Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti 2026 Date
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti 2026 is on Friday, 6 March 2026, on Tritiya tithi.
Dates are for India (IST). Tithi timings for your city are on the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti page.
About Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti
Two calendars, one king: Maharashtra marks Shivaji's birth on 19 February (Julian, 1630), while traditionalists keep the tithi — Phalguna Krishna Tritiya — that Lokmanya Tilak defended in a 1916 paper. Flowers are laid at his hill forts, especially Shivneri near Junnar, where he was born.
Shivaji took the title Chhatrapati — 'lord of the umbrella' — only at his coronation on 6 June 1674 at Raigad fort. The ceremony was contested: local Brahmins refused to crown a non-Kshatriya, so officers were sent to trace his lineage to the Sisodia Rajputs, and the Varanasi pandit Gaga Bhatt was called in to officiate. To mark the new sovereignty he launched a fresh calendar era, the Raj Shaka, and minted a gold coin called the Shivarai hon. He also set up the Ashtapradhan, a cabinet of eight ministers with Sanskrit titles covering revenue, records, defence, justice, religion and foreign affairs. Most Jayanti processions therefore garland him not just as a warrior but as the founder of a self-ruled Hindavi Swarajya — the moment a Maratha chief became, on his own terms, a king.
