Hindu Calendar

There is no single "Hindu calendar." What's usually meant by the term is the shared Panchang framework — Tithi (lunar day), Nakshatra (lunar mansion), Yoga, Karana, and Vara (weekday) — that underlies calendars across the Indian subcontinent. But how that framework is applied — whether months are lunar or solar, when the new year falls, what the months are called — varies by region, sometimes dramatically.

This page is a directory: the shared system first, then every major regional variant, each with its own dedicated guide.

Why they differ at all

Most of these traditions grew up somewhat independently across a subcontinent with limited historical communication between regions, each refining the same underlying Vedic astronomical observations to fit local agricultural cycles and administrative needs. Solar-calendar regions (the South and East) tend to have more fixed, predictable festival dates; lunisolar-calendar regions (much of the North, Centre and West) see festival dates shift within a roughly month-wide window from year to year, corrected periodically by an inserted leap month. Both approaches trace back to the same classical Panchang mathematics.

Want the North Indian lunisolar version in full, for this year specifically? See Hindu Calendar 2026, Hindu Calendar Today for a live snapshot, or Hindu Calendar Months for all 12 months explained.