Vikram Samvat
Bikram Sambat · official in Nepal, counted from 57 BCE
The Bikram Sambat — Nepal’s official calendar, and the one its newspapers, schools and government date by — counts from 57 BCE, so it runs some 57 years ahead of the Common Era and turns over in mid-April. Its months follow the sun through the sidereal zodiac, each opening on the day of a solar sankranti, which leaves them anywhere from 29 to 32 days long and different from one year to the next. Nepal does not leave that to a formula: a government almanac committee settles each year’s month lengths and publishes them about a year ahead, so the calendar on the wall is the authority and any computation is a forecast of it. The dates here follow the published calendar from 2000 to 2083 BS — April 1943 to April 2027 — and beyond that are projected from the sankranti and say so; against the printed calendar that projection has been right for about nineteen months in twenty. The same era is kept across northern India in a lunisolar form, for festivals, which is a different reckoning from the one shown here.
In UTC at 02:02 on October 27, 2026, this calendar read 10 Kartik 2083. The reading above is live, in your own time zone.
At a glance
- Type
- Solar — sidereal months, each opening at a sankranti
- Origin
- Ancient India; traditionally credited to King Vikramaditya of Ujjain
- Year
- 365 or 366 days, opening in mid-April
- Months
- 12, of 29 to 32 days, set each year
- Week
- 7 days
- Leap rule
- None as such — the months’ varying lengths absorb the difference
- Counts from
- 57 BCE (VS, or BS in Nepal)
- Where it’s used
- Nepal’s official calendar; kept across northern India in a lunisolar form, for festivals
- How it’s worked out here
- Nepal’s published month lengths for 2000–2083 BS; projected from the solar sankranti beyond them, and labeled as projected
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