Spoiler warning: this article reveals the ending of Best of the Best, including who wins the national competition. If you have not finished the Netflix film, stop reading now.
Yes — UCLA Agni wins. In the finale of Best of the Best, Maya and Anjali’s team takes the national Best of the Best title after a power failure on stage forces them to improvise, turning a technical disaster into the standout performance of the night. The trophy, though, matters far less than what it costs the two friends to reach it, so here is exactly how the ending plays out.
Best of the Best premiered globally on Netflix on September 18, 2026. Directed by Lena Khan, the coming-of-age dance comedy stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Never Have I Ever) as Maya and Priyanka Kedia as Anjali — childhood best friends who join UCLA’s cutthroat Bollywood-fusion dance team and chase a national title that nearly breaks them apart.
How Best of the Best sets up its finale
Maya and Anjali arrive at UCLA and both try out for UCLA Agni, the university’s Bollywood-fusion crew. The trouble starts when the team picks its lead dancer. Maya wins the vote, but the group’s leaders set that result aside and hand the lead spot to Anjali, who dances alongside veteran captain Ronak. What should have been a shared triumph curdles into resentment, and the two friends spend much of the film pulling in opposite directions.
Anjali has her own crisis to manage. Her commitment to UCLA Agni drags down her grades and lands her on academic probation, and her mother, Rekha (Janina Gavankar), threatens to pull her out of UCLA for a community college unless she turns things around. Anjali steps away from the team to save her semester. Maya, meanwhile, becomes so fixated on winning Ronak’s approval that she neglects the people closest to her, including her love interest, Arjun — and eventually alienates Anjali entirely. By the time nationals arrive, the friendship that powered the whole team is in pieces.
The final dance and the power outage
Before the national showdown against rival crew USC Tamasha, both friends find their way back. Maya owns up to her mistakes and rejoins UCLA Agni; Anjali, her grades repaired, returns as well. In a genuine olive branch, Ronak lets Maya choose the theme for the routine and proposes that Maya and Anjali share the lead. The two set their grudges aside and reaffirm what has bound them since childhood before they step on stage.
Then the finale goes wrong in the best possible way. Midway through the performance, a technical failure cuts the power, killing the music and the lighting effects the team had built the number around. Instead of freezing, Maya and Anjali keep dancing — falling back on an old routine the two of them used to perform back home. The rest of UCLA Agni follows their lead, and the unplanned, stripped-down moment becomes the emotional peak of the night. It is enough: UCLA Agni is crowned champion of the Best of the Best competition.
The point of the ending is not the win itself. Maya redeems herself without turning the spotlight into a solo or making anyone else feel small; every member of the crew gets a moment, and the victory belongs to the group.
Do Maya and Arjun end up together?
They do. Once Maya stops chasing validation and reconnects with the people who actually support her, her relationship with Arjun clicks back into place, and the film closes with the two of them together. There is a second romantic thread as well: sparks fly between Anjali and Ronak by the finale. Both pairings stay firmly in the background, though — Best of the Best keeps the central friendship at its heart. In the final beat, Anjali’s mother shows up to watch her daughter perform, offering the support Anjali had wanted all along, and the two best friends cap the day with their favorite meal at Taco Bell.
Is the Bollywood-fusion dance circuit real?
The world around the story is real, even if the specific teams are not. Bollywood-fusion is an established college dance scene in the United States, with campus crews that blend South Asian classical and folk styles with hip-hop and contemporary choreography, then face off at intercollegiate competitions. To ground the script, co-writers Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam interviewed South Asian women who had competed on the circuit, drawing on the real texture of endless rehearsals, internal hierarchies, lead-dancer politics, and competition pressure.
UCLA Agni, rival crew USC Tamasha, and the Best of the Best championship itself are inventions for the film rather than a record of any real season. What the movie does is put a rarely centered corner of American campus culture at the heart of a mainstream comedy — and thanks to Netflix, in front of a global audience.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I watch Best of the Best?
Best of the Best is streaming exclusively on Netflix worldwide, including in the United States, where it landed on September 18, 2026.
Does UCLA Agni win the competition?
Yes. After a power outage forces the crew to improvise, UCLA Agni wins the national Best of the Best title.
Is Best of the Best based on a true story?
No. The film is fictional, but it is rooted in the very real world of collegiate Bollywood-fusion dance in the United States.
Who stars in Best of the Best?
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Maya and Priyanka Kedia plays Anjali, with Janina Gavankar and Hasan Minhaj among the supporting cast. Lena Khan directs.
