Is India's 2026 monsoon in trouble?

What are the odds of a deficient monsoon in 2026?

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) released its updated monsoon forecast on 29 May 2026. The headline is stark: it gives a 60% probability that this year's southwest monsoon will be deficient, meaning total rainfall finishes below 90% of the long-period averagelong-period average (LPA)Think of the LPA as the 'average score' for monsoon rainfall over 50 years (currently 1971-2020). It's the benchmark—like a school's average exam result—used to judge whether a particular year's rain is normal, below, or above. It counts total rainfall from June to September. A season at 100% of LPA means rain exactly equaled that average. It does not tell you about floods or dry spells within the season, only the total.IMD uses LPA percentages to label seasons as normal, below normal, or deficient. The 2026 forecast at 90% of LPA means the season is expected to be 10% below that benchmark, right on the edge of deficient. (LPA). A further 24% probability is assigned to a below-normal season (90–96% of LPA). The chance of a normal or surplus monsoon (above 96% of LPA) is just 16%. In other words, the odds tilt roughly 5-to-1 against a healthy monsoon.

The LPA is the average rainfall over the 1971–2020 period, about 87 cm across India. IMD defines a season as normal when rainfall is within 10% of that average, below normal when it falls 10–4% short, and deficient when the shortfall exceeds 10%. So a 90% LPA is right on the boundary between below normal and deficient. The forecast average of roughly 90% means the season is expected to be just inside the below-normal band, but the probability of slipping into deficient territory is high.

This is a forecast, not a measurement. The model carries an error of about 4–5% of LPA, and the actual outcome will not be known until October. Early June saw a late onset over Kerala and a weak start, but June is historically the most variable month and tells us little about the full four-month season. For now, the numbers signal elevated risk, not a finished story.

Has the forecast moved, and does it mean it is getting worse?

IMD's first-stage forecast in April 2026 had pointed to about 92% of the LPA. By the end of May, as the El Niño signal in the Pacific strengthened, the updated forecast nudged down to about 90%. That two-percentage-point drop may sound small, but it sits well inside the model's typical uncertainty band of 4–5% of LPA. For a monsoon forecast, the direction of change matters more than the precise decimal.

A downward revision in May often reflects a firmed-up El Niño outlook, which historically depresses monsoon performance. The shift from 92% to 90% is a signal that the odds of a deficit have increased, not that the monsoon has suddenly weakened by a specific amount. Think of it like a weather app moving the chance of rain from 80% to 85%, the precise tick is less important than the higher confidence that it might pour.

But hasn't the monsoon always been unpredictable? A 125-year view

If you line up every monsoon season since 1901, you see a long streak of brown, blue, and every shade in between. Years with rainfall below normal appear scattered across the entire 125-year record, not clustered in any one era. The wettest years, like 2025 with a +7.8% departure, and the driest, like 1901 with -13.8%, are part of the same noisy system. The monsoon has no steady long-term trend in the all-India average, it just wobbles.

This historical chaos is a reminder that a below-normal forecast is not a freak event. The monsoon often falls short. A bad year is not a permanent shift. The challenge in 2026 is that a natural wobble may coincide with an El Niño, increasing the odds of a larger deficit. But the historical stripes show that even severe droughts are followed by recoveries, and that the sky has not fallen before.

Does El Niño really ruin India's monsoon? The odds, counted.

El Niño is a warming of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which shifts the tropical rising air eastward and weakens the monsoon's pull over India. Since 1950, 57.7% of El Niño years (15 out of 26) saw the summer monsoon finish below normal, compared with 33.3% in neutral years and just 17.4% in La NiñaLa NiñaThe opposite of El Niño: the same part of the Pacific cools more than usual. This cooling tends to strengthen the winds that pull rain clouds over India, often leading to a wet monsoon. It's like a booster for the monsoon engine.La Niña years serve as a comparison. Only 17.4% of them had below-normal monsoons, showing how much the Pacific state tilts the odds. years. The chance of a truly deficient season (more than 10% short) rises to 30.8% under El Niño, versus only 7.4% in neutral conditions. El Niño roughly doubles the risk of a weak monsoon.

But note the remaining gap: even when El Niño is active, about 42% of the time the monsoon still ends up normal or better. The Pacific Ocean is a heavy thumb on the scale, not a dictator. That gap is where other forces, like the Indian Ocean, come in. For a deeper dive into El Niño's history over India, see our companion piece, what El Niño does to India.

But haven't some El Niño years still brought good rains?

