FM Sitharaman may present Budget 2026 on Sunday, February 1: Sources

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman may present the Union Budget for 2026 on Sunday, February 1, government sources told India Today on Tuesday. The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) is likely to take a final call on the Budget Session dates at a meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

According to officials, the CCPA meeting will decide both the schedule of the Budget Session of Parliament and the exact date on which the Union Budget will be presented this year, amid uncertainty as February 1 falls on a Sunday.

Government sources indicated that the Budget Session may begin on January 28 with the President's address to a joint sitting of Parliament. The Economic Survey is expected to be tabled on January 29.

January 30 and 31 are likely to be holidays, paving the way for the Union Budget to be presented on February 1 (Sunday), if approved by the committee.

Preparatory work for Budget 2026 is already underway. Pre-Budget consultations were held between October 9, 2025, and mid-November. Budget Estimates for 2026–27 and Revised Estimates for 2025–26 have been provisionally finalised.

The finance ministry is also in the process of gathering GDP estimates from the Central Statistical Office, which will feed into the final fiscal calculations ahead of the Budget.

Last year, Sitharaman presented her eighth consecutive Union Budget, equalling former Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s record of ten Budgets delivered across two tenures as finance minister.

India's Budget tradition dates back to November 26, 1947, when R. K. Shanmukham Chetty presented the first Budget of independent India. Over the decades, leaders such as Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram have shaped the country’s economic policy through successive Budgets.

Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman finance minister, also holds the global record among women for the highest number of Budget presentations.

(With inputs from Himanshu Mishra)