Bengali New Year 2026

15 Apr, 2026

Wednesday

Bengali New Year 2026 on
(15-04-2026)

Bengali New Year based on Spring Harvest

Bengali New Year is celebrated on 14 April in Bangladesh and on 15 April in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Jharkhand and Assam (Goalpara and Barak Valley). It is a festival based on the spring harvest marking the first day of the New Year in the official calendar of Bangladesh.

Pohela Boishakh(पोहेला बोइशाख) means the frist day of Baisakh Month. Originated in the Mughal Empire, representing the announcement of tax collection reforms under Akbar. Its celebration is rooted in the traditions of the Mahifrash Community of old Dhaka. Currently, it is a secular holiday for most celebrants and is enjoyed by people of many different religions and backgrounds.

Muslim Fundamentals

During the Mughal rule, land tax was collected from the Bengali people according to the Islamic Hijri Calendar. This calendar was a lunar calendar, and its new year did not coincide with solar agricultural cycles.

According to some sources, this festival was a tradition in Bengal during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar to start the tax year at harvest time, and the Bengali year was called Bangabada. Akbar asked the royal astronomer Fatullah Shirazi (फ़तुल्लाह शिराज़ी) to create a new calendar combining the already prevalent lunar Islamic calendar and solar Hindu calendar and it became known as Fasholi Shan means the harvest calendar.

According to some historians, the Bengali calendar started from this. According to Shamsuzzaman Khan(शम्सुज्जमां खान), it may have been the Mughal governor Nawab Murshid Quli Khan(नवाब मुर्शिद कुली खान) who first used the tradition of Punyaho(पुन्याहो) as a day for formal land tax collection, and used Akbar's fiscal policy to introduce the Bengali calendar.