Losar 2026: Nepal's Tibetan New Year and Its Masked Monastery Dances

When the coldest, quietest weeks settle over Nepal’s high country, its Buddhist villages light up from the inside. This is Losar — the New Year of the Tibetan-Buddhist world — and in the Sherpa, Tamang, Gurung and Tibetan communities of the mountains it is the most important celebration of the year. The name says exactly what it is: in Tibetan, lo means “year” and sar means “new.” Homes are scrubbed, debts are settled, old quarrels are put down, and prayer flags that have faded through a hard year are pulled down and strung up fresh against the wind.

There is no single “Losar”

Travellers often assume Losar is one date on the calendar. It is not. Several of Nepal’s Himalayan peoples celebrate their own new year, each on its own day, each with its own name — a reminder of how many distinct cultures share these mountains.

Tamu Losar, the Gurung new year, falls on the 15th of Poush and turns over a twelve-year animal cycle much like the wider Tibetan zodiac. Sonam Losar, kept by the Tamang, arrives some weeks ahead of the Tibetan reckoning. Gyalpo Losar — the “king’s new year” of the Sherpa and Tibetans — is the one most trekkers picture, tied to the first day of the lunisolar Tibetan calendar and unfolding over fifteen days, with the main celebrations in the first three. Because all of these follow the moon, the Gregorian dates move each year; in 2025, for example, Gyalpo Losar began at the end of February. For that reason we do not fix a single date here — the exact day is set by the lunar calendar and confirmed closer to the time.

How the new year is welcomed

The preparations are as meaningful as the day itself. Houses are cleaned from top to bottom to sweep out the residue of the old year. Auspicious signs — the sun, the moon — are painted in flour, and branches of juniper, cedar and rhododendron are burned as fragrant incense to purify the home. Families make an effort to clear debts and mend arguments before the year turns, so the new one begins with a clean slate.

Then comes the food and the symbolism. Households fry kapse, crisp twists of dough stacked high for guests, and prepare guthuk, a hearty soup eaten in the run-up to the new year. A brew called changkol is made from chhaang, the local barley beer. Many families build a phyemar — a wooden box heaped with roasted barley flour and grain — and shape a decorative sheep’s head from coloured butter, both offerings for prosperity in the year ahead. In the monasteries, monks lead prayers honouring Palden Lhamo, the fierce protector-deity of the dharma.

The masked dances of the monasteries

For many visitors the abiding memory of a Himalayan Buddhist festival is the cham — the masked, costumed dance performed by monks to the crash and drone of Tibetan horns, drums and cymbals. Cham is far more than spectacle. It is understood as a moving meditation and an offering, a form of moral teaching about compassion, and a source of spiritual merit for everyone who watches. The dancers, hidden behind vivid carved masks and heavy brocade robes, act out episodes from the life of Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) and other saints. In the celebrated Black Hat dance, the dancers mark the defeat of a tyrant — a vivid enactment of good overcoming evil.

Early Western travellers, unsettled by the wrathful masks, called these “devil dances.” The name says more about the observers than the ritual: what looks fearsome is, to the community, protective and profoundly sacred. Around Losar and through the winter festival season, gompas across the Buddhist Himalaya fill with these dances, drawing families down from scattered villages to watch together.

Losar in Nepal’s trekking country

Losar falls squarely in the Himalayan winter, the season when the high trails are at their quietest and clearest. In the Khumbu below Everest, in Langtang, and across the Tamang and Gurung hills, it is the moment the monasteries come alive — prayer flags snapping in cold blue air, juniper smoke rising, drums carrying across the valley. For anyone drawn to the culture as much as the climbs, it is one of the richest times to be in the mountains. To understand the people whose festival this is, read our companion pieces on the culture of the Sherpa people and who the Sherpa really are.

If a winter trek through this living Buddhist landscape appeals, our team in Kathmandu can help you plan the route and time it around the mountain festival calendar — just get in touch and tell us what you would like to see.

Cover photo: Wikimedman via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Section photos: Dinesh lens via Pexels (Pexels licence); sagar sintan via Pexels (Pexels licence); Karma Samten via Pexels (Pexels licence); Christian Cavero Pacco via Pexels (Pexels licence).

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