Census 2027
India's next census is scheduled for 2027. It will be the first count since 2011 — and the first thing on this site that replaces a number rather than adding one.
Placeholder. Written from the schedule as announced by the Government of India; census timetables move, and this one has already moved once. Check the announced dates against censusindia.gov.in before treating anything here as current, and update the page as the programme firms up.
Two phases, two reference dates
The census is to be run in two phases — houselisting first, then population enumeration — with a reference date of 1 March 2027 for most of the country. Snow-bound areas of Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are to be enumerated earlier, against a reference date of 1 October 2026.
It is also to be the first Indian census collected digitally rather than on paper, and the first since 1931 to enumerate caste.
Why 2011 data is still the latest
The 2021 census was postponed and never held, which is why a site about Indian population data in 2026 is still publishing figures counted in 2011. That gap is unusually long by Indian standards — the census had run every ten years since 1881.
It is also the reason this site refuses to display projected current-year numbers. Sixteen years of extrapolation compounds into a figure with no measurement behind it. See the Methodology.
What changes here when it lands
Census results are published in stages over months — provisional totals first, then the Primary Census Abstract that this site is built on. Census360 will move to the new abstract when that stage is released, not when the first headline totals appear, so that state, district and town figures stay drawn from one consistent source.
District boundaries will have changed considerably since 2011, so a good deal of the work will be matching new districts to old ones rather than loading numbers.