The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on 12 May 2026 released the country's first artificial intelligence enabled block-level monsoon onset advance forecasting model in New Delhi, marking a major leap from district-level to sub-district granularity in operational monsoon prediction. Developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting Noida, the system currently covers 3,196 blocks across 15 states and one Union Territory, largely in rainfed regions where the timing of monsoon onset is critical for sowing decisions. The model fuses outputs from existing numerical weather prediction systems with machine learning trained on the IMD historical archive, generating probabilistic forecasts every Wednesday for up to four weeks ahead with an error margin of about four days. Outputs will be shared with farmers through application programming interfaces designed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and pushed through the Agri Stack platform that powers the digital agriculture mission. Roughly 52 per cent of India cultivated area is rainfed, and block-level lead time is expected to improve choice of crop variety, fertiliser scheduling, crop insurance enrolment under PMFBY and labour planning. The IMD clarified that the new tool is independent of the seasonal long range outlook, which currently projects the 2026 southwest monsoon at around 92 per cent of the long period average. Coverage will be progressively expanded to additional states in the coming seasons.