.
• The credit: 65 Indian freelancers logged a first Netflix credit on the special.

In a statement on the nomination he returned to that lost voice, which is also the joke in the title.

I am humbled all over again to be nominated for an International Emmy. Fool Volume is about silence, what it means to have a voice, and what happens when you actually use it. I’m deeply grateful to the jury, audiences, my team, and Netflix for giving me the space to make work I believe in. And to everyone who has laughed along the way, clearly, my delusion is contagious.

Vir Das, comedian, statement on the Fool Volume nomination

His Comedy rivals are División Palermo Season 2 from Argentina, Man vs Baby from the United Kingdom, and Old Dog, New Tricks from Spain. A stray reply to his post asked whether he had a National Award. That split, international juries versus India’s own prizes, has followed him since Landing. It says nothing about the Kashmir series, which is the point. The third nomination is real, and it will still crowd out the club whose name is on the drama card.

A Thousand Blows, Carême and a Kashmir Drama

Drama Series is a four-title race. Real Kashmir Football Club is the only Indian title, and the only one whose plot is a living second-tier club rather than a period kitchen, a political life, or Victorian boxing.

DRAMA SERIES NOMINEES

A Thousand Blows comes from The Story Collective, Matriarch Productions, and Water & Power Productions. Carême is from VVZ and Shine Fiction. Menem is from Claxson. Against that slate, a Sony LIV series that its own lead says lacked viewers is the odd title, which is likely why it is on the list.

Nine months after the December 2025 premiere, the academy has done what the Indian streaming cycle did not: put the Snow Leopards’ origin story in front of jurors who do not need a cricket calendar to care about a football club.

New York on November 23 Will Not Name the Founders

The gala will announce four drama winners’ producers and a comedy winner. It will not read out Shamim Meraj or Sandeep Chattoo. Shawl’s club will still have training to run. The series, as Sony LIV has framed it, is finished.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The noms: Real Kashmir Football Club in Drama Series and Vir Das: Fool Volume in Comedy, announced September 23, 2026.
• The date: Winners at the 54th International Emmy Awards Gala in New York City on November 23, 2026.
• The club: Founded in 2016, still competing nationally, third in the I-League in 2024-25.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The winners: No Drama Series or Comedy result until the November 23 gala.
• Who goes to New York: No public list of which RKFC figures, if any, will be in the room.
• A second season: Sony LIV has described the series as a closed one-season story, with no renewal announced.

Kaul wanted the nomination to find the audience the series missed the first time. Zeeshan Ayyub wanted it to travel farther than the valley. Chattoo told people the club was his legacy. On November 23 the academy will call a title. The man who put money into the actual shirts will not hear it.