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Highlights:

• Ganesh Chaturthi 2026 begins on 14 September and runs for ten days, ending with Anant Chaturdashi on 23 September.
• The festival's closing ritual, immersing a clay idol of Lord Ganesha in water, is restricted in UK rivers and lakes under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Water Resources Act 1991.
• British Hindu communities have spent two decades building workarounds, from Environment Agency-permitted river sites to eco-friendly idols designed to dissolve safely at home.

Every Ganesh Chaturthi ends the same way. Ten days after Lord Ganesha's clay idol is welcomed into a home or temple, it's carried out in procession and lowered into water, so that he can begin his journey back. In Maharashtra, that means the Arabian Sea. In Britain, it means the Thames isn't legally yours to use that way, and the diaspora has been quietly solving that exact problem for twenty years.

Why can't you just do it in the river?

Because British law doesn't make an exception for it. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Water Resources Act 1991 both restrict depositing solid material into protected waterways, and that applies to clay idols and religious offerings just as much as anything else, regardless of intent. The Thames, in particular, is treated as a protected waterway, meaning any activity that could affect water quality or wildlife needs formal authorisation from the Environment Agency and, in London specifically, the Port of London Authority as well.