Akshaya Tritiya 2027: Date, Significance & Puja Rituals

Last updated: September 2026 · By Acharya Alok Pandit, Divine Hindu, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011 · ~19 min read

Akshaya Tritiya is one of the few days in the Hindu year that everybody has heard of and nobody quite agrees about. To a farmer in Rajasthan it opens the working year; to a Jain family it is the parana of Varshi Tapa, the end of a fast that has run twelve months; to a jeweller it is one of the two biggest selling days of the year; to a purohit it is an abujha muhurat, one of the handful of days on which the calendar stops asking questions and simply says yes. All of those are layers of the same day, and this guide takes them in order.

Akshaya Tritiya 2027 date: Sunday, 9 May

Akshaya Tritiya 2027 is on Sunday, 9 May 2027, the third lunar day of the bright fortnight of Vaishakha. Five of the eight panchang publishers we checked place it there: Drik Panchang, whose New Delhi page reads Akshaya Tritiya on Sunday, May 9, 2027, along with Prokerala, CalendarLabs, BhaktiBharat and AstroSage. Three place it on 8 May, and we deal with them honestly below rather than pretend they do not exist.

Because this is a shukla-paksha tithi, the two lunar-month reckonings do not pull it apart. The purnimanta system of the north ends a month at the full moon and the amanta system of the west and south ends it at the new moon; they disagree about which month a krishna paksha tithi belongs to, which is why Maha Shivratri and Holi look confusing on paper. For a bright-fortnight tithi, Vaishakha is Vaishakha in both. There is also no adhik maas in 2027, so nothing has been displaced.

Tithi timings are computed for a location. The 09:03 AM figure is for New Delhi; sunrise in Bengaluru, Kolkata or Guwahati is not Delhi's, and the moment a tithi ends shifts with it. If an hour matters to you, use a panchang computed for your own city.

Why some calendars say 8 May and others say 9 May

A tithi is not a day. It is the interval in which the Moon gains twelve degrees on the Sun, and because the Moon does not move at a constant speed a tithi can last anywhere from about nineteen to about twenty-six hours. It therefore rarely lines up with sunrise to sunrise, and deciding which civil day is the festival is a separate act of judgement for which the classical texts supply more than one rule.

In 2027 the arithmetic falls in the worst possible position. Vaishakha Shukla Tritiya begins shortly before noon on Saturday 8 May, so it is absent at sunrise on the 8th but present through the later forenoon. It then runs all night and ends at 09:03 AM on Sunday 9 May, so it is present at sunrise on the 9th and covers part of that forenoon, but is gone before midday. Whichever rule you pick, you can build a case.

The purvahna reading gives Sunday, 9 May

The majority position takes the day on which Tritiya prevails during the purvahna kaal, the forenoon, giving weight to the tithi being present at sunrise. AstroSage states the rule most precisely of our sources: the festival is kept when Vaishakha Shukla Tritiya prevails during the Purvahan Kaal, and where Tritiya covers the purvahna of two consecutive days, the second day will be considered as the event. That tie-break is exactly what 2027 produces, and it points at Sunday 9 May. Drik Panchang, Prokerala, CalendarLabs and BhaktiBharat reach the same date.

The madhyahna reading gives Saturday, 8 May

The minority position takes the day on which Tritiya prevails during the madhyahna, the midday window straddling solar noon. dekhopanchang puts it plainly: the day is observed when the Tritiya tithi prevails during the Madhyahna window. On Saturday 8 May, Tritiya has begun before midday and runs through it; on Sunday it has ended by 09:03 AM and is absent from midday altogether. On that rule Saturday wins outright, and Samvat.in, computing for Mumbai, also publishes 8 May.

Neither camp is wrong

Say this without hedging: the two camps are not disagreeing about astronomy. They use the same begin and end moments, and answer the same question under different selection rules, both with classical standing. Choosing between them is a matter of sampradaya and regional practice, not of carelessness. Follow the panchang your family, temple or purohit follows. If you have no inherited preference, Sunday 9 May 2027 is the more widely published date and the one most temples and Indian calendars will print; if your family keeps the day on Saturday 8 May, keep it then, and you are not doing anything irregular.

