Who created World Biryani Day?

LT Foods created the July observance, instituting it in 2022 and filing to trade mark the name the following year. For the October 11 date, no founder, establishing act or reason for the date has been documented.

Is World Biryani Day a public holiday?

No. It is an unofficial observance with no United Nations recognition and no government proclamation on record, so it is a normal working day.

World Biryani Day

Next celebratedSunday, October 11, 2026

Hyderabad seasons its biryani with coconut and saffron, Mumbai adds fried potatoes and dried plums, and Sindhi cooks reach for prunes and chilies. World Biryani Day puts one date on a dish whose origin still starts fights.

See how to celebrate

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Last updated September 5, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEOctober 11

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYFood

SUBCATEGORYGlobal Cuisines

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~2023

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Distinct from the corporate July biryani day.

No founder, establishing act or reason for the date has been documented for the October 11 observance, which Indian newsrooms have marked since at least 2023. It is distinct from Daawat World Biryani Day, a separate first-Sunday-of-July observance that LT Foods instituted in 2022.

See LT Foods' July day recordvia ltfoods.com

INTRO

93 million orders on one app, and a day nobody signed

World Biryani Day has no founder on record, no establishing act and no documented reason for its date. The name, on the other hand, has an owner in mind.

A company did name a World Biryani Day, just not this one. In 2022 the rice firm LT Foods began holding Daawat World Biryani Day on the first Sunday of July, and the following June it filed to register the words as its own.

The scale explains the appetite for ownership. Indians placed 93 million biryani orders on Swiggy in a single year. A dish at that scale now has two days competing for its name.

ORIGINS

World Biryani Day history

INTRODUCTION

Ask where biryani comes from and you will get a fight. The accounts on the record do not agree, and the disagreement runs through serious food history rather than around it.

Britannica puts the first Indian record of biryani in the Deccan region of the south, which suggests merchants carried it in by sea. That is already an argument with the version most restaurant menus tell.

CHAPTER 01

Three accounts, none of them settled

The food historian Lizzie Collingham places the dish's emergence in Mughal royal kitchens under Akbar, defining it as a synthesis of Persian pilaf and spicier Hindustani rice dishes. Pratibha Karan argues the opposite direction of travel, calling biryani an Indian invention derived from pulao and essentially a southern dish rather than a northern court one. The food writer Vir Sanghvi, reviewing her book, rejects the import story outright, noting the dish was known in India before Babur arrived.

CHAPTER 02

A book that argues with its own jacket

The dispute is visible inside a single volume. Karan's publisher told readers on the jacket flap that biryani originated in the Mughal court, while the author herself will say only that a Mughal origin is widely believed.

CHAPTER 03

The day a rice company built

The modern half of the story is easier to date. In 2022 Goa's food and drugs regulator told the public not to consume or sell several listed batches of basmati rice, among them Daawat lines, after samples were reported as failing the rules on pesticide residues.

Six months later, on the first Sunday of July, LT Foods held its first Daawat World Biryani Day. The following June the company filed two Indian trade mark applications for the words World Biryani Day, in the classes covering advertising services and the running of cultural events. Its own press material later described the celebration as cementing its ownership of the Biryani space.

October 11 has no equivalent paper trail. Indian newsrooms have marked the date since at least 2023, but no filing, announcement or named founder sits behind it.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Awadh's cooks reach Calcutta

The British deposed Wajid Ali Shah, last Nawab of Awadh, and he settled at Metiabruz with the court cooks who carried Awadhi slow-cooking east.

A rice brand names the day

LT Foods instituted Daawat World Biryani Day on the first Sunday of July, the start of an annual brand celebration.

The name goes to the registry

LT Foods filed two Indian trade mark applications for the word mark World Biryani Day, each claiming first use in July of the previous year.

October 11 in the papers

ETV Bharat reported that World Biryani Day is celebrated on October 11 annually across the globe, without naming an originator.

A tenth year at number one

Biryani finished as India's most ordered dish on Swiggy for the tenth consecutive year, ahead of burgers and pizza.

