India's Festival Calendar
A Month-by-Month Guide

India does not really have an off-season for celebration. Somewhere in the country, almost every week of the year, a festival is filling a street with colour, a temple with lamps or a river with lights. Time your trip to the right one and you'll see an India that no ordinary itinerary reaches — a country at its most joyful, devout and alive.

This is our month-by-month guide to the festivals worth planning a journey around. Most follow the lunar calendar, so exact dates shift each year — we confirm them when we build your trip, and you can always check the live festival calendar. Here's the shape of the year, and where to be for each.

Which temple, which month? The temple festival calendar takes the same year and organises it the other way round — by the temple hosting each festival, with the booking lead time each one needs.

The Festival Year, Month by Month

January — harvest & kites

The year opens with harvest festivals. Pongal brings four days of thanksgiving to the Tamil south — see our Pongal in Tamil Nadu journey and the Madurai guide. On the same days, Makar Sankranti / Uttarayan fills the skies of Gujarat with kites, best over the rooftops of Ahmedabad. Out in the Thar, the Bikaner Camel Festival parades decorated camels — read the Bikaner guide — while the Modhera Dance Festival lights up the Sun Temple at Patan & Modhera.

February — desert festivals & Shivaratri

The Jaisalmer Desert Festival turns the golden city into three days of music, turbans and camel races — see our Desert Festival journey and the Jaisalmer guide. Maha Shivaratri fills the great Shiva temples — the first Jyotirlinga at Somnath, the ghats of Varanasi, and Gokarna's temple town. Goa's pre-Lent Carnival brings a splash of Latin colour.

March — Holi, the festival of colour

India's most exuberant festival. Holi drenches the country in coloured powder, and nowhere celebrates it like Mathura and Vrindavan, Krishna's homeland, where it runs for over a week — see our Holi in Mathura & Vrindavan journey. Read the story behind it in The History of Holi and how to experience it in our complete Holi guide. The palace cities of Udaipur and Jaipur hold their own elegant royal Holis.

April — new-year festivals

Mid-April brings a cluster of regional new years. Baisakhi is the great Sikh harvest festival of Punjab, at its most stirring at the Golden Temple — see the Amritsar guide. Bohag Bihu ushers in the Assamese new year with dance and feasting — our Bohag Bihu journey takes you into the North-East. Kerala marks Vishu, and the towering temple festival of Thrissur Pooram (April–May) gathers caparisoned elephants for one of the south's greatest spectacles — see the Thrissur Pooram journey.

May–June — Buddhist festivals & the mountains

As the plains heat up, the celebrations move to the hills. Buddha Purnima marks the Buddha's birth. In high Ladakh, the masked Hemis Festival fills a monastery courtyard with cham dances (June–July) — see our Hemis Festival journey and the Leh guide, timed to the Himalayan summer.

July–August — Onam & the monsoon feasts

Onam, Kerala's ten-day harvest festival, brings flower carpets, the 26-dish sadya feast and the thunder of the snake-boat races — see our Onam in Kerala journey and the Kochi and Alleppey guides. Janmashtami celebrates Krishna's birth across the country, with special fervour at Dwarka, and Independence Day falls on the 15th of August.

September — Ganesh Chaturthi

Ganesh Chaturthi grips Mumbai for eleven days, ending with vast, joyous processions carrying idols of the elephant god to the sea — see our Ganesh Chaturthi in Mumbai journey and the Mumbai guide. In the Kumaon hills, the Nanda Devi Mela draws pilgrims to Almora and Nainital.

October — the great festival month

If you can travel only once for a festival, come in October. Durga Puja transforms Kolkata into a week-long open-air gallery of extraordinary pandals — the festival we film and know best. Read our Durga Puja 2027Durga Puja for International TravellersDurga Puja 2027 Countdown packages, the full Durga Puja 2026 guide, our essay on Durga Puja in Kolkata, and the history of the festival. The same weeks bring Dussehra across the north and the magnificent Mysuru Dasara — see our Mysuru Dasara journey and the Mysuru guide — and Navratri, nine nights of garba dancing, at its most electric in Gujarat (our Navratri Garba journey).

November — Diwali & the Pushkar Camel Fair

Diwali, the festival of lights, lands in late October or November — homes, temples and whole cities glowing with lamps. Read our complete Diwali guide and travel it on our Diwali in Jaipur & Varanasi journey, taking in the lamplit ghats of Varanasi and the Dev Deepawali that follows. The same month, the Pushkar Camel Fair fills the Rajasthan dunes with fifty thousand camels and traders — see the Pushkar Camel Fair journey, our complete fair guide, and the Pushkar guide. Out west, the Rann Utsav opens on the white salt desert of Kutch — our Rann of Kutch journey.

December — Hornbill, Christmas & the white desert

The year closes in the hills and on the coast. The Hornbill Festival gathers Nagaland's tribes for a week of dance, music and colour — see our Hornbill Festival journey and the North-East guide. Christmas is wonderfully atmospheric in old Portuguese Goa — our Christmas in Goa journey — and in Kolkata's Park Street. The Rann Utsav is in full swing under the winter full moons, and the Mamallapuram Dance Festival plays out against the shore temples of Mahabalipuram.

The Calendar at a Glance

To catch India in festival is to catch it with its guard down and its heart open — a week of lamps on the Ganga, a street of painted goddesses, a desert full of camels. Come for one, and it becomes the story you tell first.

Frequently Asked Questions