A rangoli competition is the hardest easy item on any festival programme. Forty entries kneel on the same floor for the same ninety minutes, and at the end a panel has to explain why one circle of coloured powder beat another. Without a written scheme the argument always lands in the same place — the biggest design wins, or the brightest one does, and the entry with flawless line control in three colours goes home unplaced. This guide gives the criteria for judging a rangoli competition as a 100-mark marking scheme with weightage, a second rubric for the Ganeshotsav decoration (sajavat) competition, a printable score sheet you can hand a judge, a deduction table, the rules to publish before entries close, and the one logistical problem that makes festival competitions different from stage items: the panel judges in fifty places instead of one.

Timing matters this year. Ganesh Chaturthi 2026 falls on Monday 14 September, and the ten-day Ganeshotsav closes with Anant Chaturdashi and visarjan on Friday 25 September 2026 — with many households and mandals keeping shorter one-and-a-half, three, five or seven day observances in between. If you are running competitions across that window, entries need to close and judges need to be briefed in the last week of August. Everything below is written to be set up in that gap.

The Ganeshotsav competition list: what actually gets judged

A Ganeshotsav programme is a celebration, but the part that needs an organiser, a panel and a results sheet is the competition half. Below is a catalogue of the judged items commonly run by schools, housing societies and mandals during the festival — pick six or eight from it rather than attempting all of them. Nothing here is a rule of the festival; it is a working list you can adapt, and every column is a decision you should publish in your own rules.

Competition	Individual / Team	Where it is judged	Typical duration	Decided mainly on
Rangoli (rangoli spardha)	Individual or team of 2–3	On the floor, at a marked plot	60–120 min	Line control, colour, composition
Decoration / mandap (sajavat spardha)	Team (a whole society or mandal)	At each venue, by a visiting panel	Judged over 1–3 days	Theme, craft, safety, material
Eco-friendly idol making (shadu clay)	Individual	Workshop table or at home, submitted	60–90 min on site	Form, proportion, finish, material
Drawing & colouring (chitrakala spardha)	Individual	Hall, on stamped paper	45–90 min by age group	Theme, technique, neatness
Fancy dress / character portrayal (veshbhusha)	Individual	Stage	2–3 min per entry	Characterisation, confidence
Aarti & devotional group singing	Team	Stage or mandap	4–6 min per team	Sruthi, blending, coordination
Solo song (gayan spardha)	Individual	Stage	3–5 min	Sruthi, laya, expression
Group dance (nritya spardha)	Team	Stage	5–7 min	Synchronisation, formation, theme
Elocution (vaktrutva spardha)	Individual	Stage	3–5 min with warning bell	Content, delivery, language
Essay writing (nibandh spardha)	Individual	Hall, written, judged off-stage	60–90 min	Content, structure, language
Quiz	Team of 2–3	Written prelim, stage final	Prelim 30 min, final 60 min	Round scores, tie-break rules
Recitation / shloka and poetry	Individual	Stage	2–3 min	Diction, modulation, memory

Two of these — rangoli and decoration — are the ones nobody has a rubric for, so they get the full treatment below. For the rest, the criteria already exist: drawing and colouring, fancy dress, solo and group singing, elocution, essay writing and quiz scoring each have their own marking scheme and printable sheet.

Rangoli is not pookalam, and it is not a drawing competition

Three floor-art competitions get scored with the same borrowed rubric, and all three suffer for it.

• Rangoli is made with dry colour powder, and sometimes rice flour, chalk, petals or grains, on a floor. It can be freehand or built on a dot grid (thipkyanchi rangoli), geometric or pictorial. What separates the top three is almost always line control — whether a curve holds its width along its whole length.
• Pookalam, judged during Onam, is a different competition with a different rubric: fresh flowers only, usually circular, usually a team working against a hard clock. If that is the item you are running, the Onam competitions guide carries a pookalam rubric and its own rules-and-deductions table.
• Drawing on paper is judged sitting down, on a surface that forgives correction, with a pencil that can be erased. A rangoli cannot be corrected once the powder is laid, which is exactly why execution deserves more weight here than it does in a drawing competition.

Decide which one you are running, name it in the rules, and use the matching scheme. Running “rangoli” and accepting flower-only entries alongside powder entries in the same result is the fastest way to an argument you cannot win.

