Festivals of Kerala: 18 Famous Festivals with 2026-27 Dates and a Month-wise Calendar

Onam is the state festival of Kerala and a public holiday across the state. People often search it as the “national festival of Kerala”, but India names no national festivals by state. Onam’s status is official state festival, and Malayalis keep it wherever they live, from Dubai to Houston. The legend is the yearly homecoming of King Mahabali, the Asura ruler whom Vamana, Vishnu’s dwarf avatar, sent to the underworld.

The ten days open on Atham with the Athachamayam street parade in Thrippunithura near Kochi, a river of floats, drummers and folk artists that once marked the Cochin king’s march. From Atham onward, families lay a Pookalam, a flower carpet in the courtyard that grows by one ring a day. Thiruvonam itself is a family day built around the Onasadya, a vegetarian feast of 20 to 28 dishes that finishes with two or three payasams. A few days later, on Nalam Onam (Chathayam, the fourth Onam day after Uthradom, Thiruvonam and Avittom), Thrissur’s Swaraj Round fills with Pulikali dancers painted as tigers, pot bellies wobbling to the udukku drum.

For travellers, the Kerala Tourism Onam Week in Thiruvananthapuram is the easiest way in, with free stage shows across the city and a closing procession down MG Road. Our full Onam festival guide covers the day-by-day rituals.

Thrissur Pooram is the biggest temple festival in Kerala, and the Paramekkavu and Thiruvambady devaswoms jointly fixed the 2027 date as 17 April. Sakthan Thampuran, the ruler of Cochin, started it in the 1790s by bringing ten neighbourhood temples together at the Vadakkunnathan Temple, and that rivalry still drives the day.

The morning opens with the Madathil Varavu, a panchavadyam ensemble of timila, maddalam and horns. Around 2 pm, roughly 250 percussionists line up under the ilanji tree inside the temple walls for the Ilanjithara Melam, the chenda melam most people come for. Near sunset, 15 caparisoned elephants from each side face off on the southern side of the temple for the Kudamattam, swapping sequinned parasols in quick rounds while the crowd roars at each new design. The fireworks begin around 3 am and shake windows across town.

Reach Swaraj Round by 1 pm if you want a spot near the Ilanjithara wall, carry water and earplugs, and stay clear of the lanes where the elephants move. The sample fireworks two days earlier make a quieter preview. There is more in our Thrissur Pooram guide.

Vishu marks Medam 1, the day the sun enters Mesha and the traditional new year in Kerala, and in 2027 it falls on 15 April. (The official Malayalam calendar year begins instead on Chingam 1 in August.) The ritual everyone remembers is the Vishukkani, the first sight of the year. The night before, the eldest woman of the house fills an uruli, a wide bell-metal vessel, with raw rice, a golden cucumber, mango, jackfruit, coins, a mirror and bunches of yellow konna flowers, and sets it before a Krishna image with a lit brass lamp. At dawn, each family member is led in with eyes covered to see it first.

After the kani, elders hand out Vishukkaineettam, small gifts of money, and children set off crackers through the morning. Lunch is the Vishu sadya. Because Vishu is a home festival, a visitor sees it best at a homestay, or at the Guruvayur temple, where devotees queue from 2.30 am for the Vishukkani darshan.

Vallam Kali is the general Malayalam name for Kerala’s boat races, and the stars are the chundan vallams, the snake boats. Each one runs 100 to 120 feet, carved from anjili wood, and carries around 100 oarsmen plus singers who keep time with the vanchipattu, the boat song.

The Nehru Trophy on Punnamada Lake in Alappuzha is the big one. Jawaharlal Nehru jumped into a snake boat during a 1952 visit, and the trophy he donated has been raced for ever since. The 72nd edition ran on 22 August 2026, and Aroma Chundan, from the first-time Aroma Boat Club, took the title in the final. Pavilion tickets sell on nehrutrophy.nic.in, and the finals begin after lunch, so claim your seat by 11 am. The season opens with the Champakulam Moolam in June or July and runs through the Champions Boat League to the President’s Trophy in Kollam in November.

See our Kerala boat race guide, or let a planner handle tickets and stay with a Nehru Trophy boat race package.

Theyyam is not a single festival. It is a season of ritual performances in which a performer becomes the deity for the length of the ritual. The performers come from hereditary Theyyam communities such as the Vannan, Malayan and Velan, and during the ritual even upper-caste devotees bow to them for blessings. There are more than 400 forms. The ones visitors ask for are Muchilottu Bhagavathi, Gulikan, Kathivanur Veeran and Theechamundi, in which the performer is thrown again and again onto a pile of glowing embers and pulled back by attendants.

