Holi & Holika Dahan 2027: Date, Muhurat & Significance

Last updated: September 2026 · By Acharya Alok Pandit, Divine Hindu, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011 · ~26 min read

Holi is really two festivals wearing one name. The first is a fire kept at night — a pyre built over weeks in a lane or a courtyard, lit after sunset, walked around with a thread in the hand. The second is what happens when the sun comes up: gulal, water, gujiya, thandai, and the one morning of the year on which the ordinary rules about who may throw what at whom are formally suspended. Getting the two days straight is most of what people are searching for, so we have led with that.

2027 is a year in which the panchangs do not fully agree, and this guide deals with that head-on. The majority reading — Drik Panchang for New Delhi, the Braj temple listings at Mathura and Vrindavan, and most published Indian calendars — puts Holika Dahan on Sunday, 21 March 2027 and Rangwali Holi on Monday, 22 March 2027. A minority of calendars, including some very widely read ones, move the pair to 22 and 23 March. The disagreement is not carelessness on anybody's part. It comes from a genuinely awkward alignment of tithi, sunset and Bhadra, and once you see the mechanism the whole thing becomes clear in about two minutes.

After the dates we set out what the tithi actually does in 2027 and what we are prepared to print to the minute; the legends behind the fire — Prahlad and Holika, Kamadeva and Rati, Dhundhi, and Radha and Krishna; the Holi ka danda and Holashtak; the puja vidhi; what belongs on the pyre and what must never go on it; the difference between the purnimanta and amanta calendars, which is why the same full moon carries two different month names; the regional forms from Barsana to Manipur; and the practical business of choosing colours that will come off your skin afterwards.

Holi and Holika Dahan 2027: dates at a glance

Holika Dahan is kept on the evening of Phalguna Purnima, and Rangwali Holi follows the next day. Here are the fixed points of the 2027 season, each of them cross-checked against two independent India-localised panchangs.

Two of these deserve a note. Holashtak in 2027 begins on Tuesday, 16 March and runs to the fire on the 21st — that is a verified date rather than the vague "eight days before" you will often see. And Rang Panchami on Saturday, 27 March 2027 falls conveniently on a weekend, which matters if your family keeps the Maharashtrian or Konkani form of the festival rather than the North Indian one.

The tithi in 2027: what we will print, and what we will not

A tithi is not a clock time. It is the angular distance between the moon and the sun, and it opens and closes when that angle crosses a threshold — which can happen at any hour of the day or night. Panchang publishers compute the same astronomy but round, localise and label it slightly differently, and in a year like 2027 those small differences decide the calendar date of a festival. So here is exactly what we are willing to state, and why.

The one figure two sources agree on to the minute

Phalguna Purnima ends at 04:13 PM on Monday, 22 March 2027 for New Delhi. Drik Panchang and Prokerala both print that figure verbatim, to the minute, independently of one another. It is the single most load-bearing number on this page, because everything about the 21 versus 22 March question turns on the fact that the full moon is gone from the sky-reckoning well before sunset on the Monday.

The figures we have deliberately hedged

Purnima begins shortly after 6:20 pm on Sunday, 21 March 2027, with publishers a minute apart — one gives 06:21 PM and the other 06:22 PM for New Delhi. An earlier version of this page printed "about 06:21 PM". We have softened that to "shortly after 6:20 pm" because a one-minute spread between two careful publishers is a signal, not noise: it tells you the threshold crossing is being rounded differently, and a reader who plans a ritual to the minute off a single source is trusting a precision that does not exist.

Sunset in New Delhi on 21 March 2027 is about 6:33 pm. Two panchangs give that figure; a third astronomical source puts it two minutes later. "About 6:33 pm" is as precise as we are prepared to be, and it is precise enough for the argument that follows.

The figures we will not print at all

We have not printed a Holika Dahan muhurat window anywhere on this page, and the reason is worth stating plainly. We checked four published windows for the same evening: Drik Panchang for New Delhi, Prokerala for New Delhi, the Mathura listing, and the Govardhan listing. No two of them agree. Some of that spread is genuine geography — Mathura and Delhi have different sunsets — but not all of it, and a reader in Bengaluru or Pune reading a Delhi window would be wrong on both counts. A muhurat that is a few minutes out is not a rounding error; it is the whole point of a muhurat. Take yours from the panchang your household follows, or from the priest at your temple.

