Nepal is majority Hindu, around 81 percent per its national census and reflected in Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, with a Buddhist minority near 9 percent concentrated among Newar, Tamang and Himalayan ethnic communities, alongside smaller Muslim, Kirati and Christian populations; Hindu and Buddhist practice in Nepal have long overlapped closely, sharing temples, festivals and deities in ways that make strict statistical separation somewhat artificial in daily practice.
Nepal is the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, born in Lumbini in the sixth century BCE according to tradition, a site now a major pilgrimage destination and UNESCO World Heritage listing. The Kathmandu Valley's Newar civilization developed a distinctive syncretic religious culture blending Hindu and Vajrayana Buddhist elements over more than a millennium, visible in shared temple complexes such as Pashupatinath, one of Hinduism's holiest Shiva shrines, and Swayambhunath and Boudhanath, major Buddhist stupas. Nepal was the world's only constitutionally Hindu state until 2006, when the monarchy's absolute power was overturned amid a decade-long Maoist insurgency, and the country was formally declared a secular republic under its 2015 constitution following the monarchy's abolition in 2008.