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Celebrate India
India's calendar bursts with religious, regional, musical, cultural and culinary celebrations. Filter by month, type or state to plan around the right moment.
Happening soon
Indian festivals mostly follow lunar calendars, so the exact days shift each year. We name the month they fall in and leave the day to the panchang closer to the time.
Festival calendarFestival directory
Use the calendar when timing is the main decision, or browse the directory for context, location and meaning.
Historic Sun Temple, Modhera, Mehsana district, Gujarat.
A classical performing arts festival staged against the dramatically lit sandstone of the 11th-century temple.
Held in the historic desert town of Nagaur, situated between Jodhpur and Bikaner in Rajasthan.
One of India's largest cattle fairs, trading cattle, camels and horses, alongside folk performances, tug-of-war, camel races and rural sports.
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The open-air Nishagandhi Theatre, Kanakakkunnu Palace grounds, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
An open-air festival that brings together the leading exponents of Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, and Odissi.
The ancient Pattadakal Temple Complex (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), situated beautifully along the Malaprabha River, Bagalkot district, Karnataka.
A festival of classical Indian dance staged against the backdrop of 8th-century Chalukyan temples.
Settler villages across South Andaman and North and Middle Andaman, among the descendants of convicts and labourers brought to the penal colony.
The oldest continuously transmitted settler tradition documented in the islands — it predates most of the present population and arrived with the penal colony itself.
Predominantly in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and among Tamil communities worldwide.
Tamil Nadu's grandest harvest thanksgiving to the Sun God, featuring the ceremonial boiling-over of newly harvested rice in milk, cattle worship (Mattu Pongal) and kolam art.
Medaram village, situated deep inside the dense Tadvai forest zone, Mulugu district, Telangana.
The largest tribal religious congregation in the world, honouring mother goddesses who fought feudal oppression.
St Paul's Church, Diu town. Diu's other Portuguese-built churches — St Thomas (1598) and the Church of St Francis of Assisi — stand nearby.
Portuguese Diu still in use rather than on display — these are working liturgical occasions in a seventeenth-century church, not heritage performances.
Tirthamukh at the Dumbur reservoir, Gandacherra sub-division, Dhalai district — where the Raima and Sarma meet.
A working pilgrimage with roots reported to the Maharaja era, now given state support and tourism infrastructure.
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The grand stone courtyard of the historic Tawang Monastery (Gaden Namgyal Lhatse), Tawang district, Arunachal Pradesh.
A Buddhist monastic festival to drive away evil spirits, with spectacular sacred mask dances.
Across the Chhota Nagpur Plateau, extending through Purulia district (West Bengal), Ranchi and Jamshedpur districts (Jharkhand), and Mayurbhanj district (Odisha).
A lyrical folk festival celebrated by young girls who craft clay effigies of Goddess Tusu and float them in streams.
Bageshwar town, Kumaon — at the Bagnath temple and on the Numaish Khet ground beside the Saryu, at its confluence with the Gomti.
Founded under the Chand dynasty as a trade fair, and historically the point where Bhotiya traders from the high valleys met traders from the plains.
The Mising heartland along the Brahmaputra — Majuli, Jorhat, Dhemaji, Lakhimpur and Sonitpur.
The principal festival of Assam's largest tribal community, and one of the clearest surviving agricultural rites in the state.
West Nimar, Jhabua, Alirajpur, and Dhar districts of Madhya Pradesh, as well as bordering zones of Gujarat.
A colourful agricultural matchmaking fair of the Bhil tribes, where young people wear traditional dress, move to looping music, and choose their own partners.
Tashiding Monastery in Gyalshing district, West Sikkim — a Nyingma monastery founded in 1641.
A genuine, continuously observed monastic tradition rather than a tourism creation, and one of the few Buddhist oracle rituals in India that a visitor can actually attend.
The Zakir Hussain Rose Garden, Sector 16, Chandigarh — all thirty acres of it.
A modern municipal event, not an inherited tradition — at most 58 years old and run by the Municipal Corporation. Its interest is as the clearest expression of a city that was planned around its gardens.
The historic courtyards of the Leh Palace, Diskit Monastery in the Nubra Valley, and Likir Monastery in Ladakh.
The scapegoat festival featuring sacred monastic thread traps and mask dances to banish evil forces from the old year.