We have likewise printed no Bhadra clock times. The two panchangs we checked place the start and end of Bhadra's Punchha and Mukha divisions two to three minutes apart from each other. Two or three minutes is nothing in astronomy and everything in a muhurat, so we have described where Bhadra falls without pretending to know when.

One further caution. Every figure above is computed for New Delhi. A tithi maps to slightly different local times — and occasionally to a different calendar date altogether — depending on your city's sunrise and sunset. If you are in Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata or Mumbai, the Purnima end time will not be 04:13 PM for you. The full-moon and new-moon guide explains how that localisation works in more detail.

Why some panchangs say Holi 2027 is on 23 March

If you have searched for this date and found two answers, you are not confusing yourself. The panchangs genuinely disagree in 2027, and the disagreement has a clean, describable cause. It is one of the more instructive calendar puzzles of the decade, and understanding it will tell you immediately which answer applies to you.

The rule that decides the date

Holika Dahan has one governing condition: the Purnima tithi must be running during pradosh kaal, the period just after sunset. The fire is a pradosh rite on a full-moon night, and if the full moon is not present in that window, the day is not a candidate. Layered on top of that is a second, softer condition: it is traditionally held that the pyre should not be lit while Bhadra — also called the Vishti karana — is running, Bhadra being regarded in tradition as an inauspicious window for auspicious acts. In most years the second condition is a minor scheduling constraint. Bhadra covers part of the evening, the muhurat is simply set after it lifts, and nobody notices.

What actually happens in 2027

Now apply the rule to the two candidate evenings, using the figures above.

Sunday, 21 March. Purnima begins shortly after 6:20 pm. Delhi sunset is about 6:33 pm. The tithi therefore opens roughly a dozen minutes before the sun goes down, which means Purnima is present in pradosh on the Sunday evening. It is a narrow entry — a matter of minutes — but it is a real one. The 21st qualifies.

Monday, 22 March. Purnima has already ended at 04:13 PM. Sunset is more than two hours later. There is therefore no Purnima at all in the pradosh of Monday evening — not a short window, not a marginal one, none. On the primary rule, the Monday does not qualify. This is the fact that most discussions of the 2027 date leave out, and it is decisive.

So on the governing condition, 21 March is the only evening in 2027 on which Holika Dahan can be performed in pradosh at all. Everything else is about how a tradition handles the Bhadra overlay on that one qualifying evening.

How Bhadra pushes the fire past midnight — and how a calendar loses a day

In 2027 Bhadra begins with the Purnima tithi itself on the evening of 21 March and runs on through the night. Drik Panchang's daily panchang is the only source we found that publishes the full span, and it puts the release a little after five on the morning of 22 March; no other publisher we checked prints the same figure, so treat that as Drik's reckoning rather than as settled fact. Either way, the practical consequence is the same: Bhadra covers the whole of pradosh on the Sunday evening and does not lift until close to dawn.

Traditions resolve that squeeze in one of two ways. Many authorities permit the dahan during Bhadra Punchha, the tail of the Bhadra period, when Bhadra is held to be least obstructive — this is the classical escape valve for exactly this situation, and it keeps the fire on the Sunday night. Others prefer to wait for Bhadra to release altogether, which pushes the observance into what Drik Panchang lists as an alternate muhurta after Hindu midnight. We are not printing times for that alternate, because only one publisher gives it, but its existence is the key to the entire disagreement.

Here is why. That deferred window falls, on a wall calendar, on the Gregorian morning of 22 March. But in Hindu reckoning it is still the night of Sunday the 21st, because the Hindu day runs from sunrise to the next sunrise, not from midnight to midnight. A fire lit at four in the morning on the 22nd is, in panchang terms, part of Sunday. A human priest knows this without thinking about it. An automated calendar that keys its listing off the Gregorian date stamp of the muhurat does not — it sees a muhurat dated 22 March, prints Holika Dahan on 22 March, and then, because Holi is by definition the day after the dahan, rolls Rangwali Holi forward to Tuesday 23 March. One convention mismatch, propagated twice.

