Budget 2026 Date: The Union Budget 2026 is expected to be presented on February 1, which falls on a Sunday, with the government unlikely to alter the schedule despite the Budget Session dates of Parliament
yet to be formally announced, CNBC-TV18 reported, citing sources.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting her eighth consecutive Union Budget, which will also be the 80th Budget since Independence.
According to the report, preparations for the annual Budget exercise are moving ahead with February 1 as the scheduled date. Traditionally, the Union Budget is tabled on February 1 each year to allow sufficient time for parliamentary scrutiny and implementation from the start of the financial year.
Presenting the Budget on a weekend would not be unprecedented. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had presented the Budget 2025 on a Saturday, while former finance minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budgets of 2015 and 2016 on February 28, both Saturdays.
If the schedule holds, Sitharaman will also create history by becoming the first finance minister to present nine consecutive Union Budgets, further cementing her position among India’s longest-serving finance ministers. This would bring her closer to the record held by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who presented a total of 10 Budgets across two stints — six between 1959 and 1964, and four between 1967 and 1969.
Among other recent finance ministers, P Chidambaram had presented nine Budgets, while Pranab Mukherjee presented eight Budgets during their respective tenures under different prime ministers.
Sitharaman was appointed India’s first full-time woman finance minister in 2019, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s return to power for a second term. She continued to hold the finance portfolio after the Modi government secured a third consecutive term in 2024.
An official announcement on the dates of the Budget Session of Parliament is still awaited.
Since 2017, the Union Budget has been presented on February 1 to allow faster passage of the Finance Bill and ensure smoother implementation from April 1, the start of the financial year. In both 2020 and 2025, Sitharaman presented the Budget on February 1, which happened to fall on Saturdays.
If the Budget is indeed presented on Sunday, February 1, 2026, it would mark the first such instance since the date change in 2017, and add another first to Sitharaman’s record, matching Morarji Desai’s tally of eight Budgets, but doing so consecutively, under one Prime Minister and two successive governments.
