The Three Calendars of Nepal: Bikram Sambat, Gregorian, and Nepal Sambat

Look at three dates: 2083 BS, 2026 AD, and 1146 NS. Written side by side, they look like they belong to entirely different eras, decades or even close to a thousand years apart. Yet depending on which day of the year it is, all three can be true at once, describing the exact same 24 hours. On Tuesday, November 10, 2026, that is exactly what happens in Nepal: the Gregorian date is November 10, 2026, the Bikram Sambat date is Kartik 24, 2083, and it is also the first day of Nepal Sambat year 1147, the calendar the Kathmandu Valley used as its calendar of record for close to nine centuries before Bikram Sambat ever became official. Three numbering systems, one day. This is not a coincidence, a typo, or a sign that Nepal is confused about what year it is. It is the ordinary, everyday result of Nepal running three separate calendars side by side, each one built for a different purpose, sometimes appearing together on the very same official document.

What a Calendar Actually Does

Before comparing three calendars, it helps to be precise about what a calendar even is. At its core, a calendar is a system for organizing days into months, months into years, and years into a continuous count, so that people can agree on when something happened, when something will happen, and how far apart two events are. Everything else, festivals, fiscal years, birthdays, historical dates, gets built on top of that basic structure.

The reason calendars differ from each other is that each of these building blocks can be defined differently. A calendar has to decide what counts as a year (one full orbit of the sun, or a cycle tied to the moon), where that year starts, how long its months are, and what event marks year one. Change any of those decisions and you get a calendar that looks completely different from another, even if both are quietly tracking the same physical passage of time. Bikram Sambat, the Gregorian calendar, and Nepal Sambat each made different decisions on every one of these points, which is exactly why 2083, 2026, and 1146 can all be correct answers to "what year is it," depending on which system is doing the counting.

Bikram Sambat: Nepal's Everyday Civil Calendar

Bikram Sambat, almost always shortened to BS, is the calendar most Nepalis mean when they simply say "the date." It is a solar calendar, currently in its 2083rd year, and it is the calendar printed on citizenship certificates, land ownership papers, school and university transcripts, court documents, and the top of most Nepali newspapers. If a form in Nepal asks for a date without specifying which calendar, the safe assumption is BS.

The popular explanation for where the calendar's name and starting point come from is that a king named Vikramaditya of Ujjain founded the era in 57 BCE after a military victory. It is a tidy story, and it is repeated constantly, but it is worth being honest about how thin the historical evidence for it actually is. The earliest known inscription that even uses the word "Vikrama" for this era dates to 842 CE, nearly nine centuries after the era supposedly began, and the first literary source connecting it to a specific King Vikramaditya is later still, from around 993 to 994 CE. Historians who have traced the inscriptional record note that earlier documents simply call the era "Krita" or "the era of the Malava tribe," with no royal name attached at all. Nepali historian Dinesh Raj Panta has pointed out that the era was called "Kirta Samvat" until roughly the 10th century, and historian Ramesh Dhungel has proposed an entirely different theory, that the calendar may originally have marked the seasonal renewal of spring in the month of Baisakh, with no individual founder involved at all. There were also, as it turns out, several historical figures who used the title Vikramaditya, which only adds to the difficulty of pinning the legend to one real person. None of this means the 57 BCE starting point is in doubt. It means the specific king the era is popularly named after is a later addition to the story, not a settled historical fact.

What is better documented is when Bikram Sambat became Nepal's official calendar. That happened in the early 1900s, under Rana Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, replacing the Saka Era that earlier Shah and Rana rulers had used since the Gorkha conquest of the Kathmandu Valley in 1769. Sources differ slightly on the exact year, giving either 1901 or 1903, so it is more accurate to describe this as happening in the early 1900s than to insist on a single precise date.

The Twelve Nepali Months

Gregorian equivalents are approximate and shift by roughly a day from year to year. See the note below on why.