The internal inconsistency worth noticing

There is a check anyone can run for themselves. Prokerala's own Holika Dahan page prints the Purnima tithi ending at 04:13 PM on 22 March, and then, one line below, publishes a Holika Dahan muhurat window for the evening of 22 March — a window that lies entirely outside the tithi it has just printed. The two statements cannot both be right, because a Purnima rite cannot be performed after Purnima has ended. That is not a swipe at Prokerala, which is a careful and useful publisher on ordinary days; it is what an edge case does to an automated pipeline. It is also the clearest possible demonstration that the 22/23 March listing is an artefact of date-stamping rather than a considered alternative reading of the shastra.

What you should actually do

Plan for Sunday 21 and Monday 22 March 2027. That is the reading with the stronger reasoning behind it, it is what the overwhelming majority of published calendars carry, and it is what your neighbourhood, your relatives and your local temple will almost certainly keep. If your lane is building a pyre, it will be lit on the Sunday night.

But hold that conclusion with an open hand. Panchang traditions are living things, and regional almanacs sometimes revise their listings as a date approaches. If the panchang your family has used for three generations says something different, follow your family — the continuity of a household observance is worth more than being right against a website. Check again a few weeks before March 2027, especially before you book travel or apply for leave, and if the temple you attend publishes its own programme, that is the timing to keep. Neither reading is dishonest; they are answering the same question under different conventions, and only one of them has a good reason.

Purnimanta and amanta: why the same full moon has two month names

Almost every confusion about Hindu festival dates that is not about tithi is about this, and it is rarely explained properly. There are two lunar calendars in use in India. They agree perfectly about the sky. They disagree about where to draw the line between one month and the next.

In the purnimanta system, followed across North and much of central India — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal and Uttarakhand — a lunar month ends at the full moon. In the amanta system, followed in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, a lunar month ends at the new moon. That single difference shifts the month label by a fortnight for every dark fortnight of the year, while leaving every actual date untouched.

Two things follow, and both of them are things people ask about every year.

Why the North says Holi ends the year and the South does not

Because Phalguna Purnima is the closing day of the purnimanta month, and Phalguna is the closing month of the lunar year, Holi in North India genuinely is the last festival of the old year. That is not poetry; it is the calendar. The fire on Phalguna Purnima is the last rite of one year and the colour on the following morning is the first play of the transition — which is a large part of why the burning of what should not be carried forward reads so naturally in the northern telling.

In the amanta South, the same full moon lands mid-month. Phalguna still has a dark fortnight to run, the year does not turn for another two weeks, and Holi is a spring festival rather than a year-ending one. This is one reason the southern forms of the festival are so different in tone — the observance is not carrying the weight of a year's close.

The Maha Shivratri example that makes it obvious

The cleanest demonstration is a festival everyone knows. Maha Shivratri falls on Saturday, 6 March 2027 — on the same day in both systems. But in the North it is described as Phalguna Krishna Chaturdashi and in the South as Magha Krishna Chaturdashi. Same night, same tithi, same moon, two month names, because the dark fortnight that contains it belongs to the end of Magha in one accounting and to the start of Phalguna in the other.

So if you have ever seen Maha Shivratri described as a Magha festival by one source and a Phalguna festival by another and assumed one of them was wrong, neither was. Our Maha Shivratri 2027 guide sets out the vrat vidhi for the night in full.

Does any of this change the Holi date?

No — and this is the reassuring part. Purnimanta and amanta do not move Holi. Holika Dahan is fixed to Phalguna Purnima by the moon, and the moon is indifferent to bookkeeping. Both systems will point at the same full moon in March 2027 and both will keep the fire on the same evening. What differs is only the label you would use to describe the date in a formal sankalpa. The date itself is one date.

The two systems also agree about the new year. Chaitra Shukla Pratipada falls on Wednesday, 7 April 2027 in both reckonings, because a shukla-paksha first tithi sits at the same point in the month either way — it is only the dark fortnights that shift labels. That day begins Vikram Samvat 2084 and Shaka Samvat 1949, and it is kept as Ugadi in Karnataka, Andhra and Telangana, as Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra, as Cheti Chand among Sindhis and as the Ghatasthapana of Chaitra Navratri across the North. Our guide to Gudi Padwa and Ugadi covers the gudi, the bevu-bella and the panchanga shravanam that go with it.

