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Background Nipah virus is a zoonotic agent causing diseases with extremely high mortality rate and several outbreaks have been reported from different parts of the world. Bangladesh is one of the country having repeated Nipah outbreaks since 2001.Objective To prevent an outbreak, it is necessary to understand public awareness and knowledge about the epidemic agent. This study was aimed to determine the level of knowledge and awareness related to NiV infection and to assess the potential risk of NiV disease among the rural population of Bangladesh.Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted with the participation of 200 respondents from different villages of Bangladesh. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews in January 2021 using structured questionnaire.Results From the survey it was found that 58.5% respondent of the study unknown about the term Nipah virus. However, maximum people seem to be aware of the fact that a virus infected person should be isolated as they can spread the disease further. The awareness level of the people is classified as “very poor”, “poor”, “good” and “excellent” with a percentage of 20%, 23%, 25.5% and 31.5% respectively based on some questions. Bionomial regression analysis showed that education and government campaign were variables associated with the awareness of NiV disease.Conclusion Education and government campaigns need to be stepped up to make rural people aware about this zoonotic disease.