Nowruz is the Persian New Year, celebrated for over 3,000 years across Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and communities throughout the world - including a vibrant and growing diaspora right here in the UK. In 2026, Nowruz falls on 20 March: the exact moment of the spring equinox, when day and night are equal in length and the world tips toward light.
It is one of the oldest continuously observed celebrations on earth. UNESCO recognised Nowruz as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, and more than 300 million people observe it each year. Growing up, I watched my family prepare for Nowruz weeks in advance. The house would be cleaned from top to bottom - a tradition called khane tekani, or "shaking the house." New clothes were laid out. And then, slowly, the Haft Seen table would take shape.
Why Does Nowruz Fall on the Spring Equinox?
The word Nowruz means "new day" in Persian: now meaning new, ruz meaning day. Its roots stretch back to at least 550 BCE, embedded in the ancient Zoroastrian calendar and later refined by the astronomer-poet Omar Khayyam in the eleventh century.
The connection to the spring equinox is deliberate and profound. Nowruz is not fixed to a specific date in the Gregorian calendar - it moves slightly each year to align with the precise astronomical moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator. In 2026, that moment falls on 20 March. For Persian families, this is the new year: not midnight on 1 January, but the earth's own turning point.
It anchors the celebration in something older than any calendar - the rhythm of the natural world itself. This is why Nowruz has survived empires, invasions, and millennia: it is rooted not in politics or religion, but in the earth's own turning. Even during periods when it was suppressed, Persian communities found ways to quietly observe it. That resilience says everything about what it means to those who celebrate it.
The Haft Seen Table
The heart of Nowruz is the Haft Seen: a ceremonial spread set at home in the days before the new year. Haft means seven; seen is the letter "S" in Persian. Seven items, each beginning with the letter sin, are arranged on a table or cloth - each one carrying its own symbolism for the year ahead.
Here are the seven:
- Sabzeh - Sprouting wheat or lentil grass, grown at home in the weeks leading up to Nowruz. It represents rebirth and the renewal of nature. The shoots are tended carefully, and on the thirteenth day after Nowruz, they are thrown into running water to carry away any lingering bad luck.
- Samanu - A rich, sweet pudding made from germinated wheat, simmered slowly overnight in a communal act of preparation. It symbolises abundance and fertility.
- Senjed - Dried oleaster fruit, silver-grey and sweet, placed on the table to represent love.
- Sir - Garlic, a symbol of medicine and good health. Its pungency is a reminder to look after the body in the year ahead.
- Sib - A polished red apple, representing beauty and vitality. Usually the finest apple in the house.
- Somaq - Dried sumac berries, deep red like a winter sunrise, representing patience: the willingness to wait for good things to arrive in their own time.
- Serkeh - Vinegar, aged and sharp, symbolising wisdom and the kind of patience that only comes with years.
Beyond the seven, families often add a mirror (ayneh) for reflection and clarity; goldfish swimming in a glass bowl (mahi) for life and energy; decorated eggs for fertility; candles for light and warmth; hyacinths in full bloom for the fragrance of spring; and a copy of the Quran, the Divan of Hafez, or the Shahnameh - the great Persian Book of Kings.
Each family's table is a little different. That is part of its beauty.
The Moment of Tahvil
Tahvil is the Persian word for the precise second the year changes. Families gather around the Haft Seen table well in advance. The candles are lit. Incense is burned. Everyone is dressed in new clothes - a tradition representing a clean start.
Then comes the waiting. The countdown. And at the exact moment of Tahvil - calculated by astronomers to the second - the room goes quiet. Elders say prayers. Some families read poetry. Children sit upright, trying to look patient, watching for the handing-out of eidi: gifts of new banknotes or sweets pressed into palms as blessings for the year.
The moment passes. The house erupts. Visits to family begin. For the next thirteen days, Nowruz continues with meals, trips, and the slow unwinding of celebration.