Two calendar details specific to 2027

First, there is no adhik maas in 2027. The intercalary month that keeps the lunar and solar years in step last appeared as Adhika Jyeshtha in May and June 2026, and it will not recur in 2027. That means the 2027 festival sequence runs at its normal spacing, with no thirteenth month to displace anything — a useful thing to know if you are planning observances a year ahead.

Second, the Chaitra shukla paksha of 2027 contains a tithi kshaya, a skipped tithi. Kamada Ekadashi and Vamana Dwadashi both fall on Saturday, 17 April 2027, because a tithi begins and ends within a single sunrise-to-sunrise day and is therefore never current at a sunrise. That compresses the fortnight by a day, which is precisely why Chaitra Purnima and Hanuman Jayanti land on Tuesday 20 April 2027 rather than the 21st. If you have ever wondered why a festival appears to move by a day against the previous year's spacing, a tithi kshaya is usually the answer. The Ekadashi fasting guide explains how households handle a doubled or skipped fasting day.

Holika Dahan and Rangwali Holi are two different days

It is worth saying plainly, because a great deal of the confusion around Holi comes from treating it as a single event. Holika Dahan — also called Chhoti Holi, Holika Deepak or Kama Dahan — is an evening fire ritual on the full-moon night. It is quiet, devotional and family-centred: a pyre, a puja, a parikrama, an offering of new grain, and a crowd of neighbours standing in the smoke. Rangwali Holi — Dhulandi, Dhuleti, Dhulivandan, Phaguwa — is the next morning, and it is the loud one: colour, water, sweets, music and the deliberate levelling of hierarchy.

The two are joined by more than sequence. The fire is understood in tradition as the burning away of what should not be carried into the new season, and the morning that follows is understood as what is left once that has gone. Households that keep only one of the two almost always keep the dahan; the colour can be sat out, the fire generally is not.

The significance of Holika Dahan: Prahlad and Holika

The legend behind the Holika Dahan date comes from the story of Prahlad, the devoted son of the demon king Hiranyakashipu. When Prahlad refused to stop worshipping Lord Vishnu, his aunt Holika — who held a boon of immunity to fire — sat with him in a blazing pyre to kill him. By divine grace Holika was burnt to ashes while the devout Prahlad emerged unharmed. Holika Dahan is therefore traditionally understood as the burning away of ego, arrogance and ill-will, and as a statement about the steadiness of devotion (bhakti) rather than about the power of fire.

Lighting the Holika bonfire is, in that reading, a symbolic act rather than a transactional one. Families gather at the pyre in the same spirit in which they light a lamp at dusk: as a marking of something, not as a mechanism. If you keep a home mandir, our guide to the significance of the diya covers the older meaning of the lit flame at the turn of a season.

Why Holika's boon failed

The detail most retellings skip is the condition attached to the gift. Holika's boon — variously described as a cloak or a shawl that would not burn — is traditionally said to have been given for her own protection alone, and to hold only while she was not using it to harm another. Entering the fire with a child in her lap in order to kill him voided it. In the older telling the cloak lifts from her shoulders of its own accord and settles over Prahlad.

Devotees read the episode less as a story about fire than as a story about intent. A protection sought for oneself is one thing; the same protection turned into a weapon is another, and the tradition holds that it does not survive the turning. That reading is what people are gesturing at when they say the bonfire burns ego rather than a person, and it is why the fire is not treated as a punishment scene at all — nobody at a Holika pyre is celebrating a death.

Kamadeva, Rati and the fire of spring

A second legend attaches to the same night and is the dominant one across much of South India. Kamadeva, the god of desire, was asked by the devas to rouse Lord Shiva from his deep meditation so that the world could be saved through his union with Parvati. Kamadeva loosed his flower-arrow, Shiva woke, and in his anger opened his third eye and reduced Kamadeva to ash. Rati, Kamadeva's wife, is described as keeping a forty-day mourning and then pleading for him, and Shiva is said to have restored him — in some tellings in bodily form, in others as a presence without a body, felt rather than seen.

