Nepal Festivals & Events: When and Where

If you have already read about Dashain and Tihar, this cluster covers the festivals and seasonal events that are easy to miss — high-Himalayan Buddhist gatherings, great temple congregations, regional new-year celebrations and even the spring rhododendron bloom that draws crowds to the hills. Each guide below explains what the event celebrates, when it falls, where to be and what you will actually see, so you can build a trip around it. For the famous national festivals, start with our festival calendar of Nepal and the at-a-glance festivals of Nepal overview; the deep-dives here go further off the beaten path.

The short answer

If your dates are fixed, find the festival that matches them. Spring travellers should aim for Nepali New Year in mid-April, Buddha Jayanti at Lumbini in April–May and the rhododendron bloom on the Ghorepani–Poon Hill trail. Winter and early spring bring Maha Shivaratri at Pashupatinath. Late summer and autumn are for the mountains: Yartung in Mustang and Manang, the Buddhist full moon of Saga Dawa in late spring, and the masked-dance festival of Mani Rimdu at Tengboche in autumn.

Festivals by season

To line dates up with your trip, browse the month-by-month overview in Nepal festivals by month, which threads these events through the Nepali year alongside the big national holidays.

Winter and early spring belong to Maha Shivaratri, when tens of thousands of pilgrims and sadhus converge on the Pashupatinath temple complex. Mid-spring opens with Nepali New Year (Bikram Sambat) on roughly 13–14 April, celebrated nationwide and most spectacularly at Bisket Jatra in Bhaktapur. Spring is also the season of the rhododendron bloom, when Nepal's national flower carpets the hills around Ghorepani and Poon Hill, and of Buddha Jayanti, the Buddha's birthday, marked grandly at his birthplace in Lumbini. Saga Dawa, the most sacred month in the Tibetan Buddhist calendar, falls in late spring and is observed in Boudhanath, Mustang and the high Sherpa valleys.

Late summer and autumn are for the high country and the Kathmandu Valley. Yartung, a horse-racing harvest festival, livens up Muktinath, Lo Manthang and Manang in August. The Newar cow festival reaches its fullest expression in the capital — see Gai Jatra in Kathmandu for the Valley-specific traditions. Autumn closes the trekking-festival season with Mani Rimdu, the Sherpa masked-dance festival at Tengboche Monastery on the Everest trail.

How to use these guides

Each pin gives the lunar month plus a rough Gregorian window, because dates move every year. Where a festival means a trek — Mani Rimdu, Yartung, Saga Dawa in the mountains — pair the guide with our Nepal trekking guide and read up on altitude sickness before you go. To slot any of these into a broader itinerary, check the best time to visit Nepal.

The nine guides

Below you will find deep-dives for Nepal festivals by month, Mani Rimdu, Maha Shivaratri at Pashupatinath, Gai Jatra in Kathmandu, Nepali New Year, Saga Dawa, Yartung, Buddha Jayanti at Lumbini and the Ghorepani–Poon Hill rhododendron bloom. Together they cover spring blooms, summer mountain races, temple congregations and high-altitude masked dances — so whatever season you arrive, there is an event worth planning around.