The Nowruz Table Through the Eyes of a Jewellery Designer
When I look at a Haft Seen table now, I see it differently than I did as a child. I see composition and balance, symbol and weight - the same considerations I bring to designing a piece of jewellery. The mirror placed alongside the candles creates a doubling of light, the way a well-cut facet catches the room. The goldfish in their bowl are the most alive thing in the space. The decorated eggs are the oldest form of adorned object.
Persian decorative arts have always understood that objects carry meaning. A bowl is not just a bowl. A thread of gold is not just metal. This is the tradition Silux London draws from - a design language rooted in Persian symbolism, executed in the craft of British fine jewellery. You can read more about how this shaped our identity in the story of the Silk Road name behind Silux London.
Nowruz Traditions: What Happens During the Thirteen Days
Nowruz is not a single day - it is a season. The celebration runs for thirteen days, each with its own rhythm.
In the first days, families visit the elders. Grandparents receive the first calls. Uncles and aunts open their doors. Children collect eidi from every house - the new banknotes, the sweets, occasionally something more lasting. In some families, a piece of gold jewellery is given as eidi to mark significant years: a girl's first Nowruz as a married woman, a boy's entrance into adulthood. Gold has always been the language of permanence in Persian culture.
The middle days are for travel. Many Iranian families take the opportunity to visit the north of the country - the Caspian coast, the green forests of Gilan and Mazandaran. In the UK diaspora, this translates into gathering in one city or another, hosting large meals, and keeping the thread of connection alive across distance.
On the thirteenth day - Sizdah Bedar, literally "thirteen out-of-doors" - the celebration ends with a picnic in nature. The sabzeh grown for the Haft Seen table is thrown into running water, carrying with it any remaining bad luck. It is a joyful, slightly chaotic day, with families sprawled across parks and riverbanks across Iran and wherever Persians have settled.
In the UK, Sizdah Bedar is observed in parks across London, Birmingham, Manchester, and wherever the diaspora has gathered. You will find picnic rugs and samovars and the smell of ash reshteh - a thick noodle soup eaten on Sizdah Bedar specifically for good fortune.
Traditional Nowruz Foods
Food is inseparable from Nowruz. The table at the moment of Tahvil is followed by days of cooking and sharing.
Sabzi Polo Mahi is the Nowruz meal: herb-studded rice served with white fish - a dish eaten at the exact moment of the new year in homes across Iran. The green of the herbs mirrors the sabzeh; the fish echoes the mahi in the goldfish bowl. Everything is connected.
Ash Reshteh - the thick noodle soup - is eaten on Sizdah Bedar. The noodles represent the threads of fate, and stirring the pot is said to help untangle the knots of the coming year. It is one of the oldest dishes in Persian cuisine, rich with legumes and herbs and dried kashk.
Reshteh Polo - noodle rice - appears at Nowruz tables across the thirteen days. Khoresh Mast - a yoghurt-based stew with saffron and herbs - is a festive dish from Isfahan. Kuku Sabzi, the herb frittata, is eaten as a symbol of spring growth. Noghl and naan berenji - sugar-coated almonds and rice flour biscuits - are the sweets pressed into the hands of visitors.
Saffron is everywhere. It threads through Persian cooking the way gold threads through Persian jewellery: both are luxury materials made humble by tradition, present at every significant moment.
How Nowruz Is Observed Around the World
Nowruz is not a uniquely Iranian celebration, though it finds its deepest roots there. It is observed across Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as among Kurdish communities in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. It is also observed by Zoroastrian communities in India - the Parsis - who carry the pre-Islamic Persian calendar forward to the present day.
The United Nations officially recognised Nowruz in 2010 as an International Day. March 21st is now the International Day of Nowruz, acknowledging the celebration as a symbol of peace and solidarity between peoples.
In the UK, the Persian community - one of the most educated and culturally active diaspora communities in Europe - marks Nowruz with increasing visibility. Universities host Nowruz nights. Cultural organisations commission art and performances. Community centres open their doors. London's Iranian community has made Nowruz events a fixture of the city's cultural calendar, and cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, and Glasgow have growing Persian communities who observe it with the same warmth.
