Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Served More Than 9 Crore Free Meals in the First Nine Months of 2026, and the Temple's Inscriptions Record Food Endowments Back to the 1400s

The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the board that runs the Venkateswara temple on the Tirumala hill in Andhra Pradesh, served more than 9 crore (90 million) free meals between January and September 2026, the United News of India reported on 7 October 2026, citing TTD. The service averages nearly 1.8 lakh (180,000) meals a day and passes 3 lakh on peak days. It began on 6 April 1985 with free food for 2,000 pilgrims a day, according to TTD’s own page on the trust, and the board’s 1940 history of the shrine summarises inscriptions in which donors paid for food to feed others more than five centuries earlier.

The hill shrine as the Devasthanams describe it

TTD’s temple history says Lord Sri Venkateswara, also called Srinivasa, Balaji and Venkatachalapati, made Tirumala his home five thousand years ago, and that Lord Varahaswami had lived there before him. The Varaha Purana, which TTD draws on for its account, places Adi Varaha on the western bank of the temple tank, the Swami Pushkarini, and Venkateswara on the southern bank. In TTD’s telling, Srinivasa asked Varahaswami for a gift of land and promised in return that every devotee would offer first darshan, worship and offerings to Varahaswami. That order of worship is still followed, TTD says.

Seshachalam hill ranges hold the shrine, and TTD’s text speaks of the holy seven hills. Its complex covers 16.2 acres, and the main gateway has been raised since the 13th century to its present fifty feet, the page says. Tirumala is accredited as the most visited temple in India and in the world, in the board’s own words, a claim it makes about itself.

What the earliest records say

A Tamil source places the hill on the map long before any temple record. Aiyangar, writing for the Devasthanam committee in 1940, notes that the Tolkappiyam, the classical Tamil grammar, names Vengadam as the northern boundary of the Tamil country. Nanditha Krishna, in Open magazine, dates that text to about 200 BCE. Aiyangar also traces verses on the shrine to the early Alvars, the Tamil Vaishnava poet-saints, and reads one verse by Poygai Alvar as naming Vengadam as the shrine of the one who blew the white conch.

Pallava rulers appear in the earliest stone records. Aiyangar counts eleven Pallava records among the inscriptions the Devasthanam had published by 1940. Of these, the first two record gifts of money for a perpetual lamp in the reign of Dantivikrama, the first of them dated by his reckoning to about 833 or 834 CE. Two further records concern a woman named Samavvai, the wife of a Kadava (Pallava) chief, whose gift was made to the deity standing at Vengadam. Aiyangar says she made a silver image with jewels valued at 47 kalanju of gold, and gave land for the temple’s services. The Deccan Chronicle dates her gift to 966 CE, calls the image a one-foot silver Bhoga Srinivasa Murthy, and says her inscription on the northern wall of the first enclosure mentions Brahmotsavam celebrations in the Tamil months of Purattasi and Margazhi. Nanditha Krishna describes the same gift as a gold plate set with stones, jewels and two parcels of land, so the accounts differ on the object.

Inscriptions also record how the festival calendar grew. A Panguni Brahmotsavam is tied to the Yadavaraya ruler Vira Narasimha, who reigned from 1209 to 1263, a Chittirai festival was added in 1254, and an Aadi festival around 1300 to 1330, the Deccan Chronicle lists. By the time of the Vijayanagara empire five were held each year, it says, and between 1539 and 1616 as many as ten.

One question about the early verses is argued over by scholars. Nanditha Krishna reads lines by Bhutatalvar, Peyalvar and Poygaialvar as blending the forms of Shiva and Vishnu. After studying the same early Alvars, Aiyangar concluded that the temple was, by common repute, dedicated to Vishnu.

Ramanuja, Annamacharya and the Vijayanagara gifts

The teacher Ramanuja (1017 to 1137) visited Tirumala three times, climbed the hills on his knees out of reluctance to trample them, and set the temple’s rituals in order according to the Vaikhanasa Agama, a Vaishnava ritual tradition, TTD says. A pavilion inside the temple holds his granite statue.

The poet Tallapaka Annamacharya, TTD says, composed more than 32,000 songs for Venkateswara. TTD’s page records the belief that the songs were first written on palm leaves and that his son copied them onto copper plates, and says the storehouse for them was completed between 1525 and 1530 with help from the Vijayanagara king Achyutaraya. They came to light when the epigraphist Sadhu Subrahmanya Sastri, who worked for TTD from 1919 to 1946, sighted the inscriptions. Nearly eleven thousand of the songs have since come to light, by TTD’s count.

Vijayanagara rulers left the most visible marks inside the temple. Saluva Narasimha built four pavilions in the corners of the Sampangi Pradakshinam, the inner circumambulation passage, in 1470, according to TTD. Krishnadevaraya’s first visit was on 10 February 1513, the Deccan Chronicle says, and he established a Thai Brahmotsavam the same year. Aiyangar’s summary of the inscriptions has him bathing the deity in gold with 30,000 varahas (gold coins) on 6 July 1514, and TTD says copper statues of the king and his two queens were installed on 2 January 1517. His life and campaigns are in Krishnadevaraya and the golden age of Vijayanagara, and the capital he ruled from is in Hampi, the Vijayanagara capital.

