12 Nepali Months in English: Baisakh to Chaitra Calendar & Seasons

Baisakh, Jestha, Ashadh, Shrawan, Bhadra, Ashwin, Kartik, Mangsir, Poush, Magh, Falgun, Chaitra. That's the full list, in order, and none of them line up with an English month the way a straight substitution would suggest. Baisakh isn't January. It isn't even close to January. It sits across mid-April and mid-May, and the other eleven months follow the same pattern: each one straddles the second half of one English month and the first half of the next.

This trips up a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. A student translating a birth certificate needs the right English month for a visa office that has never heard of Kartik. An NRN filling out a foreign tax form needs to know which quarter their Nepali salary slip actually falls in. A foreigner planning a trek wants to know if "Mangsir" means good weather or a monsoon downpour. This page is built to answer all of that in one place, month by month, with the reasoning behind the mismatch rather than just a table to memorise.

Search results for this question tend to fall into two camps: a bare list with no context, or a long cultural essay with the actual month-to-month mapping buried somewhere in the middle. Neither is particularly useful when you just landed here needing an answer fast, so the table comes first below, and the explanation follows for anyone who wants to understand why it works the way it does.

The 12 Nepali Months in English: Quick Reference

Approximate ranges below, since the exact start and end date shifts by a day or two each year depending on the solar transit. Treat this as the month you'd generally expect, not a fixed date.

Bikram Sambat (BS) is Nepal's official calendar. It's a solar calendar, not a copy of the Gregorian one shifted by a fixed offset, which is the whole reason this list can't be reduced to "add 3.5 months" or any other shortcut.

Why Nepali Months Don't Match English Months

Two separate things cause the mismatch, and it helps to keep them apart.

First, the year starts at a different point. Bikram Sambat begins on Baisakh 1, which tracks Mesh Sankranti, the moment the sun enters Aries in the Nepali solar zodiac. That astronomical event falls in mid-April, so the entire twelve-month sequence is offset from the Gregorian year by roughly three and a half months right from the start. There's no round-number way to translate between the two systems because they don't share a starting line.

Second, the months themselves aren't fixed lengths. A Gregorian month is a human convention, 30 or 31 days, with February as the odd one out. A Nepali month's length is set by how long the sun takes to cross a specific zodiac sign, and the sun doesn't move through the sky at a constant speed relative to the calendar, it moves faster through some signs and slower through others. That means Nepali months genuinely vary between 29 and 32 days, and the exact figure can shift by a day from one year to the next for the same month. Baisakh through Shrawan tend to run long, often 31 or 32 days, while Kartik through Magh tend to run short, closer to 29 or 30. Merokalam has a full breakdown of the astronomical mechanics behind this in why Nepali months have different days every year, if you want the deeper explanation.

Put those two facts together and you get a calendar where Baisakh 1 might fall on April 13 one year and April 14 the next, where a full Nepali month can end up shorter than every single Gregorian month except February, and where the only reliable way to get an exact date is to check that specific year's conversion rather than memorise a formula.

Baisakh: Nepal's First Month, and Why It's Not January

Baisakh (बैशाख) opens the Bikram Sambat year and overlaps mid-April to mid-May in the Gregorian calendar. Its name comes from the Sanskrit Vaishakha, tied to the Vishakha nakshatra, and it carries more cultural weight than any other month on this list because Baisakh 1 is Nepali New Year, a nationwide public holiday marked by temple visits, family gatherings, and in Bhaktapur, the dramatic chariot-pulling and tug-of-war of Bisket Jatra.

People searching for "Baisakh in English month" are usually trying to answer one of two questions. If it's "what English month is Baisakh," the answer is April and May, since the month starts partway through April and finishes partway through May. If it's "when exactly does Baisakh start this year," the answer changes annually by a day, so it's worth checking the exact date through a live converter rather than assuming April 13 or April 14 without confirming, especially for anything official like a visa or legal filing.

Where the 12 Month Names Actually Come From

Every Nepali month name traces back to a Sanskrit nakshatra (lunar mansion) or zodiacal reference point, the same naming logic used across the wider Hindu calendar tradition in South Asia. Knowing the root meaning makes the names far easier to remember than treating them as arbitrary labels.

This nakshatra-based naming system is shared broadly across Hindu calendars in Nepal, India, and the wider region, which is part of why Nepali, Hindi, Bengali, and other South Asian month names sound closely related even when the underlying calendar mechanics differ.