Four Nepali months, Jestha, Ashadh, Shrawan, and Bhadra, can run to 32 days, a length no Gregorian month ever reaches. Data reflects verified day counts for BS 2082 and 2083. See why Nepali months have different days every year for the full mechanism.

Those Gregorian ranges are approximate on purpose, and the "typical length" column is a range rather than a fixed number for a real reason. Nepal's civil calendar is not simply lunisolar in the loose way some articles describe it. Each BS month is defined by the sun's calculated transit through one zodiacal sign, using traditional Surya Siddhanta astronomical rules, and the exact moment that transit happens, called sankranti, is computed fresh for every year by Nepal's official calendar-determination body. Because that moment can fall just before or just after midnight depending on the year, a given month can occasionally run a day longer or shorter than it did the year before. This is a real, verifiable effect, not folklore. Baisakh ran 31 days in both 2082 and 2083, for instance, while Kartik ran 30 days in both of those same years, but the pattern is not guaranteed to repeat indefinitely for every month. For the full mechanism behind this, including worked comparisons across recent years, see Merokalam's dedicated explainer on why Nepali months have different days every year, and for a month-by-month cultural breakdown, see the 12 Nepali months in English guide.

Why Bikram Sambat and Gregorian Read So Differently

The practical result of these differences is that there is no single fixed number you can add or subtract to move between the two calendars. Because BS New Year falls in mid-April rather than January, a given Gregorian year overlaps two different BS years, and a given BS year overlaps two different Gregorian years, which flips the correct offset depending on the month. Merokalam has a full explanation of that mechanic, including the exact months where the offset changes, in why Nepal is 57 years ahead on the Bikram Sambat calendar.

The Gregorian Calendar in Nepal

It is easy to think of the Gregorian calendar as simply "the English calendar," but that undersells why Nepal uses it at all. Gregorian is the calendar almost the entire world has settled on for cross-border civil purposes, and Nepal encounters it wherever it has to interact with that wider world: international air travel, passports and visas, banking systems, computing and software, academic publishing, and international business correspondence all run on Gregorian dates by default, regardless of what calendar any individual country prefers domestically.

This shows up concretely on Nepali passports, which is exactly why passport and visa applications ask for both. As Merokalam's own guide on converting a Nepali birth date for a passport or visa explains, citing Nepal's own passport application guidance, the AD field on a passport form has to contain the citizenship or identity document's date converted into Gregorian format, while the BS field follows whatever date appears on the underlying Nepali document. Get the conversion wrong, and the mismatch is exactly the kind of error that causes real passport and visa rejections.

It would be a mistake, though, to assume Gregorian has quietly become Nepal's real operating calendar and BS is just ceremonial. Nepal's own government fiscal year, for example, is anchored to a BS date, not a Gregorian one: it begins on Shrawan 1 each year, not January 1 or April 1. Nepal's international-facing systems run on Gregorian dates. Its domestic administrative and fiscal life runs on Bikram Sambat. Most Nepalis simply live inside both systems at once, switching between them depending on which door they are walking through.

What "English Date" Actually Means

One phrase trips up a lot of people encountering Nepali English for the first time: English date. In everyday Nepali usage, saying "what's the English date today" almost always means "what's the Gregorian date today," not a request for a date specific to England. The Gregorian calendar is not formally England's calendar, it is the near-universal international civil calendar, but the label stuck in Nepal partly because English was the administrative language through which Nepal's institutions first engaged with it.

Worth remembering when reading or filling out a Nepali form: "English date" and "Gregorian date" are the same request in practice, even though only one of those is the calendar's actual formal name.

Nepal Sambat: A Calendar With Deep Cultural and Historical Significance

Of the three calendars in this article, Nepal Sambat is the one most likely to be unfamiliar even to many Nepalis outside the Kathmandu Valley, and it deserves more than a passing mention, because reducing it to "another calendar used in Nepal" would badly understate what it actually is.

