The budget in short
India’s Union Budget 2026–27, unlocked
Every material change from this year's budget, ranked by how much it actually matters — not by press-release prominence. Scheme allocations, customs duty changes, the borrowing and the fiscal deficit, and the dates you have to act on, each one quoted from the official budget documents with its page number.
What’s on this page
Budget highlights
What the Finance Minister actually announced in the Budget Speech, ranked by which part of an ordinary life it lands on rather than by the order it was read out in. Each one opens to the government’s own wording.
Where the money comes from and goes
India’s receipts and expenditure for 2026–27 side by side: total spending, capital expenditure, the fiscal deficit, gross borrowing and who the government borrows it from, plus spending broken out by ministry.
Material changes, ranked
Scheme-by-scheme allocation changes — what went up, what was cut and what is new — sorted by how much money moved as a share of the whole budget rather than by how loudly it was announced.
What gets cheaper and costlier
Every customs duty change in the speech’s annexure, plus the excise and surcharge measures, sorted into duty cut, duty raised and exemption withdrawn — the government’s own classification, not an inference.
Dates to act on
The filing windows, cutoffs, extensions and start dates the budget moved, soonest first, each printed with the sentence in the document that establishes it.
Methodology and sources
Which official documents were read, how much of the page was checked line by line against them, and what the check changed. Every figure carries a quote and a page number.
Union Budget 2026–27: common questions
When was the Union Budget 2026–27 presented?
The Union Budget for the financial year 2026–27 was presented in Parliament on 1 February 2026. It covers the year running from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. Everything on this page is read from the documents tabled that day on indiabudget.gov.in.
What gets cheaper and costlier in the Union Budget 2026–27?
The Prices section lists every customs duty change in the Budget Speech’s own annexure, plus the excise and surcharge measures the annexure has no table for. Direction is the government’s own: cheaper or costlier is decided by which of its tables a row appears in, never inferred. A duty change is not automatically a price change — where the charge falls on an importer or a manufacturer, whether it reaches a shelf price is their decision.
Does this cover income tax, customs duty and GST changes?
Direct tax changes are taken from the Finance Bill and the Memorandum explaining its provisions, and customs and excise duty changes from the duty schedule annexed to the Budget Speech. GST rates are set by the GST Council rather than by the Budget, so they appear only where a budget document itself changes something GST-related.
What are the important dates and deadlines in Budget 2026–27?
The Deadlines section collects the filing windows, cutoffs, start dates and sunset dates the budget moved, soonest first, together with the dates the duty changes begin to apply. A date is collected only where the document puts a word next to it saying what kind of date it is — extended, lapsing, apply by, takes effect — and the government’s own sentence is printed beside every row.
How does Budget Unlocked decide which budget changes matter most?
Material changes are ranked by how much money moved as a share of the whole budget, blended with how much the line moved in proportional terms — so a large scheme growing slightly and a small scheme doubling can both rank. Speech highlights are ranked separately, by which part of an ordinary life they land on. Nothing is ranked by how prominently it was announced.
Where do the figures come from and how are they verified?
From the official documents on indiabudget.gov.in: Budget at a Glance, the Demand for Grants, the Expenditure Budget, the Finance Bill and its Explanatory Memorandum, cross-checked against PRS Legislative Research. Figures are extracted from the published tables by software rather than read off a page by a language model, and each checked figure carries a verbatim quote and page number.
Is Budget Unlocked an official government website?
No. It is an independent digest published by The Credit Compass. The official source is the Ministry of Finance at indiabudget.gov.in, which every figure here is quoted from and links back to. Nothing on this site is tax or investment advice.
Where India’s Union Budget 2026–27 money comes from and goes
The whole budget as two sheets that have to balance: what the government expects to take in, what it plans to pay out, and the gap between them it borrows to cover. Then the same money cut a second time, independently, by which ministry does the spending.
Every rupee, accounted for
Where it comes from
Where it goes
Who the government borrows from
Promised, then revised
Spend by ministry
The same money cut by who spends it rather than by what kind of spending it is — read from the Expenditure Budget, not from the sheet above, so the two are independent views of one budget.
Every material change in the Union Budget 2026–27, ranked
Scheme by scheme: what went up, what was cut, and what is new this year. Ranked by how much money moved as a share of the whole budget, blended with how far the line moved in proportional terms — so a large scheme nudged and a small one doubled can both surface. Filter by category, or by who a change lands on.
No changes in this category.
What gets cheaper and costlier in the Union Budget 2026–27
The part of a budget that reaches a shelf price. Every rate the customs schedule moves, in the direction the government itself filed it under — with the tariff lines it expressly rewrote without changing what anyone pays kept out of the count.
What gets cheaper & costlier
Every duty change in the Budget Speech's own schedule — the part of a budget that reaches a shelf price — plus the export, excise and surcharge measures that move a bill without moving any rate. Direction is the government's: these are the tables it sorted into duty cut, duty raised, and exemption withdrawn.
A duty change is not a price change. Where the charge falls on an importer or a manufacturer rather than on you, whether it reaches the shelf is their decision, not the budget's. And a rate moving is not always a bill moving: this budget rewrites a large part of the tariff schedule expressly without changing what anyone pays, and none of that is listed here as a price change.
No duty changes in this direction.
Union Budget 2026–27 deadlines and dates to act on
A budget is full of dates and almost none of them are deadlines. These are the ones the documents themselves mark as something to do by: extended, lapsing, apply by, takes effect — soonest first, with the sentence that establishes each one beside it.
Dates to act on
The filing windows, cutoffs and start dates the budget moved — and the dates the duty changes on the previous tab actually begin to apply, soonest first. Where the documents state the date a new one replaced, both are shown.
A budget is full of dates and almost none of them are deadlines. Only dates the documents attach to a word saying what kind of date it is — extended, lapsing, apply by, takes effect — are collected here, and the sentence under each one is the government's own. Anything already past on presentation day is dropped, as is the routine start of the tax year that every provision names when nothing unusual is happening.
No dates in this group.
How Budget Unlocked reads and checks the budget
Seven official documents, read directly rather than through a press release. Every figure is pulled out of the published tables by software, re-checked against the sentence it came from, and printed with the page it was found on — including the count of what that check corrected.