The 12 Months by Season

Nepal's older agricultural and ritual calendar groups the twelve months into six seasons, ritu, of two months each. This grouping predates Bikram Sambat's civil adoption and still shapes how farmers plan planting, how festivals cluster, and how Nepalis describe weather in everyday conversation. It's also a genuinely useful way to remember the months in order, since each pair shares a clear identity.

The 57-Year Gap, Explained Properly

Bikram Sambat counts from an epoch of 57 BCE, while the Gregorian calendar counts from year 1 CE. Subtract one from the other and you get roughly 57 years, which is why 2026 AD corresponds to 2083 BS for most of the year. But the gap isn't a clean, constant 57, and that trips people up more than almost anything else on this page.

Because the Nepali year starts in mid-April rather than January, the offset actually flips partway through the Gregorian year. From mid-April through the end of December, Bikram Sambat runs 57 years ahead (2026 AD sits inside 2083 BS). From January through mid-April, it drops to 56 years ahead, since the new BS year hasn't started yet (early 2026 AD, before Baisakh, still falls inside 2082 BS). Anyone doing a rough mental conversion needs to know which side of the mid-April line they're on, or the year comes out wrong.

Nepal didn't formalise Bikram Sambat as its official civil calendar until surprisingly recently in historical terms. Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher's Rana government standardised it for administrative use between 1901 and 1903 CE (1958 to 1960 BS), replacing a patchwork of local lunar reckonings that made tax collection and land records genuinely unpredictable. Nepal Sambat, the older Newar lunar calendar dating to 879 CE, continued in cultural use throughout and was formally recognised as a national calendar in 2007 alongside Bikram Sambat, without replacing it as the civil standard.

Nepal's Bikram Sambat vs India's Vikram Samvat

Both calendars share a name and an epoch, but Nepal and India ended up using genuinely different systems, which surprises a lot of people who assume they're identical.

This is also why an Indian Panchang and a Nepali BS calendar can disagree on the exact day something falls, even when both are technically "Vikram Samvat." They're solving the same underlying astronomical problem with different mechanics.

Convert Any Nepali Month's Dates to English Instantly

The date converter takes a single BS or AD date and flips it instantly. The full calendar shows an entire month at once, with tithi, festivals, and public holidays laid out day by day, which is more useful if you're trying to see where a whole Nepali month falls rather than just one date within it.

Writing Nepali Dates for International Paperwork

Anyone filling out a foreign form with a Nepali-issued document runs into a formatting question this page can settle directly. The safest approach is to write out the English month name in full rather than using a number, since "15 Kartik 2082" converted incorrectly could otherwise become an ambiguous "11/1/2025" that a foreign clerk reads as either November 1 or January 11 depending on which date format they default to. Writing "1 November 2025" removes that ambiguity entirely.

A second habit worth building: note both calendar dates on anything that might get cross-checked later, birth certificates, academic transcripts, employment letters. "Kartik 15, 2082 BS (November 1, 2025 AD)" takes one extra line and prevents a future headache if the document gets re-verified against a different source years later, which happens often with citizenship and passport paperwork.

A Worked Example: Converting a Month by Hand

Say a document lists a date as "Mangsir 2082" and you need the English month without a tool handy. Mangsir is the eighth Nepali month, sitting in the Hemanta season, and from the quick reference table above it overlaps mid-November to mid-December. Since 2082 BS covers the second half of 2025 and first weeks of 2026 (mid-April 2025 to mid-April 2026), and Mangsir falls well into that year rather than right at its start, the English equivalent lands in November to December 2025. That's close enough for a rough estimate, a form field asking only for month and year, or a quick conversation. For anything with legal weight, a specific day, a contract deadline, an exact age calculation, run it through the date converter instead, since manual estimation can be off by a few days at the edges of a month.

Who Actually Needs This List

A few groups run into this conversion problem repeatedly, for genuinely different reasons.

Students and document translators need it for certificates, since a birth certificate, citizenship document, or academic transcript issued in Nepal almost always carries a BS date, and a foreign university, embassy, or immigration office needs the Gregorian equivalent spelled out in English, month included, not just a number.

NRNs and diaspora workers need it for anything crossing borders financially, tax filings, remittance timing, loan applications back home, where a Nepali payslip or bank statement in BS has to be reconciled against a foreign institution's Gregorian records.

Developers and content teams building anything Nepal-facing, a booking system, a government portal, an e-commerce checkout, need accurate month mapping baked into their date-handling logic, and a lot of bugs in Nepali web tools trace back to someone hardcoding an assumption like "Baisakh always starts April 14," which breaks the following year.

