President Murmu presents the Durand Cup to East Bengal

President Droupadi Murmu handed the President's Cup of the 2026 Durand Cup to East Bengal Football Club at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 7 September. The ceremony closed a tournament the club had already won on the pitch in August, when it beat Mohun Bagan Super Giant 4-1 in the 135th final at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan in Kolkata.

That result was East Bengal's 17th Durand title. It drew the club level with Mohun Bagan at the top of the all-time list. Thlibam Bipin Singh scored in the 10th minute. Edmund Lalrindika completed a first-half hat-trick at 12, 22 and 44 minutes. Manvir Singh's 33rd-minute goal was Mohun Bagan's only reply. The first half decided the derby. The second half was management.

The presentation is a Durand custom. The tournament is run by the Eastern Command of the Indian Army on behalf of the three services and is the world's third-oldest surviving football competition, founded in 1888. Only the FA Cup and the Scottish Cup are older among competitions that still exist. The President's Cup is the piece of silver that marks the winner at the end of the fortnight. This year the society brought the team to Raisina Hill rather than leaving the trophy on a Kolkata podium.

Chief of Defence Staff General N.S. Raja Subramani, who is president of the Durand Football Tournament Society, attended. So did Army chief General Dhiraj Seth, Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh and Admiral Krishna Swaminathan, the three vice-presidents of the society, along with club officials and players. The President's office posted the list on X the same afternoon.

Durand has always sat in an odd place in the Indian calendar. It is older than independence and older than the national league. Army and other services teams still enter. So do the two Kolkata clubs whose rivalry is the loudest in the country. A 4-1 derby final in front of a full Salt Lake crowd is the version of the tournament that travels. A formal handover under the dome at Rashtrapati Bhavan is the version that ties the cup back to the services that still own it.

The 2026 edition also did a piece of bookkeeping that supporters notice. For years Mohun Bagan sat alone at 17 Durand titles. East Bengal's win erased that gap. The next final between the two will be played as a contest for the lead, not as a defence of it. That is a small change in a long ledger and a large one in the way the two dressing rooms will talk about the cup.

East Bengal's season does not end with a President's photograph. The Super League calendar and the next Kolkata derby will test whether the August night was a peak or a base. For one afternoon in New Delhi the argument was simpler. The cup changed hands in the room where the services and the presidency still treat a 138-year-old army tournament as public business.

Mohun Bagan will not stay on 17 for long if the next final goes the other way. That is the point of a shared record. It lasts until the next meeting. Murmu's role on Monday was to put the current holder on the record in the official photograph. The grass in Kolkata will settle the rest.