Nowruz Gifts and the Role of Gold
Eidi - the New Year gift - is central to Nowruz. For children, it is new banknotes. For adults, it is something more considered. And across centuries of Persian culture, gold has been the gift of choice for the significant moments: weddings, births, Nowruz.
Gold in Persian culture is not simply precious metal. It carries protection, blessing, and continuity. A gold coin given at Nowruz is called a seke and has been exchanged between Persian families for centuries - sometimes ancient coins, sometimes new minted ones, but always gold. A gold bangle given to a daughter at Nowruz is the kind of object she will still have in fifty years, still wearing it on the same wrist, still thinking of that morning.
This is why fine jewellery makes the most meaningful Nowruz gift: not because it is expensive, but because it is permanent. It holds the memory of the moment it was given. It travels forward in time with the person who receives it.
Our Nowruz gift guide for 2026 explores specific pieces suited to different relationships and budgets. If you are looking for something with deeper bespoke symbolism, our bespoke service can help you design a piece around a specific element of the celebration.
How Nowruz 2026 Is Celebrated in the UK
Nowruz 2026 UK communities will mark the occasion across every major city - London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow. Concerts, exhibitions, community meals, and public events are held in the weeks around 20 March. Cultural organisations, universities, and local councils have increasingly recognised and supported Nowruz celebrations as part of the UK's multicultural fabric.
For many in the Iranian, Afghan, and Kurdish diaspora, Nowruz is the most significant celebration of the year. It is a thread connecting people to family, to memory, to a landscape many left behind but never truly left. For those who grew up in the UK, it is often how they stay connected to their heritage - the familiar smell of hyacinths, the sabzeh growing on the windowsill, the family gathered around the table at the moment of Tahvil.
I find that jewellery plays a meaningful role in this. A piece worn at Tahvil, gifted between family members, passed from mother to daughter - these are the objects that hold the weight of belonging. If you are interested in how Persian design has influenced engagement ring traditions in the UK, or in the story of how Persian geometry became the foundation of a design language, you will find those threads throughout Silux London's work.
The Bahar Collection - Nowruz Jewellery Inspired by Persian Spring
The Bahar Collection is my response to Nowruz 2026. Eight pieces in 18ct yellow gold, each inspired by a symbol from the Haft Seen table and the broader ritual of Persian spring. Bahar is the Persian word for spring - the season Nowruz brings in, the season these pieces are made for.
The Sabzeh Pendant takes its form from the young wheat shoots grown for the table: slender, upright, reaching toward light. Cast in 18ct yellow gold, it is one of those pieces that reads as abstract to those who do not know the reference, and completely legible to those who do.
The Tahvil Ring is designed to be worn at the moment of the year's turning - the pivot point between what was and what will be. It is a statement ring with an architectural presence, built around a central form that echoes the sun's movement across the celestial equator.
The Mahi Brooch draws on the goldfish swimming in their bowl on the Haft Seen table. Goldfish as motifs appear throughout Persian decorative arts - in tilework, in miniature paintings, in embroidery. Our Mahi Brooch distils that tradition into a contemporary sculptural form.
The Ayneh Pendant reflects the mirror placed beside the candles. Persian mirrors have always been more than functional objects: they appear in poetry (Hafez, Rumi), in architecture (the mirrored halls of Shiraz's Narenjestan-e Ghavam), and in folklore as objects of truth-telling. This pendant captures that reflective quality in polished gold.
The Sofreh Earrings are named for the cloth on which the Haft Seen table is laid. The sofreh is itself a sacred object in Persian culture - used for weddings, for Nowruz, for significant meals. These earrings reference the geometric embroidery patterns that often adorn traditional sofreh textiles.
