Ugadi

Date in 2026

Friday, 20 March 2026

Masa

Chaitra

Tithi

Shukla Padyami

Duration

1 day

Observed in

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka

Significance

Ugadi is yuga-adi, the beginning of an age, and it opens the Telugu and Kannada new year. The tradition holds that Brahma began creation on this day, which is why it is treated as the start of a cycle rather than merely the start of a count. It falls at a well-chosen moment: the first day of Chaitra, at the turn from winter into Vasanta, when the mango is in flower and the neem is coming into leaf — both of which appear on the plate.

What distinguishes Ugadi from most new-year observances is that it refuses to be simply celebratory. Its central preparation, Ugadi pachadi, contains six tastes in one dish, and each stands for something the year will contain: jaggery for sweetness, neem flowers for bitterness, raw mango for surprise, tamarind for difficulty, chilli for anger, salt for fear. It is eaten first, before anything else, and the point is not subtle. The year will hold all six. Taking them together, at the start, is the observance.

The other half of the day is the Panchanga Sravanam — the public reading of the coming year's panchangam. A purohit reads out the year's name in the sixty-year samvatsara cycle, the rainfall forecast, the eclipse dates, and the general prospects for each rashi. It is a civic occasion as much as a religious one, and it is the origin of the panchangam as a published, annual object.

When it falls, and why

Ugadi falls on the first tithi — shukla paksha padyami — of Chaitra, the first lunar month, in the amanta reckoning used across the Telugu and Kannada country. That places it in late March or early April.

The date moves against the Gregorian calendar because the lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar one, corrected by an intercalary month roughly every three years. Where a padyami spans two sunrises the day carrying it at sunrise takes the festival. Maharashtra keeps the same day as Gudi Padwa, and the Sindhi Cheti Chand falls on it too; the Tamil and Malayalam new years are solar rather than lunar and fall a fortnight or so later, in mid-April.

Pooja vidhanam, step by step

1. 1

   Clean the house and hang the toran

   Clean the house the previous day and decorate the threshold with a rangoli and a toran of fresh mango leaves. The mango leaves are specific to the day and are not substituted.

2. 2

   Take the abhyanga snanam

   An oil bath before sunrise, with sesame oil applied first. Wear new clothes afterwards — this is one of the days on which new clothes are customary for everyone in the house.

3. 3

   Prepare the Ugadi pachadi

   Combine the six tastes: jaggery, neem flowers, raw mango, tamarind, green chilli or pepper, and salt. Proportions vary by household and the variation is itself traditional.

4. 4

   Offer at the puja space

   Light a lamp, offer the pachadi along with the day's other preparations, and worship the family deity. Bobbatlu or puran poli is the usual sweet.

5. 5

   Eat the pachadi first

   Everyone in the house takes the pachadi before anything else is eaten, and the significance of the six tastes is usually said aloud for the children.

6. 6

   Hear the Panchanga Sravanam

   Attend the reading at the temple, or read the new year's panchangam at home: the samvatsara name, the presiding lords of the year, the eclipses, and the rashi phalalu.

7. 7

   Begin something

   Ugadi is regarded as an auspicious day requiring no further muhurta, so new ventures, purchases and undertakings are traditionally begun on it.

Samagri checklist

What to gather beforehand. Where something is not available, offer what you have — the intention carries.

• Fresh mango leaves for the toran
• Neem flowers and tender neem leaves
• Raw mango, tamarind, jaggery, green chilli, salt
• Sesame oil for the abhyanga snanam
• New clothes for the household
• Rangoli colours or rice flour
• Ghee lamp, wicks, camphor, incense
• Turmeric, kumkum, akshata, flowers
• Ingredients for bobbatlu or puran poli
• The new year's panchangam

The vrat katha

Ugadi has no single vrat katha in the way a fasting observance does, because it is not a fast. What it carries instead is a cosmological account: that Brahma began the work of creation on the first day of Chaitra, and that the count of ages runs from it.

The story most often told alongside it is of the samvatsara cycle itself — sixty named years from Prabhava to Kshaya, derived from five circuits of Jupiter through the zodiac. An elder naming the year of their birth names a word rather than a number, and the same name returns once in a long lifetime. The Panchanga Sravanam is where that name is announced.

The pachadi's own teaching is the day's real text. The six tastes are taken together and in one mouthful because the year does not offer them in sequence or by arrangement, and the practice of accepting all six at the outset — rather than asking for the sweet alone — is the whole of what the festival has to say.

How it differs by region

• In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana the day is Ugadi, the pachadi carries six tastes, and bobbatlu is the sweet. The Panchanga Sravanam at the village or temple is a substantial public event.
• In Karnataka it is also Ugadi, and the preparation is bevu-bella — neem and jaggery — often taken as the two tastes rather than six, with holige as the sweet.
• In Maharashtra the same day is Gudi Padwa, marked by raising the gudi: a bamboo pole with a bright cloth, neem leaves, a garland and an inverted copper pot, set at the doorway or window.
• For the Sindhi community it is Cheti Chand, the birth of Jhulelal, kept with a procession.
• Tamil Puthandu and Malayalam Vishu are solar new years, falling around 14 April when the sun enters Mesha, and are not the same day as Ugadi.

Common questions

Slokas