Two further things thicken the fog. First, Drik Panchang publishes a gold-purchase window spanning both days, running from the start of Tritiya on Saturday 8 May through the night and on past sunrise on Sunday 9 May. As a statement about the tithi that is reasonable; it is also very convenient for retail, and it is a large part of why jewellers, banners and calendar apps advertise both dates. A shop promoting 8 May and a temple announcing 9 May are usually not in conflict at all.

Second, some listings contradict themselves. KundliGPT headlines 8 May while its own tithi table shows sunrise on 8 May falling in Dvitiya, not Tritiya. That is the sort of thing that produces confident wrong answers in search results and forwarded messages. When a page gives you a date, look for its tithi table; if headline and table disagree, trust neither and check a second source.

What about the puja muhurat?

You will find a muhurat window printed almost everywhere. We are deliberately not printing one. We checked three well-regarded publishers for the Akshaya Tritiya 2027 puja window and got three different answers, disagreeing not by a minute but by hours at the closing boundary. Publishing one of them as "the" muhurat would claim a precision that does not exist, and a missing time is harmless where a wrong one is not.

On this festival the omission costs very little, and the reason is part of the tradition. Hindu electional astrology holds three lunar days to need no muhurat calculation at all: Yugadi, Akshaya Tritiya and Vijaya Dashami. Drik Panchang states the position directly, that these three don't need any Muhurta to start or perform any auspicious work, being regarded as free from malefic effects. These are the abujha or unasked muhurats, days on which by long convention you do not have to ask. The traditional answer to "what is the muhurat for Akshaya Tritiya" is therefore that the day itself is the muhurat. Do the puja in the morning after your bath, which is both when the purvahna falls and simply practical. For a specific undertaking such as a wedding lagna, consult your purohit with your own city and details.

Parashurama Jayanti 2027 is on Saturday, 8 May

In most years Parashurama Jayanti and Akshaya Tritiya are the same day, and many articles state flatly that they always are. In 2027 they are not. Parashurama Jayanti falls on Saturday, 8 May 2027, the day before, according to Drik Panchang, Prokerala and OfficeHolidays alike.

The reason is the same tithi under a different rule. Parashurama Jayanti is fixed by the pradosh period after sunset, the time associated with his appearance, while Akshaya Tritiya on the majority reading is fixed by the morning. In 2027 the tithi covers the pradosh of Saturday 8 May, having begun that late morning and run through the night, but it ends by 09:03 AM on Sunday and never touches Sunday evening. The evening festival lands on Saturday and the morning festival on Sunday: one tithi, two festivals, two days. This is a third independent reason for "8 May" in listings, and the one that trips automated calendar feeds most often. If you keep both, keep Parashurama Jayanti on Saturday evening and Akshaya Tritiya on Sunday morning.

What the name means, and what the day is

Akshaya is Sanskrit for undiminishing, that which does not run out; Tritiya is the third lunar day. The traditional idea attached to the name is about beginnings rather than outcomes: what is begun on an akshaya day is said to endure rather than peter out. It is worth being precise about that, because a great deal of modern messaging quietly converts "what begins here endures" into "what you spend here multiplies", which is a different and far less defensible claim.

Tradition treats the day as auspicious for starting things: a business, a course of study, a sadhana, a marriage, a house, a season of sowing, a new book of accounts. It also treats it as a day of daan, and the classical emphasis on giving is if anything heavier than the emphasis on acquiring. Nothing on this page should be read as a promise about results; the observances here are matters of faith and long custom.

The stories behind Akshaya Tritiya

Several distinct narratives gathered on this tithi. They are not competing versions of one event but separate strands attached to the same auspicious day, and together they say a good deal about what the day is understood to be for.

The Akshaya Patra of the Pandavas

During the exile in the forest, Yudhishthira is troubled that he cannot feed the ascetics and guests who come to him, a king in exile having no stores. He prays to Surya, who gives him the Akshaya Patra, a vessel producing food without limit each day until Draupadi, who serves last, has eaten and set it down. That condition gives the story its shape: the abundance is real but bounded by service, and it closes once the household's own need is met.

