Is Rose Day a public holiday?

No. It is an unofficial cultural observance, not a public or government holiday, so schools, banks, and offices stay open.

Is Rose Day the same as World Rose Day on September 22?

No. The romantic Rose Day is February 7, while World Rose Day on September 22 is a separate, solemn observance for the welfare of cancer patients honoring Melinda Rose.

What do the different rose colors mean?

In the language of flowers, red roses signal love and passion, yellow stands for friendship, pink expresses admiration and gratitude, and white suggests purity and respect.

Rose Day

Next celebratedSunday, February 7, 2027

A romantic observance on February 7, the first day of India's Valentine's Week, when people exchange roses to express love, friendship, admiration, and gratitude.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated February 26, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEFebruary 7

OBSERVED INIndia

CATEGORYRelationships

SUBCATEGORYRomance

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~1990s

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A week of love that opens with one flower.

No source documents a founder or a formal establishment record for Rose Day. It emerged in India in the 1990s as the opening day of Valentine's Week, a commercial extension of Valentine's Day that spread as global commerce and consumer culture grew after the country's 1991 economic liberalization.

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INTRO

Why a single bloom opens an eight-day calendar of love

Ask people to buy a flower for someone they love and they reach for the same one. In an industry survey of Valentine's flower buyers, 83% bought roses. Rose Day, on February 7, is built on that agreement.

The day is the first stop on India's Valentine's Week, the eight-day run from February 7 to February 14. People hand roses to partners, friends, and family, and the color does the talking: red for love, yellow for friendship, pink for thanks.

What the calendar leaves out is who decided any of this. Rose Day has no founder on record and no document that set it down. It is a young observance resting on a very old idea, that a flower can say what a person cannot.

BY THE NUMBERS

Rose Day by the Numbers

250M+: Roses grown for Valentine's Day
65%: Rose buyers who chose red, 2022
$2.9B: US Valentine's flower spending, 2025
40%: US consumers who buy Valentine's flowers

ORIGINS

Rose Day history

INTRODUCTION

The rose came loaded with meaning long before anyone marked a day for it. To understand why February 7 leans on a single flower, start with the centuries when flowers were a written language.

CHAPTER 01

The flower learned to talk

In the early 1700s, the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu sent letters home from Constantinople describing a Turkish habit she found charming: sending coded messages through flowers and small objects. Her account helped plant the idea in the Western imagination.

Around 1819, a French book pushed it further. "Le Langage des Fleurs" was the first work devoted entirely to the language of flowers, and it became the basis for the British flower-language guides that followed.

The fashion peaked in the Victorian era, from 1837 to 1901, when a carefully chosen bouquet could carry a message too bold to speak. That is the period that fixed the red rose as the sign of love, the meaning Rose Day still trades on today.

CHAPTER 02

How a week of love arrived in India

The observance itself is recent. Until the 1980s, Valentine's Day was marked by only a handful of families in India.

That changed in the 1990s. Global commerce nudged the country toward chocolate, flowers, and teddy bears, and Valentine's romance moved from the margins to the mainstream. Somewhere in that shift, the single day stretched into Valentine's Week, with Rose Day as its opening.

No record names who first drew the line at February 7 or who decided roses would lead. The day grew the way a custom does, through shops, schools, and repetition, and not through a proclamation. By the late 1990s it was established enough to draw a backlash, with right-wing groups calling these tokens of romance foreign to Indian culture.

So the history splits in two. The rose's meaning is old and well documented. The holiday that gathers people around it is new, undocumented, and still being written.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Flowers as a coded language

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters from Constantinople describe sending messages through flowers and small objects.

First book on flower language

France's 'Le Langage des Fleurs' becomes the first work devoted entirely to floriography and shapes later British guides.

Victorian flower craze peaks

The language of flowers reaches its height, entrenching the red rose as the symbol of love.

Valentine's Week takes hold in India

Global commerce pushes Valentine's romance into the mainstream, and the Feb 7 to Feb 14 week forms with Rose Day first.

Roses ship by the crore

Bengaluru exports about Rs 4.4 crore of flowers for the Valentine's season as rose demand peaks.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love Rose Day

ECONOMY

One day of roses underwrites months of work for growers.

Around Bengaluru, India's rose hub, auction volumes climb from about 5 lakh stems a day to 8 to 10 lakh during the Valentine's season, and prices rise with them. A single day of gifting underwrites months of work for growers and exporters.

LANGUAGE

It keeps an old code alive

Rose Day runs on the language of flowers, a Victorian-era system that assigned a precise meaning to each color. The custom lets a gift say something exact without a single word.

RITUAL

It sets the tempo for a week

As the first of eight named days, Rose Day opens Valentine's Week and eases people into it with the lowest-stakes gesture. A rose asks less than a proposal, so the week starts gently before it builds.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate Rose Day

Pick the color for the relationship

Match the rose to the person rather than defaulting to red for everyone. Choosing the shade on purpose turns a generic bouquet into a specific message.

GIVE

Give roses beyond romance

Hand one to a friend, a parent, or a colleague you appreciate. Rose Day covers friendship and gratitude, not only couples.

LEARN

Learn the language of flowers

Read up on what different blooms and colors traditionally mean before you buy. Knowing the code makes the gift land harder.

BUY

Buy from a local grower

Source your roses from a neighborhood florist or farm rather than a big chain. Demand around Rose Day is what sustains small growers through the season.

PRESS

Press a rose to keep the day

Flatten and dry a single bloom between heavy pages to preserve it. A pressed rose outlasts the bouquet and marks the date.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about Rose Day

There is a second, very different Rose Day

A separate World Rose Day falls on September 22 and honors the welfare of cancer patients, in memory of Melinda Rose, a 12-year-old Canadian who died in 1996. It shares only the name.

A government once pitched a rival to Valentine's Day

In February 2023 India's Animal Welfare Board urged citizens to mark February 14 as Cow Hug Day instead, then withdrew the appeal four days later after public ridicule.

India's rose belt is growing fast

Production around Bengaluru, the country's rose hub, has been expanding by roughly 15% a year as Valentine's demand climbs, turning a single gifting day into a steady agricultural bet.

Yellow roses are a friend-zone classic

In the language of flowers, yellow means friendship rather than romance, so a yellow rose on Rose Day is a deliberately platonic choice.

Red still outsells every other rose color

When buyers pick a Valentine's rose, red wins by a wide margin over pink and white, a preference inherited straight from the Victorian code that tied red to love.

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