📅 19 March 2026Returns next year
Ugadi युगादि
Brahma · No fasting required
Telugu and Kannada New Year on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada (yuga + adi = beginning of a new age). Karnataka and Andhra-Telangana households prepare Ugadi Pachadi, a six-taste chutney mixing neem flowers, raw mango, jaggery, tamarind, salt, and green chilli — symbolising that the new year will hold sorrow, surprise, joy, disgust, fear, and anger in equal measure.
Rituals (vidhi)
- 1.Pre-dawn oil bath and new clothes
- 2.Mango-leaf toran on doorways
- 3.Ugadi Pachadi shared before the first meal
- 4.Panchanga Shravanam at temple or by elders
- 5.Reading of the year's rashi-phala (zodiac forecast)
Significance
Believed to be the day Brahma began creation. The six-taste pachadi is a uniquely Hindu acceptance-of-duality teaching — life is a balanced compound, not a single flavour. Panchanga Shravanam on this day sets the spiritual calendar for the entire year.