Mahashivratri 2027: Date, Vrat Vidhi & Nishita Kaal

Last updated: September 2026 · By Acharya Alok Pandit, Divine Hindu, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011 · ~20 min read

Mahashivratri is the one night in the Hindu year that households stay awake on purpose. It is not a daytime festival that happens to run late. It is a night observance by design, and the rule that fixes its date is a rule about midnight rather than sunrise. In 2027, that night is Saturday, 6 March, running into the small hours of Sunday, 7 March.

This guide sets out the date and the few clock timings that can be stated with confidence, explains why one or two calendars will show you the 7th instead, and then goes through the observance itself: the legends as tradition tells them, the puja vidhi step by step, what is offered to Shiva and the short but firm list of what is not, a samagri table you can shop from, the forms the fast takes and who should modify it, and how the night is kept from Kathmandu to Coimbatore. If you kept the observance last year, our Maha Shivratri celebration guide covers the 2026 night; this page is the 2027 edition.

One caution first. Panchangs compute from a city's own sunrise, sunset and lunar positions, so Delhi figures are not Chennai figures — and publishers sometimes disagree by a minute even for the same city. Where they do, this page says so and prints no number. A missing timing costs you nothing; a wrong one can cost you the muhurat.

Mahashivratri 2027: date and timings

Three clock timings appear on this page and only three: Nishita Kaal beginning at 12:07 AM, the tithi ending at 01:46 PM, and the parana closing at that same moment. Each is carried identically by two independent panchangs for New Delhi. Everything else circulating for 2027 — prahar windows, the tithi's starting minute, the close of Nishita Kaal — is disputed by one to five minutes, and this guide leaves it blank rather than guess.

That is not fussiness. At least one widely copied auto-generated page for 2027 places the Chaturdashi's start on the afternoon of Friday, 5 March. It is simply wrong — five independent panchangs put the tithi's beginning around noon on Saturday, 6 March, and the "end" quoted beside it is a Nishita Kaal figure dropped into the wrong field. Check figures like those before planning around them.

Why Mahashivratri falls on 6 March — and why you may see the 7th

Mahashivratri is kept on the Chaturdashi, the fourteenth lunar day, of the dark fortnight — Krishna Paksha — the tithi immediately before the new moon. In 2027 that Chaturdashi opens around midday on Saturday, 6 March and closes at 01:46 PM on Sunday, 7 March. By the plain arithmetic, it is current across parts of two calendar days.

Most Hindu festivals are settled by which tithi is running at sunrise. Mahashivratri is not. It is settled by which tithi is running at Nishita Kaal, the Hindu midnight — the short window straddling the exact middle of the night between sunset and the next sunrise. On the night of 6–7 March 2027, Nishita Kaal opens at 12:07 AM and closes a little under fifty minutes later, and the Chaturdashi is unmistakably current throughout. The Chaturdashi is not running at Nishita Kaal on the night of 7–8 March, because by then it has long ended. So the festival belongs to Saturday, 6 March.

This midnight rule is not a technicality bolted on afterwards. It is the reason Mahashivratri is a night festival at all: the auspicious moment sits at the deepest point of the night, and the date is chosen to place a devotee's vigil there. The jagran, the four prahar pujas and the midnight abhishek all follow from it.

You will nonetheless find at least one credible aggregator listing Mahashivratri 2027 as Sunday, 7 March. The reason is straightforward: that publisher anchors on the tithi current at sunrise, and at sunrise on the 7th the Chaturdashi is indeed still running. It is a defensible rule for most festivals; it is the wrong rule for this one. The overwhelming weight of panchang authority — Drik Panchang and Prokerala among them, both computing for Delhi and both stating it in plain words — gives Saturday, 6 March 2027, and that is the date to keep.

Phalguna in the North, Magha in the South — the same night

A second and quite separate confusion is worth settling now, because it looks like a disagreement and is not one. In North Indian calendars, Mahashivratri 2027 is Phalguna Krishna Chaturdashi. In South and West Indian calendars it is Magha Krishna Chaturdashi. Two month names, one night.

The mechanism is the point where a lunar month is taken to end. The purnimanta reckoning, followed across most of North India, ends each month at the full moon, so the dark fortnight that follows Purnima belongs to the next month. The amanta reckoning, followed in the South, West and much of the Deccan, ends each month at the new moon, so that same dark fortnight belongs to the month that is closing. A krishna-paksha tithi therefore carries one label in the North and the preceding month's label in the South — while being, on the ground, the identical lunar day.

Drik Panchang states this directly: the Chaturdashi of Krishna Paksha in the month of Magha is Maha Shivaratri in the South Indian calendar, while in the North Indian calendar the same observance is named in Phalguna, and what differs is only the naming convention of the lunar month. North Indians and South Indians celebrate on the same day. If your family calendar says Phalguna and a relative's says Magha, nobody is wrong and nobody needs to move.

Why this Shivratri is the great one

There is a Shivratri every lunar month — the Krishna Paksha Chaturdashi comes round twelve or thirteen times a year, and each occurrence is kept as Masik Shivratri by those who observe it. The vidhi is broadly the same, on a smaller scale: a fast, an abhishek, japa in the evening.

The Phalguna or Magha occurrence is the one called Maha, the great Shivratri. Tradition gives several reasons: it is the night held to mark the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, the night of the Lingodbhava, and the night the halahala was drunk. Practically, it is the occasion on which the full four-prahar structure, the night-long vigil and the day-long fast are kept together rather than in part.

