The present investigation was performed to identify resistance sources and to unravel the genomic regions controlling false smut resistance by genome‐wide association mapping (GWAS) in 150 diverse rice accessions. This study revealed 13 highly resistant, 9 resistant, 119 moderately resistant and 9 moderately susceptible genotypes. Correlation analysis revealed that the percentage of infected florets, percentage of infected tillers, percentage of infected plants and spikelet sterility percentage showed significant association with disease severity. GWAS was performed using GLM, GLM+Q and MLM+Q+K with 214 SSR markers and resulted in 16 significant marker–trait associations with the traits, viz., percentage of infected plants, percentage of infected tillers, percentage of infected florets and disease severity. This study resulted in two major QTLs for the percentage of infected florets in the marker RM16131 (126.9 cM) and RM44 (60.9 cM) on chromosomes 3 and 8 and these can be further used in marker‐assisted selection. Several genes were portrayed around major QTL regions and further validation is needed to identify candidate genes for false smut resistance.