Nepal Sambat is a lunisolar calendar with an epoch of October 20, 879 CE, traditionally linked to the reign of King Raghavadeva. It served as the Kathmandu Valley's official calendar of record for roughly 888 years, spanning the Malla period, until the Gorkha conquest of the valley in 1769 ended its official status and Shah rulers introduced the Saka Era and, later, Bikram Sambat in its place. For almost nine centuries, Nepal Sambat was not a cultural footnote. It was the calendar the valley's kings, merchants, and institutions actually used to date their affairs.

The calendar's popular origin story credits a Newar merchant named Shankhadhar Sakhwa, who is said to have found gold, in some versions from sand panned along the Bishnumati river, and used it to pay off the debts of the valley's people, prompting the era to be founded in his honor. It is a beloved story, and Shankhadhar Sakhwa has been formally honored by the Nepali state for it, but historians treat his direct connection to the calendar's founding as unverified rather than settled. Historian Baburam Acharya was skeptical of the gold-from-sand story specifically, and proposed instead that King Raghavadeva most likely started the era simply to mark his own dynasty's ascension, a far more ordinary and far more common reason for a ruler to start a new calendar era. Sakhwa's explicit link to the calendar does not appear clearly in the documentary record until long after 879 CE. As with the Vikramaditya legend behind Bikram Sambat, the honest position is that the era's exact founding is genuinely debated by historians, even though its epoch date is well established.

Nepal Sambat has always been closely tied to the Newar community, the historical inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, and it remains central to Newar festivals, religious observances, and cultural identity today. That said, it is worth resisting the temptation to flatten it into simply "the Newar calendar" and nothing more. Newar scholar Abhi Subedi has argued that Nepal Sambat should be "a great occasion for all Newars and non-Newars alike," and some historians make the case that the word "Nepal" in its name was always meant to refer to the nation as a whole rather than to one ethnic community specifically. Former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal echoed this framing directly in 2023, describing Nepal Sambat as "not only of the Newars, but a unique calendar of Nepal and all the Nepalis."

As of most of 2026, the current Nepal Sambat year is 1146, which began on October 22, 2025. The calendar steps forward to year 1147 on November 10, 2026. Nepal Sambat's New Year always falls on Kartika Shukla Pratipada, the first day of the waxing lunar fortnight in the month of Kartik, which lines up with Mha Puja and Govardhan Puja, both observed on the fourth day of the five-day Tihar festival, immediately before Bhai Tika brings Tihar to a close.

Nepal Sambat's official standing has grown in stages rather than all at once, and it is worth laying that timeline out honestly rather than rounding it up to "Nepal Sambat is now the national calendar," which overstates where things actually are:

What this recognition does not mean: Bikram Sambat remains Nepal's operative civil and fiscal calendar. The 2023 cabinet decision calls for Nepal Sambat to appear alongside BS in government documentation, not to replace it, and how consistently that directive has been implemented nationwide is not something this article can independently confirm.

Bikram Sambat and Nepal Sambat Are Not the Same Calendar

Because both names contain the word "Sambat" and both are calendars native to Nepal, it is common for people, including some Nepalis, to conflate Bikram Sambat and Nepal Sambat, or to assume one is simply a regional variant of the other. They are not. They have different epochs, different internal mechanics, different historical roles, and different modern functions.

That last row is worth sitting with for a moment. BS is at 2083 and NS is at 1146, a gap of nearly a thousand in the raw year numbers. That gap has nothing to do with which calendar is "older" in the sense of tracking time for longer. It is simply a reflection of where each calendar's epoch happens to sit. Nepal Sambat's epoch, 879 CE, is a much more recent starting point on the actual historical timeline than Bikram Sambat's traditional 57 BCE starting point, which is exactly why Nepal Sambat's year count is so much smaller today, even though the calendar itself has a documented history of continuous use stretching back further than Bikram Sambat's official adoption in Nepal.

