As the iconic film Sholay celebrates its 50th anniversary on August 15, 2025, India Post has released two specially designed picture postcards to commemorate the golden jubilee of the film. The event, held at the General Post Office at Fort in Mumbai, marked 50 years since the film's original release on August 15, 1975.

Chief Postmaster General Amitabh Singh, who heads the Maharashtra Circle, officially unveiled the commemorative items and presented the first album to Ramesh Sippy, the acclaimed director of Sholay. The occasion was graced by noted personalities including Shehzad Sippy, Rohan Sippy, Kiran Joneja, and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, the Director of Film Heritage Foundation. Senior postal officers present included Director Postal Services (Mumbai Region), Kaiya Arora; Director of Postal Services (Headquarters), Maharashtra Circle Simran Kaur; and Director, Mumbai GPO, Rekha Rizvi. The launch attracted a large gathering of philatelists and film enthusiasts, reflecting the film's enduring popularity.

Sholay, directed by Ramesh Sippy and written by Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, features a stellar cast including Dharmendra as Veeru, Amitabh Bachchan as Jai, Sanjeev Kumar as Thakur, Hema Malini as Basanti, Jaya Bhaduri as Radha, and Amjad Khan as the formidable Gabbar Singh. The film is about two criminals, Veeru and Jai, who are hired by a retired police officer to capture the ruthless dacoit Gabbar Singh.

Released on August 15, 1975, Sholay initially received negative reviews and had a slow start at the box office. However, positive word-of-mouth publicity helped it to become a box office success. The film broke records for continuous showings in many theaters across India and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre. Sholay was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union. At the time, it was the highest-grossing Indian film ever and remained so until Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994).

Sholay is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential Indian films of all time. It was ranked first in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time. In 2005, the judges of the 50th Filmfare Awards named it the Best Film of 50 Years. The film is a dacoit Western, combining the conventions of Indian dacoit films with that of spaghetti Westerns along with elements of Samurai cinema. Sholay is also a defining example of the masala film, which mixes several genres in one work.

The film's dialogue and certain characters became extremely popular, contributing to numerous cultural memes and becoming part of India's daily vernacular. The iconic dialogues, penned by Salim-Javed, have become ingrained in everyday conversations.

Many celebrities have shared their memories and thoughts on the film's 50th anniversary. Salman Khan recalled listening to the film's dialogues on loop. Sunny Deol treasures his father Dharmendra's role as Veeru. Farhan Akhtar called it a rare film etched into India's collective consciousness. Abhishek Bachchan described Sholay as a seminal moment in Indian cinema.

To commemorate Sholay's half-century anniversary, a restored and uncut version of the film premiered at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, in June 2025. This version includes several deleted scenes, among which was the original climactic confrontation between Gabbar Singh and Thakur Baldev Singh, in which Thakur kicks the bandit to death. The censor board had famously objected to this ending, and in the final cut of the film, Thakur Baldev Singh hands Gabbar Singh over to the police.

The restored version of Sholay will be shown at three film festivals: the Toronto Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the London Film Festival.