6 Festivals and Events in Srinagar (2026)

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Before you plan a trip around any of these: Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed, security-sensitive region, and the US and UK governments currently advise against travel to J&K, including Srinagar, following the April 2025 Pahalgam attack (26 killed, mostly tourists) and the India-Pakistan tension that followed. Check your government’s current advisory before you book. The Valley is also functioning, and these events have been running with heavy security, but event access and timing here can be curtailed by the security situation on short notice, so confirm dates close to travel rather than trusting last year’s calendar.

Srinagar’s calendar is thinner than a big city’s, but what’s on it is genuinely worth timing a trip around, not padding for a listicle.

  1. The Tulip Festival, roughly late March into April, tied to the bloom at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden, Asia’s largest, around 1.75 million bulbs. The festival itself draws hundreds of thousands of visitors during the roughly three-week peak window; outside it, there’s little reason to visit the garden at all.
  2. The Shikara Festival, held on Dal Lake, celebrating the traditional wooden boats with races and gatherings on the water. A good excuse to be lakeside if your dates line up, though it’s a smaller, more local affair than the Tulip Festival.
  3. The Pampore saffron harvest festival, roughly mid-October into early November, an approximately 8-day event tied to the saffron bloom in the fields around Pampore. The fields themselves are worth the detour even outside the festival days, but the festival adds demonstrations and stalls around the harvest.
  4. Eid celebrations, observed across Srinagar’s mosques and shrines; dates shift yearly with the lunar calendar, so check the current year’s dates rather than assuming a fixed month.
  5. Hazratbal Shrine commemorations, tied to occasions when the shrine’s relic, believed to be a hair of the Prophet, is displayed to the public. These draw large crowds of devotees; if you’re visiting the shrine on one of these dates, expect it to function primarily as a pilgrimage event, not a sightseeing stop.
  6. The Amarnath Yatra, roughly July-August, a major Hindu pilgrimage to a cave shrine that transits near Pahalgam and involves an unusually heavy security operation for its duration. Not something to casually tag along with, but worth knowing about if your dates overlap, since it affects road traffic and accommodation around Pahalgam specifically.

If any of these line up with your trip, our main Srinagar guide has the season-by-season breakdown for when to actually go, and our day trips guide covers Pahalgam access separately from the Amarnath Yatra’s own security footprint.

A Tulip Festival day tour is worth booking ahead during the peak window, when the garden’s parking and entry queues get genuinely long; check the current advisory before booking, and travel with a registered operator regardless of the event. The India e-visa portal is the only official place to apply if you haven’t already, and the UK Foreign Office advisory page is worth a check specifically before any festival trip, since event-season crowding and security posture can shift together.

One concrete tip: if you’re timing a trip around the Tulip Festival specifically, book your houseboat weeks ahead. It’s the single tightest accommodation window of the year.