Free food in the inscriptions before 1985

Aiyangar’s volumes summarise grants in which a donor paid for food offerings to the deity and set aside part of the consecrated food, the prasada, to feed others. One of the Pallava-period records he lists provides for feeding two Brahmans. A record of Saluva Narasimha dated 16 March 1468 gives the revenue of five villages for thirty daily food-services, with the donor’s share of the food going to keep up a free feeding house, or chatra, near the front gateway of the Govindaraja temple in Tirupati. Another of his records pays 2,000 pons for food-services and sends part of the donor’s share to feed Sri Vaishnavas at a Ramanujakuta, a charity house, that he built in Tirupati.

Aiyangar writes that in 1940 a choultry on the hill still gave free food to pilgrims and that, as late as 1901, an order had been passed that no one should be refused food for want of funds. TTD’s 2016 article credits the 18th-century saint-poet Matrusri Tarigonda Vengamamba with feeding pilgrims during the ten days of Nrisimha Jayanti, funded by donations she received between 1785 and 1812.

From the mahants to the 1933 board

The Deccan Chronicle says the temple’s administration passed to the mahants of the Hathiramji Mutt in 1843 and stayed with them until 1933, when the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams was established. Nanditha Krishna gives the same dates and adds that the East India Company took over the revenues from the Nawab of the Carnatic in 1801.

TTD now describes itself as a conglomeration of temples brought under the First Schedule of Act 30 of 1987. A board of trustees is appointed by the government, and the Executive Officer is its chief executive. The board maintains 12 temples with their sub-shrines and employs about 14,000 people, by its own account. News Arena India, citing TTD data, reported on 12 April 2026 that the average daily footfall in 2025-26 was about 73,000, up from roughly 70,000 in each of the two previous years.

How the free meals are organised and paid for

TTD’s trust page says the scheme began on 6 April 1985, inaugurated by the state’s then Chief Minister, as the Venkateswara Nithya Annadanam Endowment Scheme. It became an independent trust on 1 April 1994 and was renamed the Sri Venkateswara Annaprasadam Trust on 1 April 2014. Donations are placed in nationalised banks and the interest pays for the meals. In 2016 the trust held Rs 752.60 crore in fixed deposits, according to TTD’s article that year. A TTD press release reported by DT Next in June 2026 puts the deposits above Rs 2,500 crore.

The Matrusri Tarigonda Vengamamba Annaprasadam Complex was inaugurated on 7 July 2011 at a cost of Rs 33 crore, with four halls seating 4,000 people, TTD’s 2016 article says. UNI’s October 2026 report names three kitchens: that complex, the Sri Akshaya Kitchen and the Vakulamatha Kitchen. The June 2026 release says the Vakulamata centralised kitchen, commissioned in 2024, lets food go out to 28 more locations, and that about 1,000 Srivari Seva volunteers help each day. Volunteer service at TTD began in 2000, according to the 2016 article.

TTD’s own numbers for the daily load vary with the year and the counting. Its trust page, which carries no date, lists 1,59,500 pilgrims on a weekday and 2,05,000 at a weekend across Tirumala, Tirupati and Tiruchanoor, and over 2 lakh on New Year’s Day, Vaikunta Ekadasi, Rathasapthami and Garuda Seva. The June 2026 release gives about 1.9 lakh on regular days and about 3 lakh at weekends and peak times, and UNI’s October report says nearly 1.8 lakh on average. During the ten days of Vaikuntha Dwara Darshanam, from 30 December 2025 to 8 January 2026, TTD said 7.83 lakh devotees had darshan and about 33 lakh were served annaprasadam, PTI reported on 9 January 2026.

The trust page, again undated, sets the cost of feeding pilgrims for one day at Rs 44 lakh and lets donors fund a whole day or a single meal.

The laddu and its GI registration

The sweets offered to the Lord, including the laddu, are made in the temple kitchen on the inner circumambulation path, TTD’s temple history says. The Geographical Indications Registry lists Tirupathi Laddu as application 121, filed by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam on 31 March 2008 in class 30 (food stuffs) for the geographical area of Andhra Pradesh. It appeared in Journal 28, available from 24 November 2008, and Certificate 107 is dated 4 September 2009. Its status is Registered. Its file list also includes rectification papers dated 2010 and 2011 and renewal papers from 2018 and 2022.

The Deccan Chronicle reported, citing TTD, that 13.52 crore laddus were sold in 2025 against 12.15 crore in 2024, with a single-day high of 5.13 lakh on 27 December 2025. News Arena’s fiscal-year figures, from the same TTD data, are 13.95 crore in 2025-26 against 12.49 crore in 2024-25, and the two sets cover different periods. In June 2025 TTD sent legal notices to online platforms and sellers using the Tirupati Laddu name, The South First reported, and at least one platform took its listings down. The GI registration is valid up to 30 March 2028.