Tamu, Sonam & Gyalpo Lhosar: Dates and Differences Explained

Lhosar (also spelt Losar or Lhochhar) means "new year" in Tibeto-Burman speech: in Tibetan, lo means "year" and sar means "new"; Gurung explains it as Lho ("new") and Sar ("change"). Although the word is shared, Nepal does not have one Lhosar but three separate festivals, each belonging to a different Himalayan and hill community and each falling in a different month of the Bikram Sambat (BS) winter.

The three are Tamu Lhosar, the New Year of the Gurung (who call themselves Tamu); Sonam Lhosar, the New Year of the Tamang and Hyolmo (Helambu) people; and Gyalpo Lhosar, the New Year of the Sherpa, Bhotiya (Bhote) and other Tibetan-heritage groups. Because each community follows its own reckoning, the celebrations arrive weeks apart across Poush, Magh and Falgun, roughly late December to late February.

The confusion many searchers feel — asking for the "Lhosar date" as if there were one — comes from this overlap of a common name across distinct calendars. The Government of Nepal recognises all three separately: the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) public-holiday gazette for 2082 BS lists Tamu Lhosar, Sonam Lhosar and Gyalpo Lhosar as three individual holidays on three different days.

This page sets the three side by side so you can see at a glance who celebrates which, when it falls this year, what animal-cycle year is beginning, and how the dance, music and rituals differ from one Lhosar to the next.

The single biggest practical difference is timing. Tamu Lhosar is fixed to a solar date — the 15th of Poush every year — so it barely moves in the Gregorian calendar, always landing around 30 December. Sonam Lhosar and Gyalpo Lhosar are lunar and therefore shift year to year, tracking new-moon and Shukla Pratipada dates in Magh and Falgun respectively.

For the current cycle (2082 BS), Tamu Lhosar fell on Poush 15, 2082, which was 30 December 2025. Sonam Lhosar followed on Magh 5, 2082, corresponding to 19 January 2026. Gyalpo Lhosar comes on Falgun 6, 2082, which is 18 February 2026; because it is a multi-day festival, celebrations run through the following days of mid-to-late February.

Looking ahead, Tamu Lhosar for 2083 BS again falls on Poush 15, which is 30 December 2026 — a reliable rule of thumb, since it is solar. Sonam and Gyalpo dates for future years should always be checked against a current patro (calendar), because their lunar basis moves them by up to two or three weeks between years.

Tamu Lhosar is celebrated by the Gurung (Tamu) people, concentrated in Gandaki — Kaski, Lamjung, Syangja, Manang, Gorkha — and in Gurung diasporas across Kathmandu, Pokhara and abroad. Unlike the other two, it is a solar festival tied to the winter solstice period, which is why the Government of Nepal fixes it to Poush 15 each year.

The Gurung calendar turns a 12-year animal cycle called the Lohokor. The sequence of totem years is traditionally given as garuda (eagle), serpent, horse, sheep, monkey, bird, dog, deer, mouse, cow, tiger and cat. Each Lhosar marks the handover from the passing animal year to the incoming one, and Gurungs identify a person's birth year and character by their Lohokor animal.

Celebration is community-forward and colourful. Families raise prayer flags on homes and stupas, wear traditional dress — men in bhangra and kachhad, women in ghalek and gunyo-cholo with heavy jewellery — and gather for feasts with home-made raksi. Cultural highlights include Gurung folk dances such as the Ghatu and Chudka and songs like Thado Bhaka, while large public rallies and rangoli-lined processions fill Tundikhel in Kathmandu and stadiums in Pokhara on the day.

Because Poush 15 is a nationwide public holiday, Tamu Lhosar has become one of the most visible Gurung cultural events of the year, doubling as a moment of ethnic pride and community fundraising alongside its religious and calendrical meaning.