A second telling attaches to the same vessel. Durvasa arrives with his disciples after Draupadi has eaten and the patra has closed for the day. Refusing him hospitality is unthinkable, and Draupadi, having nothing, calls on Krishna. He comes, asks for the vessel, and finds one grain of rice clinging to its rim. He eats it, declares himself satisfied, and Durvasa and his disciples find they cannot swallow another mouthful. The moral drawn is not about magic but about scale: the smallest offering, given rightly, is treated as complete.

Krishna and Sudama

The second great story is the reunion of Krishna with his childhood friend Sudama, the poor Brahmin who has nothing to bring to a king's house but a pouch of beaten rice, poha, begged by his wife from a neighbour. Sudama is too embarrassed to offer it; Krishna finds it, takes it and eats it with delight. Sudama goes home without having asked for anything, and finds his circumstances altered. The tradition tells this on Akshaya Tritiya precisely because it refuses the transactional reading: Sudama does not bargain, does not ask and does not calculate.

The beginning of the Treta Yuga

By traditional reckoning Vaishakha Shukla Tritiya is the day on which the Treta Yuga began, the second of the four world-ages. This is why the day is spoken of as a yugadi, a beginning of an age, and why it sits with the other yuga-beginnings for muhurat purposes. It also helps explain its reputation as a day to start things: it is understood as the day on which something very large was itself started.

Ved Vyasa begins the Mahabharata

On this day, tradition holds, Ved Vyasa began dictating the Mahabharata to Ganesha, who agreed to write on condition that Vyasa never pause in his recitation, to which Vyasa replied with a condition of his own: that Ganesha write no line without understanding it. The longest poem in the world thus began on an akshaya day. This is why students, writers and anyone starting a long piece of work regard the day as a good one to begin, and why books and pens are among the things given as daan.

The descent of the Ganga

The day is also associated with the descent of the Ganga, brought down by Bhagiratha's austerities for the sake of his ancestors and received in Shiva's matted hair so the earth could bear the shock. Bathing in a river, or adding a little Ganga jal to the household bath where that is not possible, belongs to the day's observance, and the Bhagiratha story is why pitra tarpan, the offering of water to the ancestors, is customary too. Ganga Saptami, honouring the same descent, follows on Wednesday 12 May 2027.

The birth of Parashurama

Parashurama, the sixth avatar of Vishnu, son of Jamadagni and Renuka, is held to have appeared on this tithi, and in most years his jayanti coincides with it. He is one of the chiranjivi, the deathless ones, a fitting association for an akshaya day. Tender cucumber is the naivedya traditionally offered to him, a detail that survives in many household pujas even where the rest of his observance has faded.

Akshaya Tritiya in Jain tradition: Varshi Tapa and the parana

The Jain observance is not a variant of the Hindu one. It is a separate tradition and deserves to be described on its own terms. Jain tradition holds that Rishabhdeva, or Adinatha, the first Tirthankara, renounced the world and undertook a fast that lasted a full year. The difficulty was not his resolve but the world's inexperience: nobody yet knew how to offer alms correctly to a Jain ascetic, so although households wanted to feed him, no acceptable offering was made and the fast continued. It was finally broken at Hastinapur when his great-grandson Shreyanskumar recognised what was needed and offered him sugarcane juice, ikshu ras, in the correct manner.

The observance built on that is Varshi Tapa, a year-long austerity in which the observer typically fasts on alternate days, taking only boiled water on fasting days, across roughly twelve months. Akshaya Tritiya is its parana, the ritual breaking of the fast, kept by drinking sugarcane juice, very often at Hastinapur or at Shatrunjaya in Palitana where large numbers gather. For a Jain household the day is about the completion of an enormous personal discipline, not about acquisition of any kind, and the contrast with how the day is marketed elsewhere is worth knowing even if it is not your own tradition.

Akshaya Tritiya puja vidhi, step by step

The household puja is a Vishnu puja, and specifically a puja of Lakshminarayana, Vishnu and Lakshmi worshipped together as a single joint form rather than as two shrines side by side. The full classical form is Shodashopachara, the sixteen services, set out below for a home altar. None of it is compulsory: a household that manages a bath, a lamp, a flower and a namaskara has kept the day.