Goa
A vibrant Portuguese-origin street carnival with float parades led by 'King Momo', music, dancing, and the red-and-black dance, unique to Goa.
The Kala Ghoda Heritage Precinct, extending across the historic Fort neighborhood in South Mumbai, Maharashtra.
India's biggest open-air street arts festival, with visual installations, theatre, and heritage walks across the city.
Staged in the open-air courtyards adjacent to the Western Group of Temples in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh.
A week of Indian classical dance staged against the floodlit medieval temples of Khajuraho, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Held at the Grewal Sports Stadium in Kila Raipur village, near Ludhiana, Punjab.
A famous rural sports carnival featuring bullock-cart races, traditional Punjabi feats of strength, and exuberant village athletics.
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At Umang Lai — sacred grove — shrines across the Imphal valley and the surrounding hills.
The oldest surviving layer of Meitei religion, older than the eighteenth-century Vaishnavite conversion, and the source of much of the vocabulary of Manipuri classical dance.
Celebrated in the historic towns of Barsana and Nandgaon within the Braj region of Uttar Pradesh.
A famous form of Holi in which the women of Barsana playfully beat the men of Nandgaon with sticks (lathis), re-enacting the Krishna-Radha legends.
Celebrated across Himalayan Buddhist regions, particularly in Ladakh, Dharamshala and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh), Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh), and Sikkim.
The New Year of the Tibetan Buddhist communities of Ladakh, Sikkim and Himachal — celebrated with monastery rituals, family feasts, and masked dances.
Celebrated across all Naga-inhabited districts of Manipur, with the main, grand rotating venue hosted in towns like Ukhrul, Senapati, Tamenglong, or Chandel.
The collective seed-sowing festival of all the Naga tribes in Manipur, marked by the lighting of a traditional flame.
Celebrated across India, with iconic events in Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), the Isha Yoga Center (Tamil Nadu), Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh), and Mandi (Himachal Pradesh).
A night dedicated to Lord Shiva, observed with fasting, all-night vigils, chanting and abhishekam at Shiva temples — most intensely at the twelve Jyotirlingas.
Gangeshwar Mahadev, a cave shrine among tidal rocks on the Arabian Sea shore at Fudam village, about 3 km from Diu town.
Diu's most important Hindu site and its most-visited religious place — the counterweight to St Paul's on the same small island.
The Puducherry seafront — chiefly the beach at Vaithikuppam at the north end of the promenade, and the beach at Veerampattinam to the south.
Masi Magam is kept across the Tamil world, but Puducherry's form is distinct because it is a sea festival — the deities are bathed in open surf rather than in a temple tank.
Papum Pare, Kurung Kumey, Kra Daadi, and East Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh, with massive public grounds in Nirjuli and Itanagar.
A grand community gathering of the Nyishi people to invoke divine ancestors for protection against crop pests and diseases.
Kohima district and Dimapur district, prominent across ancestral Angami villages like Touphema, Khonoma, and Kisama in Nagaland.
The foremost purification festival of the Angami Naga tribe, cleansing body and soul of the past year's sins.
Surajkund Mela Ground, Faridabad district, Haryana, beside the tenth-century Surajkund reservoir.
A modern government tourism event rather than an inherited tradition, run by Haryana Tourism with the Union Ministry — and the largest crafts fair of its kind in the country.
Shilpgram, Taj Mahal na Eastern Gate pase, Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
A grand 10-day state carnival celebrating India's finest handlooms, crafts, culinary arts, and classical music near the Taj Mahal.
Palani Murugan Temple, Vadapalani, and across major Murugan shrines in Tamil Nadu.
Honours Lord Murugan receiving his divine spear, with intense public acts of penance and the carrying of wooden kavadis.
Yanam, the Puducherry enclave on the Godavari delta in coastal Andhra Pradesh, roughly 800 km from Puducherry town.
Yanam is the Telugu-speaking piece of Puducherry, and this festival is the clearest evidence that the union territory is not culturally one thing. Nothing about it resembles Puducherry town.
The Unakoti rock-cut site in Unakoti district, north Tripura, about 8 km east of Kailashahar.
A genuine long-standing pilgrimage rather than a manufactured event, though the mela around it is organised and amplified by the state.
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
A women-only festival at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple in Kerala, recognised for gathering millions of women who cook ritual Pongala offerings — a Guinness record event.