Rangoli competition judging criteria: a sample marking scheme (100 marks)

Publish this scheme with the entry form. A competitor who knows that execution and colour together carry 40 marks will spend the last twenty minutes cleaning her edges instead of adding one more motif — which is precisely the behaviour a good rubric should produce.

Criterion	Weightage	What the judge looks for	What pulls marks down
Design & composition	20	The whole plot reads as one design; balance, a clear centre, motifs that belong together; the border finishes the piece rather than filling space	A strong centre marooned in empty floor; four unrelated ideas in four corners
Symmetry, line control & finish	20	Curves that hold an even width; petals of matching size; clean, un-smudged edges where two colours meet; a dot grid that stays square	Wobbling outlines, colour bleeding across a boundary, a design that visibly tilts
Colour use & blending	20	A palette chosen rather than emptied; controlled shading or gradation; colours that stay distinct at three metres	Every colour in the box used once; muddy blends; two adjacent shades that read as one
Theme relevance & concept	15	The announced theme is legible without the artist explaining it; the idea suits a floor piece rather than a poster	Theme present only as written words; a concept that needs a caption
Originality & creativity	15	A design the panel has not seen four times that morning; an inventive use of grain, petal or texture	A pattern copied line-for-line from a widely circulated template
Completion within time & neatness of the plot	10	Finished when the whistle goes; surrounding floor swept; materials cleared to the edge	An unfinished quadrant; powder scattered outside the marked plot

Two deliberate choices in that split. Originality is capped at 15, so an unusual idea executed badly cannot beat a familiar idea executed perfectly — in a medium that punishes every unsteady hand, execution should decide. And theme is worth 15, not 30: weight it any higher and you are running a poster competition on the floor. If your theme is the point of the contest, raise it to 20 and take the five marks from originality, but do it in the published rules, not in the judges’ room on the morning.

Ganeshotsav decoration (sajavat) competition judging criteria: 100 marks

The decoration competition is the one every locality runs and almost nobody scores on paper. A panel walks through a mandap, admires it, and awards a prize on a shared impression. That works until two entries are close, and then there is nothing to point at. This scheme gives the panel something to point at.

Criterion	Weightage	What the judge looks for
Theme & idea	20	A single idea carried through the whole setting rather than decoration for its own sake; the theme readable from the entrance
Craftsmanship & finish	20	Work made rather than bought; joins, edges and backdrops finished; nothing propped or taped into place at the last minute
Eco-friendly & natural material	20	Natural clay, cloth, paper, wood, foliage and flowers in place of thermocol and plastic; a material declaration the team can stand behind
Lighting & overall visual effect	15	Light used to shape the setting, not just to brighten it; the whole view working from where the public actually stands
Safety, crowd flow & accessibility	15	Clear entry and exit, wiring secured and earthed, no blocked passage, space for elderly and wheelchair visitors, extinguisher on site
Cleanliness & upkeep of the site	10	Surrounds swept, waste segregated and cleared, the setting maintained across the judging window rather than only on day one

Weight this to your circuit. Where the organiser is campaigning for eco-friendly celebration, 20 marks on material is the lever that changes behaviour and it is worth keeping. Where safety is the concern, move five marks from lighting into safety. Where entries range from a small society porch to a large public mandap, add a size or budget category rather than trying to score them against each other — that is the same principle as age groups in an arts fest, and it is the difference between a fair result and a foregone one.

The problem nobody plans for: judging in fifty places instead of one

A stage item is easy to be fair about. Every entry performs on the same boards, in front of the same panel, within the same hour. A decoration competition breaks all three conditions at once, and every dispute afterwards comes out of that break. Plan for these before the panel leaves the office:

• Score drift across days. A panel is harsher on the first evening than on the third, once it has seen the range. Fix it by doing a quick unscored reconnaissance of three or four entries first, or by scoring every entry within a single evening if the route allows.
• A split panel. If two teams cover different routes, they are not scoring on the same scale, and the totals cannot simply be merged. Either every judge sees every entry, or you normalise — and you decide which, in writing, before anyone drives anywhere.
• Entry numbers, not names. Give every entry a number and put the number in front of the panel. A judge who knows whose mandap this is has already been influenced, however honest they are. It is the same reason a stage competitor is called by chest number.
• A fixed visiting slot. Publish the window each entry will be judged in. An entry judged at dusk and one judged at ten at night are not being shown the same thing, and lighting is worth 15 marks.
• Scores captured on the spot. Marks that live on a clipboard in a moving vehicle for two days lose a page. Judges scoring on a phone or tablet against the published criteria means the totals are already in one place when the last visit ends.
• A published tie-break. Decide in advance: highest craftsmanship score, then highest safety score, then a shared prize. Deciding after the totals are in looks like choosing a winner.