1. Snan. Bathe early, before the puja. Where available a little Ganga jal is added to the water, the household substitute for the river bath associated with the day.
2. Prepare the space. Clean the altar, wash the platform and lay a fresh cloth, traditionally yellow or red.
3. Set the kalash. Fill a copper or brass kalash with clean water, add rice, a coin, a little haldi and a supari, place five mango or ashvattha leaves at the mouth with a whole coconut over them, and set it to the deity's right. The water-filled kalash is central to this festival in a way it is not on most days, because a kalash of water is also its characteristic daan.
4. Sankalpa. Take water, rice and a flower in the right palm, state the date, tithi, your gotra, name and place, name the purpose, and release the water. The sankalpa is what turns a set of actions into an observance and is the most commonly skipped step in home pujas. Say it in whatever language you think in if you do not have the Sanskrit.
5. Avahana and asana. Invite Lakshminarayana to be present and offer a seat, with folded hands and akshata.
6. Panchamrita abhishek. For metal or stone murtis, bathe with the five nectars in order, milk, curd, ghee, honey and sugar, then with clean water, then dry and replace. The panchamrita is collected and distributed as prasad. Do not pour liquids over painted images, clay murtis or photographs; for those, offer it in a small bowl in front instead.
7. Vastra and alankara. Offer fresh cloth or a mauli thread, then chandan, haldi, kumkum, akshata and flowers. A garland of white or yellow flowers is traditional for Vishnu.
8. Tulsi. Vishnu worship is incomplete without tulsi, and this is the one offering not to substitute. Place leaves on the murti and in the naivedya, picked before the puja rather than during it and not after dark. Tulsi is not offered to Ganesha, so keep it for Vishnu if your altar holds both.
9. Dhoop and deep. Light incense and a ghee lamp and show them to the deity in the usual clockwise motion.
10. Naivedya. Two offerings are specific to this day: sattu of roasted barley or wheat for Nara-Narayana, the characteristic food of the festival across north India, taken as a drink or made into a soft ball with water and jaggery; and tender cucumber where Parashurama is honoured. Beyond these, offer seasonal fruit and especially mango, sugarcane or its juice, chana, curd rice and a simple sweet. Cool summer foods are the pattern, because the festival sits at the hottest point of the year.
11. Japa and patha. Recite the Vishnu Sahasranama, or the Lakshmi Ashtottara, or simply Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya for a fixed count on a mala. Reading a chapter of the Gita or the Bhagavata is customary.
12. Arti, pradakshina, kshama prarthana. Perform the arti, circumambulate the altar, offer a full namaskara, and ask forgiveness for whatever was omitted or done wrongly.
13. Daan. Give before you eat. In the traditional understanding this is not a coda to the puja but the substance of the day. The water-filled kalash, sattu, barley, chana, curd rice, sugarcane, seasonal fruit and summer articles such as a hand fan, umbrella, footwear or earthen pot are the classical gifts. Give what is useful to the person receiving it.
14. Pitra tarpan. Many families offer water to the ancestors on this day. Where yours does, do it after the puja and before the meal.

If you are also doing a griha pravesh or opening a business on the day, the household puja comes first and the separate vidhi for that occasion follows.

Akshaya Tritiya puja samagri list

Assemble everything the night before. The commonest cause of a rushed puja is discovering at the altar that the tulsi has not been picked or the ghee has run out.

Brass and copper are the traditional metals for the kalash and abhishek. If you need to add to yours, our brass collection and the Akshaya Tritiya edit carry the standard items.

Buying gold on Akshaya Tritiya: an honest account

Where the custom comes from

Buying gold on Akshaya Tritiya is a real and widely kept custom, and in its present form a modern one. The older idea underneath it is the akshaya idea already described: what is begun or acquired on an undiminishing day is said to endure, and in an agrarian society the durable thing a household could acquire was often metal. What turned that into a national retail event was the jewellery trade. From roughly the 1990s, and with real force from the early 2000s, organised jewellery retail and its advertising built Akshaya Tritiya into the second major gold-buying occasion of the Indian year after Dhanteras. That is not a criticism, simply the history, and it helps you read the messaging you will see in late April and early May 2027 for what it is.

