Boishakhi Mela
celebration of the Bengali New Year
The Boishakhi Mela (Bengali: বৈশাখী মেলা, romanized: Boishakhi Mela, lit. 'Fair of Boishakh') is a Bengali celebration (mela) which takes place outside of Bangladesh. It is celebrated by the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada as well as many other countries with significant Bangladeshi populations.
In London, it takes place across the area of Banglatown in Tower Hamlets. The festival runs through Brick Lane to Weavers Fields and Allen Gardens in Bethnal Green. The event is a celebration of the Bengali New Year, with musical and cultural events held. It is the largest open-air Asian festival in Europe and the largest Bengali festival outside of Bangladesh. After the Notting Hill Carnival, it is the second-largest street festival in the United Kingdom attracting over 80,000 visitors from across the country. Although the Bengali New Year falls on 14 April (Pohela Boishakh in the Bengali calendar), the festival is held in the second weekend of May on a Sunday to avoid the period of higher risk of rain during the month of April. Having started in 1997, the 10th anniversary of the mela was celebrated in 2007.
History
The Boishakhi Mela was launched in Banglatown located in London's Tower Hamlets borough - the most populated Bangladeshi area outside of Bangladesh.
The public source identifies “Boishakhi Mela” as celebration of the Bengali New Year. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Boishakhi, Mela and celebration.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4938487. Authority coordinates are 51.523, -0.070. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boishakhi Mela” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.