Sonam Lhosar (often written Sonam Lhochhar) is the New Year of the Tamang and Hyolmo (Helambu) peoples of Nepal, and is also observed by Tamang communities in Sikkim and Darjeeling in India. It is the largest festival of the Tamang, Nepal's single most populous Janajati group, and is centred on Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Sindhupalchok, Kavre, Makwanpur and the Kathmandu Valley.

The festival follows the eastern lunar calendar, falling on the second new moon after the winter solstice — Magh Shukla Pratipada — which places it in the Nepali month of Magh (January-February). Its 12-year animal cycle runs rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat/sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and boar; at Sonam Lhosar 2082 (19 January 2026) the Year of the Snake gives way to the Year of the Horse.

Music and dance are unmistakably Tamang. The Damphu — a round, single-headed frame drum — sets the rhythm for Tamang Selo songs, and the Syabru (Selo) dance, especially among Hyolmo and Rasuwali Tamang, brings dancers together in a line-and-circle form. Celebrations also include visits to monasteries and stupas, masked ritual dances to drive away misfortune, and feasts featuring khapse, babar and thongsey.

Sonam Lhosar is a nationwide MoHA public holiday. In Kathmandu it draws huge crowds to Tundikhel and Boudhanath, where the Tamang community stages one of the capital's biggest single-day cultural gatherings.

Gyalpo Lhosar — from gyalpo, meaning "king" — is the "King's New Year" of the Sherpa, Bhotiya (Bhote), Yolmo and other Tibetan-heritage communities of Nepal, and is the same festival as Tibet's Losar. It is strongest in the high Himalaya: Solukhumbu, Rasuwa, Mustang, Dolpa, Manang and the Tibetan-Buddhist settlements around Boudhanath in Kathmandu.

Its roots run deepest of the three. Gyalpo Lhosar descends from the pre-Buddhist Bon tradition of Tibet as a seasonal spirit-honouring festival, later becoming a royal and monastic celebration blending Bon and Buddhist rites during Tibet's imperial era. It follows the Tibetan lunar calendar and falls on Falgun Shukla Pratipada (February-March); for 2082 BS the main day is Falgun 6, 18 February 2026, opening Tibetan year 2153, a Fire Horse year in Tibetan astrology.

The festival spans about two weeks, with the first three days most intense: day one centres on family and the drink changkol; day two is the main New Year with visits to monasteries; day three brings community feasting. Signature customs include eating guthuk (a noodle soup traditionally made with nine ingredients) on the eve, deep-fried khapse pastries, firecrackers and torch (metho) rituals to expel ill fortune, and monastic Cham masked dances — including dramatised battles between deity and demon — alongside the Syabru dance.

Like the other two, Gyalpo Lhosar is a nationwide public holiday and is actively promoted by the Nepal Tourism Board as a winter draw for cultural travellers to the Sherpa homelands and to Boudhanath.

If you remember one distinction, make it the calendar: Tamu Lhosar is solar and near-fixed (Poush 15, always about 30 December), while Sonam and Gyalpo are lunar and move each year, arriving successively in Magh and then Falgun. So in any given winter the order is always Tamu first, then Sonam, then Gyalpo.

The community mapping is equally clean: Tamu = Gurung, Sonam = Tamang and Hyolmo, Gyalpo = Sherpa and Bhotiya/Tibetan. All three share the 12-animal zodiac, but the animal names and starting points differ slightly between the Gurung Lohokor and the Tamang and Tibetan cycles, and each community reads the incoming year through its own astrology.

Rituals and sound also separate them. Tamu Lhosar leans on Gurung folk forms like Ghatu and Chudka; Sonam Lhosar is defined by the Damphu drum and Tamang Selo; Gyalpo Lhosar is the most monastic, featuring guthuk soup, Cham masked dances and the metho torch ritual drawn from Tibetan Buddhist and Bon practice. What they share is the spirit — cleaning the home, honouring elders and ancestors, and welcoming a fresh animal-cycle year with feasting and dance.