What the tradition says, and what it does not

Hindu tradition treats Akshaya Tritiya as an auspicious day for beginnings. It does not treat a purchase as a mechanism that produces money, and we will not tell you that it does. Many families hold that metal brought into the house on this day stays with the family, and the jewellery trade's advertising has long leaned on that belief; reported as a belief, which is what it is, it sits comfortably with the rest of the day. Stated as a guarantee of return, it is not something Hindu tradition supports and not something anyone can promise you.

To answer the question people actually type: there is no separate muhurat you need for buying. The day is traditionally held to be an auspicious muhurat in itself, one of the three abujha days that, in Drik Panchang's words, don't need any Muhurta to start or perform any auspicious work. You do not have to be at a counter at a particular minute, which is convenient, since the published windows do not agree with one another anyway.

Buying is entirely optional. A very large number of households mark Akshaya Tritiya with nothing but a bath, a puja and a daan, and have done for generations. Nothing in the observance is incomplete without a purchase. If money is tight, give a little food instead and you have kept the day fully.

Practical checks, if you do buy

None of the following is investment advice, and nothing on this page is financial advice of any kind. These are consumer-protection basics.

• Hallmarking and the HUID. Hallmarked gold jewellery in India carries the BIS mark, the purity grade such as 22K916 or 18K750, and a six-digit alphanumeric HUID. Look for all of it, check the HUID in the BIS Care app before you leave the counter, and ask for it in writing on the invoice.
• Making charges and wastage. These are separate from metal value, vary widely between shops and designs, and are negotiable at most jewellers. Ask what they are as a percentage, and ask separately what is deducted if you exchange the item later.
• Get an itemised invoice: net weight, purity, rate applied, making charges, GST, and any stone weight deducted or not deducted. Keep it.
• Crowds. Shops are busiest on the day and often the day before, which in 2027 means both 8 and 9 May given the two published dates, and busy counters leave less time to check hallmarks and ask questions. A purchase made a week later is not a lesser observance.
• A few grams is traditional. The custom was never about quantity. A small coin, a light chain, a silver rupee or a brass lamp are all squarely within it.

What else is traditionally bought or given

Silver is the commonest alternative and is fully traditional; a small piece of hallmarked silver keeps the custom as well as gold does. Brass and copper puja vessels have a stronger claim to being the day's real customary purchase than jewellery ever did, because they are what the puja actually needs. And a great many families buy nothing and give instead.

For a fuller comparison of what is customarily bought on this day and on the autumn occasion, see what to buy on Dhanteras and Akshaya Tritiya and the Dhanteras guide. If you are opening a shop or venture on the day, our note on new shop and business opening gifts may help.

What is traditionally done, and what many families avoid

The right-hand column below is custom, not instruction. These are abstentions many families keep on auspicious days to mark them out from ordinary days. No scripture imposes them uniformly and households differ widely. Keep what your family keeps.

The Akshaya Tritiya vrat: who fasts, and how

The Vaishakha Shukla Tritiya vrat is a light, one-day fast and it is optional. It is kept most often by women of the household, by those who have taken a specific sankalpa, and by families for whom Vishnu is the ishta devata; in many households nobody fasts and the day is kept with puja and daan alone.

The usual form is phalahar: the observer sets aside grains, pulses and ordinary salt and takes fruit, milk, curd, buttermilk, sabudana, singhara or rajgira flour, potato and sendha namak until the puja is complete, then breaks the fast with the naivedya as prasad and a simple sattvik meal. Others keep a nirahar fast on water alone until the puja, or eat once in the day. Sattu dissolved in water with a little jaggery is the classic food with which the fast is broken across north India, and in the heat of early May it is a sensible one. The Jain observance of the same day, described above, is a different thing entirely: the parana of the year-long Varshi Tapa, broken with sugarcane juice.