A handful of El Niño monsoons stand as proof that the Pacific does not decide alone. In 1953, rainfall was 10.7% above normal; 1958 finished a stunning 14% above normal; 1983 matched that surplus. Even 1957, with a strong El Niño (ONIONI (Oceanic Niño Index)The ONI is the standard thermometer for El Niño. It measures how much the sea surface in a key part of the Pacific differs from the average. A reading above +0.5°C means El Niño conditions; below -0.5°C means La Niña. It does not measure anything about the monsoon directly, only the Pacific's temperature.The ONI values in the exceptions chart show that even strong El Niño events (like 1957 with an ONI of 1.25) did not ruin the monsoon, underscoring that the Pacific doesn't operate alone. 1.25), saw only a tiny deficit of -0.5%, well inside the normal band. Ten El Niño seasons since 1950 ended near or above normal, nearly half the total.

What made the difference? Often, the Indian Ocean overheated in just the right way. In 1958, for instance, the Indian Ocean DipoleIndian Ocean Dipole (IOD)Picture a seesaw in the Indian Ocean: when the western side (near Africa) is warmer than the east (near Indonesia), it's a positive IOD. That warmth pumps extra moisture into the air, which can feed the monsoon and offset El Niño's drying effect. A negative IOD is the reverse, and often weakens the monsoon.In past El Niño years, a positive IOD helped rescue the monsoon, keeping rain near normal. For 2026, the IOD is forecast neutral, so that usual rescue is missing. (IOD) was sharply negative, yet the monsoon thrived, a reminder that the IOD is not the only player. These exceptions do not erase the heightened risk, but they forbid simple headlines that say El Niño equals drought. The 2026 forecast may tilt toward deficit, but history shows that a surprise surplus is still within the realm of possibility.

Can the Indian Ocean save us? The dipole gamble.

The Indian Ocean Dipole, or IOD, is a temperature seesaw in the ocean south of India. During its positive phase, the western Indian Ocean warms more than the east, sending extra moisture into the monsoon circulation. In past El Niño years, this pattern acted like a shield. When a positive IOD coincided with El Niño, the average monsoon ended with a negligible departure of -0.3% (based on 5 years). When the IOD was neutral or negative, the average departure deepened to -3.9% (21 years), a clear deficit.

For 2026, the worrying news is that IMD forecasts a neutral IOD during the core monsoon months. That means the ocean rescue that softened the blow in many earlier El Niño monsoons is expected to be absent. However, the relationship is not mechanical. Some years with a positive IOD still turned out dry, and some neutral-IOD years managed to stay near normal. The dipole is a gamble, not a guarantee.

Will a weak monsoon make food prices shoot up?

The instinct is to hear "deficient monsoon" and brace for costlier vegetables and dal. But the numbers from past El Niño monsoons refuse to line up neatly. Wholesale food inflation after the monsoon (October to December) has ranged from near zero in 2002 to 23.1% in 1991. The most recent El Niño of 2023, with a modest rainfall deficit of -5.3%, saw food prices rise 7.1%. The worst drought in this record, 2002 with a -20.9% deficit, produced a mere 0.9% food inflation because large public grain stocks held prices down.

Prices answer to many forces: buffer stocks, import policy, global commodity cycles, and the government's ability to move grain where it is needed. A poor monsoon can push prices up, but the link is loose, not mechanical. The 2026 outcome will depend as much on how stocks and trade are managed as on how the rain falls.

If agriculture is only 14% of the economy, why worry?

Agriculture's share of India's gross value added (GVAGVA (gross value added)GVA is the value of output less the cost of materials used up in production. For agriculture, it's the total value of crops, livestock, and related products minus expenses on seeds, fertiliser, and other inputs. Think of it as the net contribution of a sector to the economy. GDP adds taxes on products and subtracts subsidies.Agriculture's share of GVA has fallen to 13.8%, meaning a weak monsoon's direct hit on overall national output is much smaller than in the 1950s. But livelihoods tell a different story.) has shrunk dramatically, from 61.7% at the dawn of planning in 1951 to 13.8% by 2026. A weak monsoon, therefore, no longer sends a large direct jolt through the overall GDP numbers. An identical rainfall shock today leaves a much smaller dent in national output than it would have half a century ago.

Yet agriculture still employed 41.6% of India's workers in 2025, down from 63.1% in 1991 but still a staggering number of livelihoods. This gap between output share and employment share is the central tension. A deficient monsoon may be a small event for GVA, but it is a large event for rural households, for landless labourers, and for the price of a meal on their plates. The economy has diversified, but millions of families still look at the sky every June.

How to read these numbers

Every statistic on this page, unless otherwise noted, comes from the India Meteorological Department's long-range forecast and its historical rainfall archive, supplemented by ENSO and IOD indices from NOAA and WMO, wholesale price data from the RBI, and employment and national accounts estimates from the World Bank and RBI. The 2026 figures are forecast probabilities, not observed outcomes; they are based on IMD's statistical and dynamical models, which carry known margins of error. The historical frequencies, averages, and decade-phase summaries describe past patterns and do not predict 2026 with certainty. The early-season progress is a snapshot as of mid-June and will evolve. The full season answer will only be written in October.