In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and parts of Karnataka the festival is kept for exactly this: the effigy burnt on the night is Kamadeva's, and the day is called Kaman Pandigai, Kama Dahanam or Kamuni Punnami. Songs of Rati's lament are sung around the fire and sandalwood paste is offered, traditionally said to cool the burning. It is the same bonfire on the same full moon, read through a different story, and it is one of the reasons the festival looks so unlike itself as you travel south.

The Dhundhi legend and the licence to be rowdy

The third legend explains a part of Holi that otherwise makes no sense: why the tradition positively encourages noise, teasing and mild abuse on a religious festival. In the kingdom of Raghu, an ogress named Dhundhi — sometimes Dhundha or Dhaundha — is said to have preyed on children. She had accumulated boons that made her nearly impossible to kill by god, man, weapon, heat or cold, but the boons carried one gap: she remained vulnerable to the noise, laughter and mockery of young boys. On the advice of the priests the village children were sent out on Phalguna Purnima with dry wood, fire, drums and every rude word they knew, and Dhundhi is said to have been driven out of the kingdom for good.

That is where the shouting, the drum-beating and the affectionate abuse of Holi are traditionally traced from, and why children are given a free hand on this one day of the year. It is also why in many North Indian villages the fire is lit not by the head of the household but by the children of the lane, and why the songs sung around a Holika pyre are so much cheekier than the ones sung at any other festival.

Radha, Krishna and the colours themselves

The colours have their own origin. The child Krishna, dark-skinned from Putana's poison, is said to have complained to Yashoda that Radha was fair and he was not; she told him, half in jest, to go and colour Radha's face whatever shade he liked. He did, and the whole of Braj has been doing it ever since. This is the story that turns Holi from a fire ritual into a festival of play, and it is why the most famous Holi in India is still the one kept at Mathura, Vrindavan, Barsana and Nandgaon.

Families who keep a home mandir often bring out the Krishna or Radha-Krishna murti for the morning and offer the first gulal at his feet before anyone touches anyone else. In many houses the deity is coloured first, the elders second, and everyone else afterwards — an order that turns a free-for-all into a rite without taking any of the fun out of it.

Holi ka danda: the pole that starts the season

Long before the pyre is lit, a pole goes into the ground. The Holi ka danda — also called the khunta or simply the danda — is a wooden staff, traditionally of castor (erand) or another soft wood, planted upright at the spot where the Holika bonfire will be built.

It is traditionally planted on Vasant Panchami, which in 2027 falls on Thursday, 11 February 2027 — roughly forty days before Holika Dahan. From that day onwards the lane adds to it: dry wood, twigs, fallen branches, cow-dung cakes, whatever will burn. By the night of the dahan the danda is buried inside a pyre that the whole neighbourhood has built without anyone formally organising it, which is one of the quiet pleasures of the festival. In Braj the planting of the danda is treated as the official opening of the Holi season, which is why Mathura and Vrindavan effectively celebrate Holi for forty days rather than two.

A few local variations are worth knowing. In some communities the danda goes in at the start of Holashtak instead, eight days before. In others two poles are planted — one representing Holika and one Prahlad — and the Prahlad pole is drawn out and set aside before the fire is lit, so that the devotee is not burnt a second time; in a few places that pole is kept and reused the following year. If you want to read more about the day the pole goes in, see our guide to Vasant Panchami.

Holashtak 2027: the eight days of restraint

Holashtak is the eight-day period that ends with Holika Dahan, running from Phalguna Shukla Ashtami to Phalguna Purnima. In 2027 it begins on Tuesday, 16 March and closes with the fire on Sunday, 21 March. That start date is confirmed by two independent sources; it is one of the few Holashtak dates you will find that is not simply back-counted from the festival.