The makeup alone takes three to four hours, and the tall headdresses (mudi) of some forms stand over 10 feet. Most kaliyattams start after dark and peak between midnight and dawn, so base yourself in Kannur or Payyanur and drive out. Temple-hopping guides in Kannur circulate the week’s schedule on WhatsApp. For a guaranteed performance on any day of the year, the Parassinikadavu Muthappan Temple holds Muthappan Theyyam every morning and evening, and its Puthari Thiruvappana falls on 2 December 2026.

Stand where the elders tell you, keep flash off, and never step into the space between the performer and the shrine.

Attukal Pongala is a ten-day festival at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple, and its main Pongala day falls on 22 February 2027. On that morning, women line the streets of Thiruvananthapuram for kilometres around the temple, each with a clay pot and a small fire of coconut fronds. The fire is lit from the temple’s own hearth, the pandara aduppu, and passed down the lines. Each woman cooks pongala, rice with jaggery and coconut, as an offering to the goddess. Guinness World Records recognised the 2009 edition, with about 2.5 million participants, as the largest annual gathering of women.

Men may watch but take no part. The city fills by the night before, so book a Thiruvananthapuram stay early and walk rather than drive on the day. Roads around East Fort and Attukal close in the morning.

Makaravilakku is the closing high point of the two-month Sabarimala pilgrimage season, held on Makara Sankranti in mid-January. Three days earlier, the Thiruvabharanam, the sacred ornaments of Lord Ayyappa, leaves the Valiyakoyikkal temple at the Pandalam palace in a procession on foot. When the ornaments are placed on the idol at dusk, the Makaravilakku flame is lit three times on Ponnambalamedu hill across the valley, the Makara Jyothi star rises in the evening sky, and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims watch from the hillsides around the Sannidhanam.

This is a pilgrimage, not a spectator event. Pilgrims keep a 41-day vratham, wear black or saffron, climb from Pamba barefoot, and must book a darshan slot through the Travancore Devaswom Board’s virtual queue. Only pilgrims carrying the irumudi kettu, the two-part offering bundle with a ghee-filled coconut, may climb the 18 holy steps (Pathinettampadi). To understand the season without making the climb, Pandalam and the Erumeli Petta Thullal a few days before are far more open to visitors.

By long-standing custom, women aged 10 to 50 do not make the pilgrimage. The Supreme Court struck down that bar in 2018 and did not stay its ruling when it referred review questions to a larger bench in 2019, yet the custom is still followed on the ground.

Navarathri in Kerala is a festival of learning and music. In 2026 it runs from 11 to 21 October. In Thiruvananthapuram, the Saraswathi idol travels in procession from Padmanabhapuram Palace to the Navarathri Mandapam, where the Navarathri Sangeetholsavam fills the nine nights with Carnatic concerts that are free to attend. On the last day, Vijayadashami, families bring children aged two to five for Vidyarambham, their first writing of letters in rice with a finger. Panachikkadu Saraswathi Temple near Kottayam and Thunchan Parambu in Tirur are the busiest venues. Books and tools are placed for puja on Durgashtami and left untouched until Vijayadashami, so don’t be surprised if a local shop stays shut.

Arattu means holy bath. At the end of each of the two ten-day utsavams, the idols of Padmanabhaswamy, Narasimha and Krishna are carried from the temple to Shanghumukham Beach for a ritual dip in the Arabian Sea. The head of the Travancore royal family walks ahead of the procession with a drawn sword, as the family has done for centuries. The procession crosses the runway of Thiruvananthapuram International Airport, which suspends flights for four to five hours on Arattu evening (until about 9 pm), one of the very few airports anywhere that close for a temple procession. Watch from the beach end, where the crowd thins and you see the idols enter the water at sunset.

Thiruvathira falls on the Thiruvathira star in the month of Dhanu, on 24 December in 2026. It celebrates Shiva’s birth star and the story of Parvati’s penance, and it belongs to the women of Kerala. Married women fast for their husbands’ long life, and unmarried women fast for a good match. The evening is for Thiruvathirakali, a slow circular dance of women in cream-and-gold kasavu sarees around a lit brass lamp, clapping to songs. In some homes it carries on past midnight. The festival food is Thiruvathira puzhukku, a mash of yam, plantain and beans, eaten with koova payasam. The best public performances are at Shiva temples in Thrissur and Ernakulam and at cultural centres in Thiruvananthapuram.

Guruvayur Ekadasi falls on 21 November 2026. The Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple marks it with an elephant procession and a full day of fasting and darshan. The build-up is the Chembai Sangeetholsavam, a roughly 15-day music festival in memory of the singer Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar, where more than 2,000 musicians perform in slots round the clock, ending with a mass rendition on Ekadasi day. Only Hindus may enter the temple, and men must wear a mundu without a shirt. Non-Hindu visitors can still see Punnathur Kotta, the temple’s elephant camp 3 km away.