Nepal's Three Calendars, Side by Side

Every cell in that table describes an actual, distinct role. None of the three calendars is redundant with either of the others, which is the real answer to why Nepal has not simply picked one and moved on.

One Day, Three Calendars: A Verified Example

Abstract comparison tables are useful, but a single concrete date makes the coexistence obvious in a way a table cannot. Here is one day, described in Nepal's three calendars at once, verified against Nepal's own calendar-lookup data rather than estimated.

A second, already-passed example for cross-checking: Wednesday, October 22, 2025 (Gregorian) was Kartik 5, 2082 (Bikram Sambat) and the first day of Nepal Sambat year 1146.

This is also why Nepali New Year, the day most people think of first when they picture the BS calendar, is really only a reliable two-calendar anchor rather than a three-calendar one. On Tuesday, April 14, 2026, the Gregorian and Bikram Sambat dates lined up cleanly (April 14, 2026 was 1 Baisakh, 2083), but Nepal Sambat was still partway through year 1146 that day, since NS 1146 runs from October 2025 to November 2026. All three calendars are always running simultaneously. They just don't all reset on the same day.

Why the Numbers Look So Different

Seeing 2026, 2083, and 1146 next to each other, it is tempting to think one of them must be wrong, or that there is a simple formula linking all three. There is not, and the reason is straightforward once it is stated plainly: each number is counting years from a completely different starting point, using a completely different definition of what a year even is. Gregorian counts from a fixed reference point in the Anno Domini era. Bikram Sambat counts from its own traditional 57 BCE epoch. Nepal Sambat counts from 879 CE. None of these numbers describes "how old Nepal is" or "how far back history goes." Each one only describes how many years that specific calendar has counted since its own particular starting line, using its own particular rules for what counts as a full year. Comparing the three numbers directly is a bit like comparing someone's age in years to their apartment number and their employee ID: all three are legitimate numbers, but they are not measuring the same thing, and no arithmetic will make them agree.

Nepal Sambat's epoch (879 CE) sits far closer to today on the actual historical timeline than Bikram Sambat's traditional epoch (57 BCE), even though Nepal Sambat's current year number (1146) is smaller. Position on this timeline reflects where each calendar's own count starts, not which tradition is older in continuous use.

Why BS and AD Don't Have a Simple Fixed Difference

This deserves its own callout because it is the single most common practical mistake people make with Nepali dates. Because Bikram Sambat's New Year falls in mid-April rather than January, a BS year overlaps parts of two different Gregorian years, and a Gregorian year overlaps parts of two different BS years. That means the "correct" year offset between the two calendars is not constant. For roughly the first few months of the Gregorian year, the correct historical offset is one number, and for the rest of the year it shifts to a different number. Stack the BS calendar's own variable month lengths, 29 to 32 days depending on the month and the year, on top of that, and it becomes clear why treating BS-to-AD conversion as "just subtract 56 or 57" produces wrong answers exactly at month and year boundaries, which happen to be the moments people care about most, like a birth date near a New Year transition. Merokalam's dedicated breakdown of this mechanic, with the exact months where the offset changes and worked real-world examples, lives in why Nepal is 57 years ahead on the Bikram Sambat calendar.

One BS Year, Stretched Across Two Gregorian Years

Here is the same idea shown as a timeline instead of a rule. Bikram Sambat year 2083 does not sit neatly inside Gregorian year 2026. It starts partway through it and finishes partway through the next one.

BS 2083 spans the last eight and a half months of Gregorian 2026 and the first three and a half months of Gregorian 2027, roughly half of each. This is why a single BS year never maps cleanly onto a single Gregorian year.

Nepal's New Year, or Rather, New Years

Because Nepal runs three calendars, it also has, in effect, three different New Year's Days, none of which fall on the same date.