The Haftsin Bracelet - set with seven gemstones - carries the number at the heart of the tradition. Seven stones, each selected for its symbolic resonance with one of the Haft Seen items: green peridot for sabzeh, citrine for samanu's warmth, white topaz for serkeh's clarity, deep red garnet for somaq, pale aquamarine for sir, carnelian for sib's blush, and blush sapphire for senjed.
Each piece in the Bahar Collection is made to order, crafted with the precision of British fine jewellery and the symbolism of Persian heritage. Prices start from £895. You can explore the full Bahar Collection here.
How Silux London Celebrates Nowruz Through Design
For me, Nowruz is not just a holiday I observe. It is the creative engine behind some of the most meaningful work I do. Every year, as the days lengthen and the light shifts, I find myself returning to the same well of inspiration: the symbols of the Haft Seen, the colours of a Persian spring, the geometry of renewal that runs through three thousand years of tradition.
The Bahar Collection was the first full expression of this. But the influence of Nowruz runs through everything Silux London makes. The colour palette of my work, the emphasis on natural motifs, the recurring theme of cycles and transitions, all of these come from growing up in a culture that treats the spring equinox as the most important moment of the year.
Design as Cultural Practice
When I design a piece inspired by Nowruz, I begin with the source material. Not photographs or Pinterest boards, but the actual traditions. I think about the weight of a sabzeh dish in my mother's hands. I think about the way candlelight moves across the surface of the Haft Seen mirror. I think about the specific green of sprouted wheat against a white cloth, and how that green might translate into a peridot set in warm yellow gold.
This process is slow and personal. It is not about applying Persian motifs to jewellery as decoration. It is about understanding what those motifs mean, emotionally and culturally, and finding a three-dimensional form that carries that meaning faithfully. A Mahi Brooch is not a goldfish pin. It is an object that holds the memory of watching goldfish circle in a glass bowl on the Haft Seen table, the way the light refracted through the water, the way the room held its breath at Tahvil.
Nowruz as an Annual Creative Cycle
I have begun treating Nowruz as an annual design moment for Silux London. Each year, I plan to release new pieces or revisit existing ones with new materials and variations. This mirrors the spirit of Nowruz itself: the same celebration, renewed each year, always familiar and always fresh. The Haft Seen table my family sets in 2026 is not the same as the one we set in 1996, but it carries the same meaning and the same love.
For 2026, the Bahar Collection launched on the day of Tahvil itself, 20 March. Future Nowruz releases may include new interpretations of Haft Seen symbols, pieces inspired by specific Nowruz foods or rituals, or collaborative designs created with other Persian artists and makers in the UK. The goal is to build a body of work that, over time, becomes a comprehensive expression of what Nowruz means in contemporary jewellery.
An Invitation
If Nowruz is part of your life, or if the ideas behind it speak to you, I would love to create something that honours that connection. Whether it is a piece from the Bahar Collection, a bespoke commission inspired by a specific Nowruz memory, or simply a conversation about what Persian heritage means in British fine jewellery today, the door is always open. Nowruz is about new beginnings, and every piece of jewellery is a new beginning of its own.
Persian Jewellery in the UK: A Growing Tradition
There is a moment happening in British fine jewellery. Persian design - long present in museum collections, in the pattern libraries of textile designers, in the geometry of Islamic architecture - is finding its way into contemporary jewellery at the hands of designers with a direct personal connection to it.
This is not Orientalism. It is not surface-level cultural borrowing. It is designers who grew up eating ash reshteh on Sizdah Bedar, who remember the smell of hyacinths and the weight of a gold seke pressed into their hands at Tahvil - bringing that lived experience into the objects they make.
Silux London is part of that tradition. So is the broader story of Persian geometry in contemporary jewellery design - a design language that stretches from the tilework of Isfahan to the engagement rings being made today in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter.
If Nowruz resonates with you - whether you are part of the diaspora, or simply drawn to what it represents - we would be glad to help you find a piece that carries that meaning forward. Get in touch with us here.
