Trend analysis of rainfall is often carried out in water resources management to understand its distribution over a given region. The cumulative seasonal and annual rainfall derived from monthly datasets spanning 102 years (1901–2002) for 11 districts of the semi-arid Karnataka, India, was used for the trend analysis. The two-step homogeneous test approach was carried out on all the time series. Then, lag-1 autocorrelation was conducted only on homogeneous time series. Only 78.18 % of the total time series data were detected as homogeneous, and 95.35% of time series data were found to have insignificant autocorrelation. Then, the Innovative Trend Analysis (ITA) method was applied to 43 homogeneous rainfall time series, as well as to 41 time series using the MK and SR tests, and to two time series using the mMK test. The MK and SR tests detected a significant trend in 14.63% of the time series, while the ITA method was able to detect a trend in 93.02% of the total time series data. The MK and SR tests revealed significant trends in winter and post-monsoon season precipitation for two districts, but only for one district in the case of summer and annual rainfall. No trend was identified for monsoon season precipitation. The mMK test showed a positive trend for the post-monsoon season in a district, while the ITA method revealed significant trends for all seasons in most districts. The sub-trend analysis revealed trends that traditional methods were unable to detect.