The Kalpathi Ratholsavam runs from 14 to 16 November 2026 at the Sree Viswanatha Swamy Temple in Palakkad. Kalpathi is a Tamil Brahmin agraharam, a street of joined houses with carved wooden fronts, built around a Viswanatha Swamy temple that dates to the early 15th century. On the last three days, huge wooden chariots carrying the deities are pulled through the lanes by hundreds of devotees on thick ropes, and the chariots from three nearby temples meet in a festival called the Devaratha Sangamam. The women of the agraharam draw kolams at every doorstep at dawn. Palakkad town has enough hotels, and Kalpathi is a 10-minute auto ride away.

Vaikathashtami at the Vaikom Mahadeva Temple, Kottayam, falls on 1 December 2026 and closes a 12-day festival. The Ashtami darshan starts before dawn, and the night of Ashtami brings the Vaikom Udayanapuram meeting, when the deity of the nearby Udayanapuram temple is carried in procession to meet the Vaikom deity. Vaikom is 35 km from Kochi, an easy day trip.

Maha Shivaratri falls on 6 March 2027, and Kerala’s biggest celebration is on Aluva Manappuram, a sandbank on the Periyar River in Ernakulam district. Devotees keep an all-night vigil at the Shiva temple on the sand, and at dawn thousands perform bali tharpanam, the rite for ancestors, on the riverbank. A trade fair and stalls run along the river for weeks around it. Aluva sits on the Kochi Metro line and about 15 km from Kochi airport, so this is one of the easiest temple festivals to reach.

Kodungallur Bharani is held at the Sree Kurumba Bhagavathy Temple in Thrissur district in the Malayalam month of Meenam. In 2027, Kavu Theendal falls on 8 April and Bharani day on 9 April. It is one of the most intense festivals in Kerala. Hundreds of Velichappads, oracles in red with curved swords and anklets, gather from across the state, and on Kavu Theendal day they run around the temple in a surge. Visitors should stay back on the edges and should not photograph the oracles up close without asking.

Almost every temple in Kerala holds an annual utsavam of eight to ten days, with a flag hoisting, processions of caparisoned elephants and an Arattu on the final day, so something is on somewhere nearly every week from January to May. The ones visitors travel for:

• Ambalapuzha Arattu, Sree Krishna Temple, Alappuzha, in March to April. The temple is also famous for its palpayasam.
• Arattupuzha Pooram, Thrissur, in March to April, where dozens of elephants gather in the paddy fields.
• Uthralikavu Pooram, Wadakkanchery, Thrissur, with its evening elephant line-up and fireworks.
• Nenmara Vallangi Vela, Palakkad, in early April, famous for rival fireworks and decorated elephant lines.
• Kadammanitta Padayani, Pathanamthitta, in April, a night ritual with huge painted areca-sheath masks.
• Adoor Gajamela, at the Parthasarathy Temple, Adoor.

The elephants are captive working animals. Keep your distance, never walk behind one, and skip any festival where you see chained animals in distress. Our list of famous temples in Kerala has the temples and their festival months.

About 18 percent of Keralites are Christian and 27 percent Muslim (Census 2011), so the festival calendar belongs to every faith. At Christmas, homes hang paper stars in front of every door, carol groups go house to house, and Syrian Christian families sit down to appam with duck or mutton stew after midnight mass. Kochi, Kottayam and Thrissur are the best-lit towns. Easter follows 50 days of Lent, and the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday processions in the old churches are moving to watch.

The church feasts, called perunnals, run as big as temple festivals. The Arthunkal Perunnal at St Andrew’s Basilica, Alappuzha, peaks in the second half of January around the feast of St Sebastian. Parumala Perunnal falls on 2 November 2026, and the Edathua Perunnal at St George’s Church runs from late April into May. There is more in our guide to famous churches in Kerala.

Eid-ul-Fitr and Bakrid bring biryani feasts across Malabar, especially in Kozhikode and Malappuram. The Beemapally Uroos in Thiruvananthapuram, the annual festival of the Beemapally mosque, opens with a flag hoisting and ends with the Chandanakudam procession. Its dates move with the Islamic calendar.

The Cochin Carnival in Fort Kochi runs through the last week of December and ends at midnight on 31 December, when a giant effigy of Pappanji, an old man standing in for the passing year, is burned on the Parade Ground. The week before brings beach football, cycle races, a fancy-dress parade on New Year’s Day and music at every corner of the old town. It has run since 1984. Fort Kochi homestays for 30 and 31 December sell out by early November, so book early. For more New Year ideas across the state, see Kerala New Year celebrations.