Religion in Myanmar: Buddhism, Nats and Minority Faiths

Updated September 2026 by Zach Smith: I corrected the religious breakdown to match Myanmar's 2014 census (the Hindu share is 0.5 percent, not 0.05), restored the section headings, and added context on the 2017 Rohingya exodus, the 2021 military coup, and the current U.S. travel advisory.

The overwhelming majority of Myanmar's population practices Theravada Buddhism: around 88 percent (87.9 percent in the 2014 census). Christians make up about 6 percent of the population (6.2 percent), 4.3 percent of the population is Muslim, 0.8 percent is animist, and 0.5 percent practice Hinduism. The census did not count an estimated one million people in Rakhine State, most of them Rohingya Muslims, so the true Muslim share is higher than the official figure.

Myanmar has changed profoundly since this guide was first written. On February 1, 2021, the military seized power from the elected government, and the country has since been engulfed in armed conflict that has displaced millions of people. As of September 2026, the U.S. State Department advises Americans not to travel to Myanmar (its highest advisory level, Level 4: Do Not Travel), citing civil unrest, armed conflict, and the risk of wrongful detention. What follows describes the country's religious life rather than a travel itinerary.

Buddhism in Myanmar

Buddhists seek to achieve a state of divine enlightenment called Nirvana. Nirvana comes with an absence of human urges and desires. Like Buddhists everywhere else in the world, Buddhists in Myanmar believe in reincarnation. A person's actions, or karma, shape the next life. If you have bad karma, you could end up as a lowly vulture in the next life. Good deeds mean your reincarnation will bring you closer to enlightenment. Building a pagoda is considered excellent karma, which helps explain the prevalence of these buildings in all of Myanmar's cities and villages. The Shwedagon Pagoda Festival in Yangon is one of Myanmar's many religious festivals and holidays.

When Buddhism first arrived in Myanmar, it blended with native animist beliefs. Anawrahta, the first Buddhist king of the Burmese empire, declared that the King of the native deities would serve as the guardian of Buddhism. These native gods are called nats. In Buddhist temples, you'll see depictions of nats co-mingling with Buddha himself. Today, Burmese people still make offerings to their favorite nats, often in the form of flowers, colorful fabric, and fruit. These shrines and offerings may appear purely decorative to an outsider, but even these small symbols can have intricate meaning.

Buddhist Monks and Monasteries

There are hundreds of thousands of monks and novices across Myanmar, and Mandalay has the greatest concentration. (The powerful earthquake centered near Mandalay in March 2025 damaged many of the region's monasteries and pagodas.) When children join the monastery, or kyaung in Burmese, they not only bring honor to their family, but also receive a solid education. Monks have long been known for their eagerness to practice English with visitors. Monasteries, along with pagodas and temples, are always the most ornately decorated and beautifully maintained places in Myanmar. They stand out because of their tiered, spired roofs.

Early each morning, monks walk the streets barefoot and in a single file line. A young monk walks in front and rings a bell. Residents come out to donate rice or fruit to the monks. This daily ritual is a way to worship as well as socialize.

Myanmar's Bagan plain holds more than 2,000 surviving temples and pagodas, built mostly between the 11th and 13th centuries. Travelers drawn to sacred architecture on that scale will find a counterpart half a world away in the Maya temple-pyramids of Central America, which Anywhere, a US-based travel agency, plans trips to with local experts.

Muslims

Rakhine State is home to the Rohingya, who have been Myanmar's largest Muslim population. Many citizens of Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although many Rohingya have lived in Rakhine for generations, and most were effectively stripped of citizenship under a 1982 law. There is strong anti-Muslim sentiment throughout many layers of Myanmar society, and some of the loudest voices have come from prominent Buddhist monks.

After waves of violence in 2012 and 2016, a military crackdown that began in August 2017 drove more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border into Bangladesh, where most still live in vast refugee camps near Cox's Bazar. In 2019, The Gambia brought a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, and in 2022 the U.S. government formally determined that Myanmar's military had committed genocide against the Rohingya. The Rohingya who remain in Rakhine State have been caught in renewed fighting since the coup.

Animism

Although Buddhism has blended with native animism over the years, folk religion still persists in some corners of Myanmar. Wizards, known as weikza, claim to practice a form of magic that they have blended with mainstream Buddhism. Some of these sorcerers have attracted journalistic attention because of their exorcism rituals.

Christianity

19th-century missionaries, notably American Baptists, won large numbers of converts among several of Myanmar's ethnic minorities. Today the large majority of people in the sparsely populated Chin State are Christian, as are many Kachin and Karen. Most Christians in Myanmar are Protestant, with a smaller number of Catholics and a tiny number of independent churches as well.

Though diverse, religious communities are simply one facet of Myanmar's people and culture.