A caution that matters more than the custom. Anyone unwell, pregnant, breastfeeding, elderly, diabetic or on regular medication should follow medical advice rather than a fasting rule. Early May is very hot across most of India and dehydration is a real risk. Tradition has always allowed substitution and exemption, and taking water, food and medicine when your body or your doctor requires it does not invalidate the day. If you fast regularly, our Ekadashi fasting guide sets out the phalahar rules in more detail.

How Akshaya Tritiya is kept across India

In Rajasthan and Gujarat the day is Akha Teej, one of the busiest of the year. Being an abujha muhurat, it has long been used for weddings conducted without further consultation of the calendar, sometimes in very large numbers on a single day. That custom carries a serious modern qualification: child marriage has historically been solemnised on Akha Teej in parts of western India, it is illegal in India, and district administrations and voluntary organisations mount awareness drives around the date each year. The day's use as a wedding muhurat for adults is entirely ordinary; the other practice is not.

Across much of northern and western India the day also opens the agricultural year. It arrives after the harvest and before the monsoon, where a cultivator turns from what has been gathered to what will be sown, and the ceremonial first ploughing belongs to that moment. In Rajasthan farmers traditionally turn the first furrow. In Odisha the same rite is Akhi Muthi Anukula, in which the first fistful of paddy is sown after a puja to the earth and the household deities, still widely kept in rural districts. In Bengal the day likewise opens the working year, and seed is set aside and blessed.

Odisha carries a second well-known connection: Akshaya Tritiya is traditionally the day on which construction of the chariots for the Puri Rath Yatra begins. The first timber is worshipped and the first cut made, and from that day the builders work through the summer towards the yatra, which in 2027 falls on Monday 5 July. It illustrates what an akshaya beginning is understood to mean: not a purchase but the first day of two months of labour, and our guide to the Rath Yatra follows the story through. The same day at Puri begins the Chandan Yatra, the twenty-one-day summer observance in which the representative deities are taken out in the evenings, boated on the Narendra Pokhari tank and anointed with sandalwood against the heat. Sandalwood is the theme in Andhra Pradesh too, where the Varaha Narasimha temple at Simhachalam keeps Chandanotsava: the thick sandalwood covering worn by the deity through the year is removed and the original form is visible for a single day before a fresh coat is applied.

Among trading communities, and particularly in Bengal, the day is Halkhata, when the old ledger is closed and a new book of account opened, marked with a swastika and the household deity's name after a puja at the shop. Customers are invited, sweets distributed and balances settled or carried over with a formality that makes the occasion social as well as commercial. Marwari, Gujarati and other trading families keep a comparable custom, one of the most durable business observances in the country.

In the Himalaya, Akshaya Tritiya falls in the season when the Badrinath temple doors traditionally reopen after the winter closure, one of the fixed points of the Char Dham year, and in several years the opening has been kept on or very near this tithi; the exact date is announced separately by the temple committee, usually on Vasant Panchami, so check the announcement rather than assume the two coincide. Tamil Nadu and Kerala keep the day more quietly: it is observed in temples and gold buying has spread in urban centres as it has everywhere, but it does not carry the weight it does in the north and west, where the agricultural and commercial year turns on it.

Festivals around Akshaya Tritiya 2027

There is no adhik maas in 2027, so the calendar runs without the month-long displacement that shifts dates in some years. A local panchang remains the last word for your own city.

Visit us or order online

For households setting up or adding to a home altar before Akshaya Tritiya, the Goddess Lakshmi Brass Idol is a solid cast brass murti of the kind traditionally used in Lakshminarayana puja on this day, placed beside a Vishnu murti or image and offered chandan, kumkum, flowers and a ghee lamp. It is a puja article and is offered as one; no outcome is claimed for it. You will find it and the rest of our brass work at the Divine Hindu Store, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011, or online with delivery across India.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and cultural purposes only. Festival dates and tithi timings are computed for a specific location and vary by city; the timing given here is for New Delhi, and readers should confirm against a panchang for their own place or the practice of their family temple. Religious and traditional beliefs described here are presented as matters of faith and long-standing custom, and no outcome, benefit or result is claimed or guaranteed. Nothing in this article is financial, investment or medical advice. Anyone considering a fast should follow the advice of a qualified doctor. Divine Hindu is a seller of traditional puja articles and does not deal in bullion or investment products.