"New Year" is not one universal date even within a single country's own calendar traditions. It is worth remembering that each of these three has its own weight and meaning in the community that observes it most closely, rather than treating any single one as the default and the others as footnotes.

Why Multiple Calendars Exist in the First Place

It is tempting to frame three coexisting calendars as a kind of confusion Nepal has not yet resolved, but that framing gets the history backwards. Calendars are not simply neutral measuring tools that a country eventually optimizes down to one. They grow out of astronomy, religion, culture, political history, and administrative need, and different institutions can reasonably need different things from a calendar at different points in time.

Bikram Sambat persisted and became official because the Rana state built its entire administrative apparatus around it in the early 1900s, and every subsequent government inherited that infrastructure. Nepal Sambat survived losing its official status in 1769 because Newar cultural and religious practice kept it alive for two and a half centuries afterward, entirely outside of state backing, until the state itself began re-recognizing it more than two hundred years later. The Gregorian calendar entered Nepali life not through conquest or religious tradition but through the practical, unavoidable pull of international travel, trade, and communication, none of which were optional to opt out of once Nepal engaged with the rest of the world. None of the three calendars "won." Each one specialized into the role it was already best positioned to fill.

Civil Calendar vs Festival Calendar

One more distinction matters before looking at specific dates: a civil calendar and a festival calendar are not automatically the same thing, even within Bikram Sambat itself. BS gives Nepal a fixed, predictable civil structure, Baisakh 1 is always Baisakh 1, but many of Nepal's major festivals are not set by a fixed BS calendar date at all. Dashain, Tihar, Teej, Holi, and Buddha Jayanti are calculated using lunar tithis, specific phases of the moon layered on top of the broader calendar, rather than a fixed day-of-month rule. Because lunar cycles do not divide evenly into the solar year, these festival dates drift against both the Gregorian calendar and, to a smaller extent, against the fixed BS civil calendar itself, shifting by days or occasionally by close to a lunar month from one year to the next.

Festivals in Motion: 2026 as an Example

The table below shows how this plays out in a single real year. Notice how the lunar festivals land on different Gregorian dates than they would the year before or after, while Baisakh 1 stays anchored to the solar BS calendar.

Notice the cluster: three separate calendar and festival events, Dashain, Tihar, and the Nepal Sambat New Year, all land within about five weeks of each other in October and November 2026, while several months in between carry no major festival at all. Dates shift in future years since most of these are lunar, not fixed BS dates.

Festival dates shift from year to year. For a complete, continuously updated festival calendar, see Merokalam's Nepal festival calendar with complete BS dates.

Six Situations Where the Calendar You Use Actually Matters

Which Calendar Should You Use?

For official forms specifically, follow whatever format the requesting institution explicitly asks for rather than guessing based on general rules like these.

How to Convert Between Nepali and Gregorian Dates

Converting a date correctly between BS and AD comes down to a short, disciplined sequence rather than a shortcut:

Mental shortcuts like "just add 57" work often enough to feel reliable, which is exactly what makes them risky: they fail quietly, specifically near month and year boundaries, and a wrong date on an official form is rarely caught until it causes a problem. If you are not trying to study calendar mathematics and simply need to know what a particular Nepali date means in the Gregorian calendar, or the reverse, an online converter that has already accounted for BS's variable month lengths is far more dependable than working it out by hand. Merokalam's Nepali Date Converter handles both directions instantly, and Merokalam's Nepali Calendar is the simplest way to see the current Bikram Sambat date alongside the Gregorian date without any manual lookup at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nepal's calendar landscape is not a puzzle waiting to be simplified down to one system. Bikram Sambat, the Gregorian calendar, and Nepal Sambat each earned their place by serving a purpose the others do not, and understanding which one applies where is far more useful than wishing there were only one. The next time a date shows up looking unfamiliar, whether it is 2083, 2026, or 1146, the question worth asking is not which one is correct, but which calendar, and which purpose, it belongs to.