| List of award recipients, showing the year, and language(s) | ||
| Year | Recipient(s) | Language |
| 1965 (1st) |
G. Sankara Kurup | Malayalam |
| 1966 (2nd) |
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1967 (3rd) |
Umashankar Joshi | Gujarati |
| 1967 (3rd) |
Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa (Kuvempu) | Kannada |
| 1968 (4th) |
Sumitranandan Pant | Hindi |
| 1969 (5th) |
Firaq Gorakhpuri | Urdu |
| 1970 (6th) |
Viswanatha Satyanarayana | Telugu |
| 1971 (7th) |
Bishnu Dey | Bengali |
| 1972 (8th) |
Ramdhari Singh Dinkar | Hindi |
| 1973 (9th) |
D. R. Bendre | Kannada |
| 1973 (9th) |
Gopinath Mohanty | Oriya |
| 1974 (10th) |
Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar | Marathi |
| 1975 (11th) |
Akilan | Tamil |
| 1976 (12th) |
Ashapoorna Devi | Bengali |
| 1977 (13rd) |
K. Shivaram Karanth | Kannada |
| 1978 (14th) |
Sachchidananda Vatsyayan | Hindi |
| 1979 (15th) |
Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya | Assamese |
| 1980 (16th) |
S. K. Pottekkatt | Malayalam |
| 1981 (17th) |
Amrita Pritam | Punjabi |
| 1982 (18th) |
Mahadevi Varma | Hindi |
| 1983 (19th) |
Masti Venkatesha Iyengar | Kannada |
| 1984 (20th) |
Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai | Malayalam |
| 1985 (21st) |
Pannalal Patel | Gujarati |
| 1986 (22nd) |
Sachidananda Routray | Oriya |
| 1987 (23rd) |
Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar (Kusumagraj) | Marathi |
| 1988 (24th) |
C. Narayana Reddy | Telugu |
| 1989 (25th) |
Qurratulain Hyder | Urdu |
| 1990 (26th) |
Vinayaka Krishna Gokak | Kannada |
| 1991 (27th) |
Subhash Mukhopadhyay | Bengali |
| 1992 (28th) |
Naresh Mehta | Hindi |
| 1993 (29th) |
Sitakant Mahapatra | Oriya |
| 1994 (30th) |
U. R. Ananthamurthy | Kannada |
| 1995 (31st) |
M. T. Vasudevan Nair | Malayalam |
| 1996 (32nd) |
Mahasweta Devi | Bengali |
| 1997 (33rd) |
Ali Sardar Jafri | Urdu |
| 1998 (34th) |
Girish Karnad | Kannada |
| 1999 (35th) |
Nirmal Verma | Hindi |
| 1999 (35th) |
Gurdial Singh | Punjabi |
| 2000 (36th) |
Mamoni Raisom Goswami | Assamese |
| 2001 (37th) |
Rajendra Shah | Gujarati |
| 2002 (38th) |
Jayakanthan | Tamil |
| 2003 (39th) |
Vinda Karandikar | Marathi |
| 2004 (40th) |
Rehman Rahi | Kashmiri |
| 2005 (41st) |
Kunwar Narayan | Hindi |
| 2006 (42nd) |
Ravindra Kelekar | Konkani |
| 2006 (42nd) |
Satya Vrat Shastri | Sanskrit |
| 2007 (43rd) |
O. N. V. Kurup | Malayalam |
| 2008 (44th) |
Akhlaq Mohammed Khan ‘Shahryar’ | Urdu |
| 2009 (45th) |
Amarkant | Hindi |
| 2009 (46th) |
Sri Lal Sukla | Hindi |
| 2010 (46th) |
Chandrashekhara Kambara | Kannada |
| 2011 (47th) |
Pratibha Ray | Oriya |
| 2012 (48th) |
Ravuri Bharadhwaja | Telugu |
| 2013 (49th) |
Kedarnath Singh | Hindi |
| 2014 (50th) |
Bhalchandra Nemade | Marathi |
| 2015 (51st) |
Raghuveer Chaudhari | Gujarati |
