Best of the Best is an American comedy dance film directed by Lena Khan from a screenplay by Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam about the competitive collegiate Bollywood-fusion dance circuit. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia star as childhood friends Maya and Anjali, who join the Bollywood-fusion dance team at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and compete in a national dance competition. It also stars Chaneil Kular, Ankur Rathee, Lilly Singh, Janina Gavankar, and Minhaj.

Produced by 186K Films and Rideback, it was released on Netflix on September 18, 2026. It received generally positive reviews from critics.

Plot As college freshmen, Maya and Anjali adjust to life at UCLA. They attend a mixer hosted by the South Asian Student Association (SASA), where Maya encounters a childhood friend Arjun, who is now a sophomore at UCLA. Anjali expresses interest in joining UCLA Agni, the school's Bollywood-fusion dance team, but is scared away by the time commitment. She is attracted to Ronak, the leader of UCLA Agni.

Maya signs both herself and Anjali up for Agni's tryouts, seeing herself as a potential lead dancer for the upcoming season and having noticed Anjali's interest in Ronak. They both make the team, which involves intense practice with the primary motivation of defeating Agni's rivals at the national Best of the Best dance competition. When the team is brainstorming a theme and lead dancers for their competition performance, Maya is outspoken about her skepticism for Ronak's idea. She nominates herself to be female lead, and also encourages Anjali to tryout as well. The final decision is to be made with a vote.

After another incident where Maya goes against Ronak's directions when performing at a fraternity, Ronak expresses his frustration that Maya is undermining him, without knowing Maya is overhearing the conversation. He and other senior members of the team decide to ignore the vote, which Maya wins, to give the lead role to Anjali, citing Anjali's likability and "lead energy". Maya is hurt by this, but refrains from revealing this information to Anjali, as Anjali is very excited to be performing with Ronak, who is selected as the male lead.

With Arjun's help, Maya builds a prop for use in their dance routine, but adds a fog machine without consulting the team first. During the Best of the Best regional qualifier event, despite Anjali's request to stick to the routine, Maya uses the fog machine, which ruins the performance. As a result, the team fails to qualify for the national competition. Maya is cut from the team by Ronak as a result of her insubordination, but Anjali convinces Ronak to give her another chance.

To attempt to qualify for the national competition, the team has to raise funds to attend another regional qualifier. The team participate in a fundraiser held by SASA by auctioning off dates with their members. Maya, who is insecure about her appearance, asks Anjali to bid on her if no one else does, but Anjali forgets in the aftermath of the team successfully raising the funds. Maya feels humiliated when no one bids on her, until Arjun appears and bids on Maya. He admits his feelings for her and they begin a relationship.

Due to prioritizing the dance team, Anjali gets placed on academic probation, and faces an ultimatum from her mother to either improve her grades by the end of term or to transfer to community college. She quits the dance team, and Maya is given the female lead role, to the annoyance of Ronak.

At the second regional qualifier, tension from the competition causes Maya and Ronak to argue, and Maya confronts Ronak about his rigging of the lead vote. The two, however, reconcile and express admiration for each other's vision for the team after learning they successfully qualified for nationals. While celebrating, Maya inadvertently reveals Anjali's academic probation and is seen dancing with Ronak on the competition livestream, which hurts both Arjun and Anjali.

Anjali confronts Maya about the livestream, and reveals her sense of betrayal that Maya would take the lead role from her, which prompts Maya to reveal the rigged vote and her feelings of insecurity about always being less likable than Anjali, culminating in Maya quitting the team as well. Arjun also feels betrayed by how Maya seeks approval from Ronak and ignores the validation he provides.

Without both Maya and Anjali, UCLA Agni struggles to prepare for nationals. Eventually, Maya apologizes to the team and rejoins, and Anjali, no longer on probation, rejoins as well. Ronak allows Maya to pick the theme for their national performance, and suggests that Maya and Anjali be the lead performers.

Before the final performance, Maya and Anjali reconcile and reaffirm their friendship. During the performance, a technical difficulty leaves the stage without power, but Maya and Anjali continue the performance and win the competition. Maya and Arjun reconcile after the performance.

Cast Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Maya Krishnaraj Priyanka Kedia as Anjali Ankur Rathee as Ronak, the leader of UCLA Agni Chaneil Kular as Arjun, Maya's boyfriend Hasan Minhaj as UCLA Professor Hamza Latif Janina Gavankar as Rekha, Anjali's mother

Production

Development Originally titled For the Culture and involving Amazon Studios, the project was announced in December 2021 alongside the announcement of Hasan Minhaj's production company, 186K Films. Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam co-wrote the story, having previously collaborated on Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj.

The film's title refers to Best of the Best (BOB), a collegiate South Asian dance competition founded in New York City in 2005 that ran until 2012, featuring dance teams performing Indian dance styles including Bhangra, Raas-Garba and Bollywood fusion. The film also drew on the current collegiate South Asian dance circuit, titled Legends.

While UCLA Agni is not a real team, inspiration was taken from the real-life UCLA Nashaa, the premier competitive team at UCLA and previous winners of Best of the Best. In concurrence with the film, the New York Times followed UCLA Nashaa during their 2025-2026 season, and wrote an opinion piece on the reality behind the team.

To ensure an accurate representation of the competitive scene, the writers interviewed several South Asian women who had participated in competitions. By April 2023, Lena Khan had agreed to direct the project.

Singer and composer A. R. Rahman created a track for the movie in homage to Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's Tamil heritage.

Casting Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia had been cast by July 2025. In order to prepare for the dance sequences in the film, both actors underwent dance training, upto six times a week, for a period of four months.

Filming The project was filmed in Jersey City and Montclair in the state of New Jersey in July 2025.

Release The film was premiered on September 9, 2026. The film was released by Netflix on September 18, 2026.

Reception On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on six critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Nandini Balial of RogerEbert.com rated the film 2.5 stars out of 4. While they praised Ramakrishnan's performance and the cultural specificity, they described the story as akin to a Disney Channel Original Movie and lacking "artistic risk." They also critiqued the writing team being male affecting the characterization, writing "stories about brown women should be written by them too." Writing for the New York Times, Chris Azzopardi praised the relationship portrayed by Kedia and Ramakrishnan, but mentioned the plot moving through "familiar steps." Cath Clarke of The Guardian rated the film 3 stars out of 5, similarly citing that there is "absolutely nothing unexpected" about the plot, but praised both the comedy as "whip-fast" and the writers for their portrayal of both Gen-Z and second-generation immigrant behavior.

Review bombing During an interview for the film, Ramakrishnan described her ethnic background as Eelam Tamil rather than Sri Lankan Tamil, citing the impact the Sri Lankan civil war had on her upbringing. In the film, her character Maya also states “I’m Tamil, my family is from Sri Lanka,” a deliberate change from the script's original wording in which Maya states she is "Tamil Sri Lankan." Ramakrishnan's comments triggered a review bomb campaign against the film instigated by Sri Lankan nationalist pages online, resulting in thousands of negative reviews for the film on IMDb.

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