FY 2026-27, FY 2027-28: What Every Financial Year Label Actually Means

India's financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March, and it never lines up with the calendar year, which is exactly why "FY26" or "FY 2025-26" trips people up. Two different years are always in play at once, and the shorthand people actually type into Google ("FY26", "FY27", "FY 25-26") doesn't always make it obvious which twelve months are meant. This page exists to answer that directly: pick your label, get the dates, done.

The Rule Behind Every Label

A financial year always starts on 1 April and ends on the following 31 March. It's written as two consecutive calendar years, and the shorthand drops the century and the first year's digits: FY 2026-27 is commonly shortened to FY26-27, FY 2026-27, or just FY27, depending on whether the writer is referencing the year the period starts or the year it ends. That inconsistency is the actual source of confusion, not the underlying rule, which is fixed and simple once you know which convention is being used. On this site, and in most Indian tax and accounting contexts, FY followed by a single two-digit number generally refers to the year the period ends in, so "FY26" means the year ending 31 March 2026, i.e. 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. Not everyone follows this consistently, which is exactly why a direct lookup table is more useful than memorising a rule.

Financial Year Lookup Table

Today's date falls within FY 2026-27, which started on 1 April 2026 and runs through 31 March 2027. If you're trying to work out the "current financial year" at any point in the year, the shortcut is this: if today's date is on or after 1 April, the financial year is the one starting this calendar year and ending next calendar year. If today's date is in January, February, or March, the financial year started the previous calendar year and ends this one.

Why FY 2026-27 Doesn't Have an "Assessment Year" in the Old Sense

Under the Income Tax Act, 1961, the year income was earned was called the "previous year", and it was assessed and taxed in the following "assessment year", a one-year lag that confused almost everyone outside the profession. The Income Tax Act, 2025, effective 1 April 2026, collapses that two-label system into a single "tax year" referring to the same 1 April to 31 March period in which the income is actually earned. So FY 2025-26 is the last full year assessed the old way (as AY 2026-27), and FY 2026-27 onward is simply "Tax Year 2026-27", with no separate assessment-year label needed. The underlying twelve-month period hasn't moved at all. Only the terminology has, and only from FY 2026-27 onward.

Financial Year vs Calendar Year: The Practical Difference

• A calendar year runs 1 January to 31 December. India's financial year runs 1 April to 31 March, so the two overlap but never coincide.
• Salary slips, Form 16, TDS certificates, and ITR forms are all issued for a financial year, not a calendar year, so a payslip dated December 2026 belongs to FY 2026-27, not "2026" as a standalone year.
• Tax-saving investments (80C, health insurance, and the rest) must be made before 31 March to count for that financial year, which is why investment activity spikes every March rather than every December.
• A financial year is sometimes called an "accounting year" or "fiscal year" in everyday use. For most purposes in India these mean the same 1 April to 31 March period.
• India isn't unusual in avoiding the calendar year for this purpose, the UK's individual tax year also starts in early April, and Australia runs July to June, but the specific dates differ by country, so this table applies to India specifically.

Quick Answers to the Way People Actually Ask This