Across much of North India — Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan especially — Holashtak is traditionally treated as a pause on shubh karya, auspicious undertakings. What families commonly set aside during these eight days:

• Marriages, engagements and the fixing of wedding dates
• Griha pravesh and moving into a new home
• Mundan, namkaran and other samskaras
• Opening a new shop or business, and registering property
• Buying a vehicle, or laying a foundation stone

What is not paused: daily puja, japa, charity, fasting, the reading of scripture and any observance of devotion. These are traditionally regarded as especially worth keeping in this window rather than as restricted. Note also that Holashtak is a regional custom rather than a universal one — in South India it is generally not observed at all, and in many families it amounts to nothing stricter than not signing a property deed that week.

Once the Holika fire has been lit the restriction is traditionally considered lifted, and the days after Holi are regarded in many households as a good moment to begin what had been set aside: a new sadhana, a fresh mala, a stalled plan picked up again. As with any devotional observance, what is described here reflects traditional belief and regional custom rather than any assured outcome, and a family that keeps none of it is not doing Holi wrong.

Holika Dahan puja vidhi

The Holika Dahan puja is performed in the evening, before the pyre is lit, during pradosh kaal. In most neighbourhoods it is a collective rite rather than a household one — the puja is done at the pyre by whoever the lane has appointed, and families make their own offerings around it.

A few points families pass on and websites rarely mention. Keep water and sand at hand before the fire is lit, not after. Do not light in a high wind, and do not build against a wall, a parked vehicle, a transformer or a tree. If the site is shared, wait for whoever the lane has appointed — in most neighbourhoods the first flame is a single act, not several. And if you have small children with you, keep them upwind; smoke from a large pyre is genuinely unpleasant at knee height.

What goes into the Holika pyre — and what must never

What is traditionally done, and what is traditionally avoided

Beyond the puja itself there is a body of custom around Holi that families pass on without writing down. None of it is compulsory, all of it is regional, and it is worth knowing simply because it makes the two days make more sense.

In the eight days before

Holashtak restraint is the main one, and it is best understood as a pause rather than a prohibition. New ventures, weddings, house-moves and property registrations are commonly deferred past the fire; devotional practice is not. Many households use the week to do the unglamorous work instead — cleaning the courtyard, clearing the lane where the pyre will stand, sorting out what is genuinely dry wood and what is not, and settling small debts and disagreements before the festival rather than during it. Reconciliation before Holi is itself a custom, and a better one than most.

At the fire

Go with the family rather than alone if you can; the dahan is a collective rite and standing in the crowd is part of it. Wear cotton, not synthetic — a nylon dupatta near an open fire is a bad idea, and this is a night on which several avoidable injuries occur every year in India. Keep a safe distance once the pyre catches, and keep it well clear of children. Do not throw anything into the fire that is not an offering, and do not use accelerants; the pyre is lit with camphor and ghee, not with kerosene.

The ash is treated with respect. Many families collect a little of it the next morning, once it has fully cooled, and some apply a mark of it on the forehead. It is customarily regarded as auspicious, and taking it is a mark of having been present at the fire rather than a claim about what the ash does. Do not gather ash from a pyre that had rubbish or plastic in it, and do not disturb a pyre that is still hot.

On the morning of colour

The oldest rule of Rangwali Holi is the order of play: colour is offered first at the feet of elders as a mark of respect, and only then does the free-for-all begin. In many households the deity in the home mandir is coloured before any person. Bura na mano, Holi hai is an invitation, not a licence — the accompanying etiquette, which is just as traditional, is that you ask before you colour someone, that you leave alone anyone who signals they would rather not play, and that water and rough handling stay away from small children, the elderly, and anyone who is unwell.

What is traditionally avoided on the day: colour on animals, which is a serious harm and not a custom anywhere; forcing anyone into water; and taking the levelling of hierarchy as permission for anything a person has not consented to. The suspension of rank on Holi is real and ancient, and it has always had limits. Households also traditionally avoid starting a fast or a formal vrat on the day of colour itself — the fasting day of the fortnight is Amalaki Ekadashi, on Thursday 18 March 2027, three days before the fire.

Rangwali Holi: the festival of colours

The morning after Holika Dahan, people celebrate Rangwali Holi by smearing each other with gulal, spraying coloured water, sharing gujiya, malpua, dahi-vada and thandai, and setting aside grudges. It is a festival of unity, forgiveness and renewal that welcomes the spring, and in most of India it is over by early afternoon — the second half of the day is for bathing, eating and visiting.