How to judge a rangoli competition, step by step

1. Walk the whole floor once before scoring anything. Five minutes, no pen. The panel needs to see the range before it commits a number to the first entry, or entry one is scored against nothing and entry forty is scored against thirty-nine.
2. Score criterion by criterion, not entry by entry. Go round scoring composition for every plot, then go round again for line control. It takes ten minutes longer and it kills the halo effect, where one dazzling colour scheme quietly lifts the other five scores.
3. Judge on the floor, not from photographs. A camera flattens texture and lies about colour. If a photograph is all you will have — for a multi-venue contest, say — then publish that in the rules so competitors can light and frame their work accordingly.
4. Bend down. Line control, grain of powder and the cleanliness of a colour boundary are invisible from standing height, and they are 20 of your 100 marks.
5. Score independently, then total. No discussion between judges until every sheet is signed and handed in. A panel that talks first produces one opinion wearing three signatures.
6. Hand in the sheets, not a winner. The panel’s job is marks against criteria. Totalling, ranking and grade calculation are the organiser’s job, and doing it centrally is what makes the result auditable when somebody asks.

Printable score sheet (rangoli and decoration)

Print one per judge per entry, or one sheet with a column per entry if your panel prefers to work across a row. Fill in the entry number, never the competitor’s or society’s name.

Rangoli criterion	Max	Marks	Decoration criterion	Max	Marks
Design & composition	20		Theme & idea	20
Symmetry, line control & finish	20		Craftsmanship & finish	20
Colour use & blending	20		Eco-friendly & natural material	20
Theme relevance & concept	15		Lighting & visual effect	15
Originality & creativity	15		Safety, crowd flow & access	15
Completion & neatness of plot	10		Cleanliness & site upkeep	10
Total	100		Total	100
Less deductions			Less deductions
Final score			Final score

Leave three lines under the table: Entry number ______    Age / category ______    Judge’s name ______________    Signature ______________    Date ______. If you would rather start from a blank template and fill in your own criteria, the judges’ score sheet template gives you one for any item type.

Deductions and disqualification

Deductions belong in the published rules, applied by the organiser or the item in-charge, not invented by a judge mid-round. Every one of these should be announced before entries close.

What happens	Suggested action	Why
Design crosses the marked plot boundary	−5	Plot size is the one condition every entry shares; exceeding it buys space others did not get
Work started before the signal or continued after the whistle	−5 to −10	Time is part of the contest, and a late finish is minutes another competitor did not have
Pre-drawn outline, stencil or printed template brought in, where freehand is specified	−10 or disqualification	It removes the skill the item exists to test — but only if you specified freehand in the rules
Prohibited material used (synthetic colours, thermocol, plastic where eco-only is declared)	−10 to disqualification	An eco-material rule that carries no penalty is not a rule
Help from anyone outside the registered team	Disqualification	Team size is part of the entry; extra hands are extra time
Name, society or any identifying mark worked into the design	−5	The panel scores entry numbers; an identifier defeats the anonymity the competitor is entitled to
Entry absent or incomplete at the published judging slot	Scored as it stands	The panel cannot come back; the slot was published in advance
Unsafe wiring, blocked exit or open flame near fabric (decoration)	Disqualification	No decoration prize is worth an incident; announce this one loudly

Rules to publish before entries close

Almost every festival competition dispute traces back to a rule that existed in the organiser’s head and nowhere else. Settle these in writing:

• Plot size and surface — the exact dimensions of the marked area, and whether it is floor, paved ground or a supplied board.
• Permitted material — rangoli powder, rice flour, chalk, flower petals, grains; whether synthetic colours, glitter, stickers or adhesive are allowed at all.
• Freehand or dot grid — and whether a competitor may mark guide dots or a faint outline before the start signal.
• Time limit, start signal and warning bell — identical for every entry within a category.
• Team size — individual, or a team of two or three, and whether one society may enter more than one team.
• Theme — announced with the rules, or given on the spot. Both are defensible; only one can be true.
• Age and category groups — who competes against whom.
• What is judged — the work on the floor, or a photograph submitted by a deadline.
• Tie-break — which criterion decides, and whether a shared prize is possible.
• Results and appeals — when results are announced, and the window in which a query will be accepted.