Foreigners planning travel need it for the obvious reason: trek operators, festival calendars, and homestay bookings are frequently listed by Nepali month, and knowing that Kartik means clear autumn skies rather than monsoon rain changes what you'd actually plan around.

Government and legal professionals deal with this constantly too, since Nepali court records, land registration papers, and municipal certificates are dated exclusively in BS by law, but any of those documents referenced in an international arbitration, a foreign court proceeding, or a cross-border business contract needs an accurate, defensible English date attached. A wrong month on a converted legal date isn't a cosmetic error, it can shift a filing deadline or a contract's effective date by weeks.

Nepali Weekdays, Since They Come Up in the Same Documents

Month names aren't the only calendar vocabulary that trips people up on official paperwork. Nepali weekday names are also worth knowing, since a document might list "Aitabar" or "Sombar" instead of "Sunday" or "Monday," and unlike the months, these translate cleanly one to one with no offset to calculate.

Nepal's government work week runs Sunday through Friday, with Saturday as the standard weekly holiday, unlike the Saturday-Sunday weekend common internationally. That's a scheduling detail worth knowing separately from the month conversion itself, especially when coordinating meetings or deadlines across time zones. It also means a Nepali date that falls on what looks like a Friday in a converted document was very likely someone's last working day of the week, not the start of a weekend, which matters when interpreting handover dates or last-day-of-employment letters.

Common Mistakes When Converting Nepali Months to English

A handful of assumptions cause most of the errors people run into.

Assuming Baisakh equals January. This is the single most common mistake, usually from someone assuming the Nepali calendar simply starts where the Gregorian one does. It doesn't. Baisakh is month one of BS, but it sits in April and May.

Assuming every month is 30 days. Nepali months range from 29 to 32 days and the figure isn't fixed year to year, so any conversion tool or manual calculation that assumes a flat 30-day month will drift off by a day or two, which matters enormously on legal paperwork.

Assuming the BS-to-AD year gap is always 57. It's 56 for part of the year and 57 for the rest, split at mid-April. A document dated early in a Nepali year (soon after Baisakh 1) needs the 57-year math; a document dated in Chaitra or late Poush might actually need 56, depending on exactly where the Gregorian calendar sits at that point.

Translating month names literally instead of using the accepted English spelling. Nepali month names get transliterated several different ways across older documents, Asadh vs Ashadh vs Ashad, Falgun vs Phalgun, Poush vs Push vs Pus. None of these are wrong exactly, but consistency matters on official paperwork, and sticking to one standard spelling throughout a single document avoids confusion for whoever reads it next.

Forgetting that "this year" in BS spans two Gregorian years. Because BS 2083 runs from mid-April 2026 to mid-April 2027, saying "in 2083" without a month attached leaves real ambiguity about whether you mean the 2026 half or the 2027 half of that Nepali year. Always pair a BS year with its month when precision matters, rather than assuming the reader can infer which Gregorian year you're referring to.

How This Compares to Other South Asian Solar Calendars

Nepal isn't the only place running a solar-transit calendar alongside the Gregorian one. Bengal, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala each maintain their own regional solar or lunisolar systems, and comparing them puts Nepal's setup in useful context for anyone assuming this is a uniquely Nepali oddity.

The Bengali calendar (Bangla Panjika) also starts its new year around mid-April, roughly the same astronomical trigger as Baisakh, and several month names are close cognates: Bengali Boishakh, Joishţho, and Ashaŗh line up almost exactly with Nepali Baisakh, Jestha, and Ashadh, both tracing back to the same Sanskrit nakshatra roots. Punjab's Nanakshahi and older Bikrami calendars follow a similar solar logic with a mid-April new year. Tamil Nadu's Tamil calendar and Kerala's Malayalam calendar both also open around this same point, called Puthandu and Vishu respectively, which tells you the mid-April solar new year isn't a Nepali quirk at all, it's a shared inheritance from a much older pan-Indian astronomical tradition that each region adapted slightly differently.

What makes Nepal's version distinct is official status. Bengal, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala all use their regional calendars for cultural and religious purposes while India's civil administration runs on the Gregorian calendar nationally. Nepal is the rare case where the traditional solar calendar is also the government's actual working calendar, the one printed on citizenship certificates, used in court filings, and taught in schools as the default. That's the detail that makes accurate BS-to-English conversion a genuine practical necessity in Nepal rather than a cultural footnote.

Frequently Asked Questions: Nepali Months in English

Related Merokalam Tools and Guides