The social dimension is not incidental to it. Holi is the one day in the traditional calendar on which the usual gradients of age, caste, gender and rank are formally suspended. Debts are traditionally settled or forgiven, quarrels are closed, and the servant may colour the master. That inversion is old, it is deliberate, and it is a large part of why the festival has survived so vigorously. It has also always come with rules of its own, and the households that keep Holi best are usually the ones that keep those rules too.

The food is worth as much attention as the colour. Gujiya filled with khoya and dry fruit is the North Indian standard; puran poli belongs to Maharashtra; malpua and dahi-vada to Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh; thandai, made with almonds, fennel, poppy seeds and pepper, is drunk everywhere. Many families make the sweets in the days before Holi, which is one of the reasons Holashtak is not, in practice, a quiet week at all.

How Holi is celebrated across India

One full moon, and a remarkable spread of forms. The festival changes so much between regions that a traveller could attend three Holis in three states and struggle to recognise them as the same observance.

The heart of it is Braj, the country around Mathura and Vrindavan where Krishna is said to have grown up, and where Holi runs for roughly forty days from the planting of the danda rather than for two. The most famous form is the Lathmar Holi of Barsana, Radha's village. Men from Nandgaon, Krishna's village, arrive to plant a flag on the Radha Rani temple and are driven back by the women of Barsana with long sticks — lath — which the men fend off with leather shields while singing and taunting. The following day the visit is returned and the women of Nandgaon do the same to the men of Barsana. It is play, rehearsed and celebrated as such, and it draws enormous crowds. The Barsana and Nandgaon dates are set by the temples and usually fall several days before the main Holi, so confirm the local programme before travelling.

In Vrindavan, the Banke Bihari temple keeps the Phoolon wali Holi, in which the deity is worshipped with flower petals rather than colour — the doors of the sanctum open, the priests shower the gathering with petals, and it lasts a matter of minutes. The widows' Holi at the Gopinath temple, in which women who were once excluded from colour altogether now play openly, has become one of the most photographed days of the Indian year. At the Dwarkadhish temple in Mathura, Holi is kept with a great deal of water and coloured powder inside the temple courtyard itself, with the deity taken in procession afterwards. All of Braj is very crowded across this fortnight and darshan needs planning well ahead.

Bengal keeps the festival as Dol Jatra and, at Shantiniketan, as Basanta Utsav — the spring festival Rabindranath Tagore shaped there, in which students dress in yellow, sing and dance in the open, and use dry abir rather than water. It is deliberately gentle and formal, closer to a performance than a scrimmage, and it has become the template for Bengali Holi in cities well beyond Birbhum. Alongside it the older Dol observance carries images of Radha and Krishna in a decorated palanquin through the streets while devotees sing and apply abir.

Odisha keeps the same full moon as Dola Purnima, but with a significant substitution: it is the image of Jagannath rather than Krishna who is placed on the dola, the swing, and carried through the village. The swinging itself is the rite, and households along the route make offerings as the palanquin passes.

In Punjab, the day after Holi belongs to Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib, established by Guru Gobind Singh as a martial counterpart to the festival. The Nihang orders hold displays of gatka, tent-pegging, bareback horsemanship and mock battle, langar runs continuously for days, and the scale of it is closer to a fair than a temple observance. The Anandpur Sahib programme is published by the gurdwara authorities nearer the date.

Manipur keeps Yaosang, a six-day festival that folds the Vaishnava Holi into much older Meitei observance. A thatched hut is burnt on the first evening, children go from house to house collecting small donations called nakatheng, and the nights belong to Thabal Chongba, the moonlight dance in which young people join hands in a circle to drums and, these days, a band. Sports tournaments run through the days.

Goa and the Konkan keep Shigmo, or Shigmotsav, a spring festival of the Konkani community that runs over several days and is only partly about colour. Folk troupes carry temple umbrellas and painted floats through the villages, the romta mel processions move from house to house with drums and cymbals, and the colour play, called Dhulvad, is one element inside a much larger festival. Further up the same coast, in Maharashtra and the Konkan, the main day of colour is not Dhulandi at all but Rang Panchami, five days later — Saturday, 27 March 2027. Indore's Ger procession, the largest of its kind anywhere, belongs to that day, and puran poli is the dish that goes with it.

Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh call the festival Phaguwa, after the month of Phalgun, and there the singing is as much the festival as the colour. Folk forms called Holi and Jogira are sung in groups for days on end, often improvised and often at somebody's expense, accompanied by dholak and jhaal. Malpua and dahi-vada are made in quantity, and the singing frequently outlasts the colour by a week.

In the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand the festival takes a form found nowhere else: a season of classical singing that begins as early as Paush and builds for weeks. Baithki Holi is sung seated, indoors, to harmonium and tabla, in raags chosen for the time of day, and the words are devotional rather than playful. Khadi Holi is sung standing, in village courtyards, by groups in traditional dress who move from house to house dancing, and Mahila Holi is kept by the women separately. The colour, when it finally arrives, is almost an afterthought to the music.

Across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana the night belongs to Kamadeva rather than Holika, as Kaman Pandigai or Kama Dahanam, with an effigy burnt on the full moon and the songs of Rati's grief sung around it. In Kerala, the Kudumbi and Konkani communities around the Gosripuram Thirumala temple in Kochi keep Manjal Kuli, the turmeric bath, in which turmeric water replaces gulal entirely. And in Rajasthan, Udaipur's royal Holi centres on the Mewar household's procession and the lighting of the pyre in the City Palace grounds, while Jaipur's older celebrations were built around elephants; both favour dry gulal and folk dance over water.

If you are mapping the whole year rather than a single festival, our Hindu festival calendar lays out the sequence, and the Makar Sankranti 2027 guide covers the harvest festival that opens the same season two months earlier.

Natural and chemical colours: skin, hair and eyes

Traditional Holi colours were made from things that grew: the flame-orange flowers of the palash or tesu tree soaked overnight, turmeric for yellow, beetroot and hibiscus for red and pink, indigo and jacaranda for blue, mehndi and neem for green, sandalwood for a cooling paste. Most gulal sold today is a mineral base carrying a synthetic dye, and quality varies enormously between sellers.

Poor-quality colour has been reported to contain heavy metals such as lead and chromium, alkaline dyes, and abrasive fillers including mica and glass powder. Dermatologists and ophthalmologists in India issue advisories every year about contact dermatitis, scalp irritation and eye injury around Holi. None of this is a reason to avoid the festival. It is a reason to buy carefully and prepare properly.

This is general information reflecting commonly given advice and traditional practice. It is not medical advice. If you have a skin, eye or respiratory condition, or if a reaction develops after playing Holi, please consult a qualified doctor.

Holika Dahan and Holi puja samagri checklist

Treat this as a preparation list rather than a shopping list, and skip whatever you already have at home. Most of a Holika Dahan is wood, grain and neighbours; very little of it needs buying.

Choosing a particular mala, metal or article is a matter of personal faith and family tradition. Nothing described here is a medical, financial or guaranteed outcome.

The Hindu calendar around Holi 2027

Holi closes the lunar year in the purnimanta reckoning and opens the spring festival run. If you are setting the mandir up now, it helps to see the whole sequence at once. Every date below has been checked against two independent sources.

Each of these is a tithi-to-date mapping that can shift by a day with your city's sunrise, so confirm against a current panchang before you observe. If you keep Chaitra Navratri, our older guide to spring Navratri, Ghatasthapana and Ram Navami covers the nine days in sequence.

Visit us or order online

If you are putting the season together, the lamps, brass articles and puja items traditionally used through Holika Dahan and the morning of colour are gathered in the Holi edit. You are also welcome to come and see them in person at Divine Hindu, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011, where our team can talk you through what a household typically keeps for the two days and what is better sourced fresh from your local market on the morning itself.

This guide is for educational and devotional purposes and reflects traditional practice and regional custom. Tithi-to-date mapping and muhurat timings shift with sunrise and location, and panchangs differ — as they do for Holi 2027 — so confirm the exact date and timings with a current panchang for your city, or with your temple, before observing any rite. Colour-safety information here is general and is not medical advice.