If you would rather start from a drafted document than a blank page, the sample competition rules and guidelines template gives you all ten of those as numbered clauses you can adapt.

Categories that work for a festival competition

A school splits by class. A housing society or mandal cannot, because a nine-year-old and her grandmother will both enter. A structure that works across both:

• Sub-junior — up to Std 4, small plot, short clock, prize for participation as much as for placing.
• Junior — Std 5 to 7.
• Senior — Std 8 to 12.
• Open — college and adult, full plot, full time limit.
• Family or team — two or three people from one household or flat, judged as one entry.

Set the plot size and time limit per category rather than running one clock for everyone, and give each category its own result. Setting up age groups covers how to define these with a cut-off date so that a child who turns twelve the week before the festival lands in the right group automatically.

The vocabulary, in Marathi and English

If you are publishing rules and results in Marathi as well as English, these are the terms your entrants will be looking for: स्पर्धा (spardha) competition · रांगोळी स्पर्धा rangoli competition · सजावट स्पर्धा decoration competition · चित्रकला स्पर्धा drawing competition · वक्तृत्व स्पर्धा elocution competition · निबंध स्पर्धा essay competition · वेशभूषा स्पर्धा fancy dress · नृत्य स्पर्धा dance competition · गायन स्पर्धा singing competition · परीक्षक (parikshak) judge · निकष (nikash) criteria · गुणदान तक्ता (gundan takta) marking table or score sheet · निकाल result · बक्षीस prize · ठिपक्यांची रांगोळी dot-grid rangoli · शाडू माती the natural clay used for eco-friendly idols.

Publish the marking table itself, not only a description of it. A competitor who can see the gundan takta before the day treats the rules as the contest, and an organiser who publishes it has already answered most of the questions that arrive after the results.

Running the whole festival programme in one place

eTalenter handles the part that turns a festival programme into a result: set up each competition per age group and category, take entries through a public registration form so nobody is retyping names off a WhatsApp list, allot entry numbers, assign judges to items, let them score against your published criteria on a phone or tablet — on the floor or on a decoration route — and the totals, ranks, grades and results publish themselves, with certificates and trophy stickers for the winners. It fits any level structure and both Arts and Sports events, so a society programme, a school festival week and a multi-venue circuit all run the same way. See competition management software for the full picture, or the judging and tabulation guide for how scoring works end to end.

FAQ

What are the judging criteria for a rangoli competition?

Design and composition, symmetry and line control, colour use and blending, theme relevance, originality, and completion within the time limit. A workable split out of 100 is 20 / 20 / 20 / 15 / 15 / 10, which puts 40 marks on execution so that a clean, controlled piece is not beaten by a bigger untidy one. Publish the split with the rules before entries close, and hand each judge a score sheet carrying the same six heads.

How is a Ganeshotsav decoration competition judged when there is no stage?

A panel visits each entry within a published time slot and scores it there against a fixed rubric — theme, craftsmanship, eco-friendly material, lighting, safety and site upkeep. The three things that make it fair are a reconnaissance pass before any marks are given, entry numbers instead of society names in front of the panel, and a written rule for how scores are combined if the panel splits across routes. Capture the marks at each site rather than back at the office.

Is rangoli judged the same way as a drawing competition?

No. A drawing can be erased and corrected; a rangoli cannot, so line control and finish carry more weight and the item rewards steadiness as much as imagination. The medium also changes what colour means — blending powder is a physical skill, not a choice of paint. Run them as separate items with separate rubrics, and never merge floor art and paper art into a single result.

When is Ganesh Chaturthi 2026, and when should competition entries close?

Ganesh Chaturthi falls on Monday 14 September 2026, and the ten-day Ganeshotsav ends with Anant Chaturdashi and visarjan on Friday 25 September 2026, with shorter one-and-a-half, three, five and seven day observances in between. Work backwards from your first judged item: publish rules and open entries about three weeks ahead, close entries a week before, and brief the panel and print the score sheets two or three days before the first competition.

Running competitions this festival season? Talk to us on WhatsApp or write to support@etalenter.com and we will set up your item list, categories, judging criteria and results with you.