Shah Rukh Khan fronts the fifth edition

LT Foods built its fifth July edition around an AI campaign letting fans appear alongside the actor.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love World Biryani Day

REACH

Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Oman: the dish travelled.

Britannica records biryani varieties in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and Oman, alongside the Sindhi version from southern Pakistan. That is a wider footprint than any single national cuisine can claim, which is what makes a world day for it more than a figure of speech.

LANGUAGE

Even the name is unsettled

Britannica traces biryani to the Farsi phrase birinj biriyan, meaning fried rice. Pratibha Karan rejects the reading of birinj as frying before cooking and prefers it as simply the Persian word for rice.

METHOD

Cooks still argue over how it is made

Kachcha biryani cooks raw marinated meat together with the rice, while pukka cooks the two separately and assembles them. Some purists count only kachcha as the real thing, though most Indian biryanis are pukka.

BY THE NUMBERS

World Biryani Day by the Numbers

365: Tasters at the Guinness record
57.7 million: Chicken biryani orders on Swiggy, 2025
44.2 million: Burger orders on Swiggy, 2025
536: Home cooks in LT Foods' 2025 contest

GOOD TO KNOW

Five regional biryanis and what sets them apart

Hyderabad

Britannica describes Hyderabad's version as goat meat seasoned with coconut and saffron.

Kerala

Rice is fried with shrimp, fish or chicken and savoury spices.

Mumbai

The city's version brings fried potatoes, fried onions and dried plums to the rice.

Muradabadi

From Uttar Pradesh, a spice list running to caraway, garam masala, coriander, black pepper, cinnamon and bay leaves.

Sindhi

From southern Pakistan, tomatoes, prunes and chilies with lamb or goat.

MYTH VS FACT

Common Misconceptions

The myth

Kolkata's biryani carries a potato because an exiled nawab could no longer afford meat.

The truth

The account is disputed. Deepanjan Ghosh writes that contemporary documents do not support the claim that Wajid Ali Shah had fallen on hard times, citing Rosie Llewellyn-Jones's finding that he spent 9,000 rupees a month feeding a menagerie of tigers and leopards, and the Kolkata food writer Poorna Banerjee dates the potato to after the 1950s.

The myth

Timur brought biryani to India when his armies invaded.

The truth

Vir Sanghvi rejects the account on a simple point of evidence: if Timur brought biryani, he brought it from his homeland, and there is no record of biryani existing anywhere outside India in that era.

The myth

Biryani is one of the fiercest dishes in South Asian cooking.

The truth

Britannica says biryani is generally less piquant than curry, and that South Asian chefs treat it as a mild dish well suited to diners sensitive to hot food.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate World Biryani Day

Cook with a regional rice instead of basmati

Swap in Tamil Nadu's seeraga samba or Kerala's jeerakasala, both of which Britannica lists as biryani rices. Seeraga samba grows in Tamil Nadu, and jeerakasala is known in Kerala as Wayanandan kaima.

ORDER

Order a style you have never tried

Muradabadi from Uttar Pradesh and Sindhi from southern Pakistan sit well outside the usual Hyderabad and Lucknow choices. Each is a documented regional style with its own spice set.

HOST

Host a tasting of three styles at once

Guinness recognised a Delhi event that served Lucknow, Kolkata and Hyderabad biryanis to one room. Three pots on one table works on the same principle at home.

READ

Read the case that biryani is Indian

Vir Sanghvi's review of Pratibha Karan's book sets out why he rejects both the Mughal and the Timur import stories. It is a short, blunt introduction to an argument that has never been settled.

CHECK

Check which of the two days you are marking

Two observances share this name and they land in different months. Look up which one your local restaurants and feeds are actually promoting before you post.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know World Biryani Day?

1 / 5

Where does Britannica say biryani was first recorded in India?

Answer

Both dates circulate under the same name. October 11 is the widely listed date and Indian newsrooms have marked it, while LT Foods holds its separate Daawat World Biryani Day on the first Sunday of July, which falls on July 5 in 2026.