August 2026 emerged as the best-performing month of the year so far at the Indian box office.
According to an Ormax Media’s India box office report yesterday, films released in August grossed Rs 1,768 crore at the domestic box office, including projected future collections of August releases.
This made August the third-best month ever at the Indian domestic box office, after December 2024 and December 2023.
‘Hanuman Ansh’, ‘Toxic’ and ‘Irumudi’ were the major contributors to August’s box office collection. Malayalam film ‘Bethlehem Kudumba Unit’ and Hindi film ‘Awarapan 2’ were the other major contributors during the month.
‘Hanuman Ansh’ was the top film of August, with an estimated lifetime domestic gross of Rs 360 crore. ‘Hanuman Ansh’ and ‘Toxic’ also entered the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2026 so far, at No. 4 and No. 5 respectively.
‘Bethlehem Kudumba Unit’ also achieved a major milestone. The film became the highest-grossing Malayalam film of all time at the Indian domestic box office, overtaking the 2024 film ‘Manjummel Boys’.
The top 10 films of August also showed the language diversity of Indian cinema. The list included three Hindi films, two Telugu films, two Malayalam films, two Tamil films and one Kannada film.
Overall, films released between January and August 2026 have grossed Rs 9,868 crore at the Indian domestic box office.
This is 18 percent higher than the same period in 2025. Hindi cinema continued to maintain a share of around 40 percent, while international cinema held a 15 percent share, compared with 10 percent in 2025.
Ormax Media uses Gross Box Office as the common measure for its report. For films that were still running in theatres when the report was published, collections were estimated based on the latest available trends.
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