Losar - the Tibetan and Bhutanese New Year that follows the Chinese one by a month

Losar is the Tibetan New Year, and in Bhutan it is a two-day national public holiday marked by masked Bara Lachi dancing and the raising of a new prayer flag. It is the third of the great New Years of the region, distinct from the Chinese and Korean ones by about a month.

The one-line summary

Tibetan and Bhutanese New Year on the first day of the first month of the Tibetan calendar. Cultural category, standard tier. Two-day national public holiday in Bhutan, and an official holiday in Tibet.

Origin

Losar is simply "new year" in Tibetan, from lo (year) and sar(new). The Tibetan calendar is a lunisolar one derived from the Chinese, but it is offset: the Tibetan new year falls about a month after the Chinese one, so Losar generally arrives in late February or March while Lunar New Year has already happened. Because the calendar can insert a leap month, and because it tracks the lunar new moon on its own reckoning, the two dates move independently of one another.

The cycle of twelve animal years gives each Losar its character, and the household approach to the new year is shaped by that sign. Losar is also the point at which monasteries perform their annual cycle of services, which in Lhasa has historically run for weeks around the New Year and draws pilgrims from across the plateau and beyond.

When it falls

Losar is the first day of the first Tibetan month, so it tracks the new moon. The published dates are 7 February 2027, 26 February 2028 and 14 February 2029. Tables that circulate online disagree on this by a day or two in some years - 6 February 2027 and 28 February 2028 both appear - and Bhutan's gazette is the reliable reference, because there Losar is a statutory two-day holiday with a published date.

Bhutan observes two consecutive days. The second day is sometimes marked separately, with the gutor - the great prayer flag flown at Trongsa Dzong - taken down, which closes the cycle that opened with the raising of a new one.

How it is observed

The preparatory work matters as much as the day. In the weeks beforehand houses are cleaned, debts are settled and new clothes are bought. Losar itself is a family and religious day: people rise before dawn, bathe, dress in something new, eat a festive rice dish, and go to the monastery.

The most recognisable ritual is the darchor - a tall pole from which a new set of five-coloured prayer flags is raised, symbolically replacing the set flown the previous year. In Bhutan the celebration centres on bara lachi, a vigorous masked folk dance performed in the courtyards of dzongs and monasteries. In Lhasa, the monastery circuit at dawn on the first morning of Losar remains the largest single gathering of the festival.

Public status

Losar is a two-day national public holiday in Bhutan. It is an official holiday in the Tibet Autonomous Region and in Qinghai in China, where observance is uneven and has been reduced in some recent years under a policy of curbing religious activity. Among Tibetan communities in Nepal, in Ladakh, and in northern and northeastern India it is widely and visibly celebrated, but without statutory status.

Related holidays

Losar is one of three distinct New Years in this part of Asia. The Chinese Lunar New Year comes about a month earlier, Seollal marks the Korean one and Tsagaan Sar the Mongolian one, which follows its own lunar calendar entirely. Sharing a script and a Buddhist framework is not enough to merge them: four calendars, four dates, four sets of customs.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica - Tibetan Buddhism (the Tibetan calendar, the twelve animal years and the New Year cycle).
• OfficeHolidays - Bhutan public holidays (Losar and Dashain dates on the Bhutanese calendar).
• Tibetan cultural documentation (darchor practice and the Losar observances of the Lhasa monastery circuit).