The stories tradition tells

The oldest and best known is the churning of the ocean, the samudra manthan. The Puranas relate that when the devas and asuras churned the cosmic ocean for amrita, what rose first was not nectar but halahala, a poison so virulent that it threatened every world. It is told that Shiva drank it to spare creation, and that Parvati, alarmed, held his throat so that the poison could go no further — it stayed there, turning his throat blue, and from that night he is called Neelkanth, the blue-throated one. The devas are said to have kept vigil through the night, singing and dancing to keep him awake while the poison was held. The jagran that devotees keep on Mahashivratri is traditionally understood as a memory of that watch.

A second strand tells of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati — the ascetic drawn out of his solitude by Parvati's long tapasya, the wedding kept on this night. It is why so much of the day's ritual is bridal in feel: the mangal gaan, the procession, the shringar offered to Parvati alongside the abhishek of the lingam.

The third is the dominant understanding in the South. Brahma and Vishnu, the Shiva Purana relates, fell into dispute over which of them was supreme, and a column of light without beginning or end appeared between them. Vishnu took the form of a boar and went downward to find its base; Brahma took the form of a swan and flew upward to find its crown. Neither reached an end. The pillar is the Lingodbhava — the lingam understood as the formless made visible — and its appearance is enacted at midnight in Tamil temples on Mahashivratri, at the very hour of the Nishita Kaal puja.

Finally, the story told with the most affection: a hunter, benighted in a forest, climbs a bilva tree to wait out the dark. To stay awake he plucks leaves and lets them fall through the night — and below him, unseen, is a Shiva lingam. Drops of water and his own tears fall with them. Without knowing it, he has kept a full night's worship in four watches. The teaching is that on this night the offering matters more than the offerer's learning. These narratives are given as tradition gives them, not as historical claims.

Mahashivratri puja vidhi at home, step by step

None of this requires a priest or a temple. A clean corner, a lingam or a picture of Shiva, water and a few leaves are enough. If you are performing a full Rudrabhishek at home, that guide sets out the longer form; what follows is the household vidhi for the night.

1. Bathe and prepare early. Bathe before dawn if you can, wear clean unstitched or simple clothes, and clean the puja place. Set the lingam or the murti on a raised platform facing north or east, with the drainage spout of the lingam pointing north.
2. Take the sankalp. Sit facing east with water, akshat and a flower in the right palm, and state aloud your name, gotra if you know it, the place, the day — Phalguna or Magha Krishna Chaturdashi, Saturday 6 March 2027 — and your intention to keep the vrat. Release the water at the base of the lingam. The sankalp is what turns a set of actions into a vrat.
3. Begin with water. Pour clean water, or Gangajal where you have it, over the lingam in a thin steady stream, chanting Om Namah Shivaya throughout. Abhishek is done with a continuous pour, not splashes.
4. Perform the panchamrit abhishek in sequence. The traditional order is water, then milk, then curd, then ghee, then honey, then sugar — the five with water opening and closing the set. Rinse with clean water between each substance so nothing is offered over a residue, and finish with a full water abhishek.
5. Wipe and dress the lingam. Dry it gently with a clean cloth. Apply chandan — white sandalwood paste — in three horizontal lines, the tripundra, which is Shiva's mark. Vibhuti or bhasma may be applied in the same three lines where that is the family custom.
6. Offer bilva patra. Bel leaves are the central offering. Use whole, unbroken, untorn leaves in threes — the trifoliate leaf as it grows — and place them with the smooth side down, touching the lingam. Offer them one set at a time with Om Namah Shivaya. Traditionally, leaves already offered may be washed and offered again, since bilva is never treated as stale.
7. Add the flowers Shiva is given. Dhatura fruit or flower, aak or madar blossoms, white flowers, and durva where custom keeps it. In some regions bhang leaves are placed among the offerings; this is a local custom only, not universal, and bhang is a regulated substance in India — where it is not your family's practice, leave it out.
8. Light the diya and dhoop. A ghee lamp and incense, then camphor. Offer naivedya — fruit, thandai, sweets — and finally the aarti; our guide on how to do aarti covers the movement and the order.
9. Do japa with a rudraksha mala. The mantra of the night is Om Namah Shivaya, the panchakshari. Many keep 108 repetitions per prahar; some keep a full mala through each watch. The Mahamrityunjaya mantra is recited alongside it, and the wider set of Shiva mantras is drawn on in longer sittings. A rudraksha mala is the traditional counting aid, and many wear the bead for the first time on this night.
10. Keep the four prahars. The night from sunset to sunrise is divided into four equal watches, the prahars, with a puja in each. Custom associates a different abhishek substance with each watch — water, curd, ghee and honey in the commonest sequence — and a fresh offering of bilva. Take the four windows for your own city from a current panchang, because they shift with local sunset and sunrise, and publishers differ by several minutes even for a single city.
11. Keep the vigil. Between the prahar pujas, the night is filled with bhajan, path from the Shiva Purana or the Rudrashtakam, and japa. The vigil is the observance; the pujas punctuate it.
12. Do the parana. On the morning of Sunday, 7 March 2027, after sunrise and after a final puja, break the fast. By the rule most households follow, the parana is completed before the Chaturdashi ends at 01:46 PM that day. Give prasad and, where it is your practice, food or dakshina before you eat.

What is offered to Shiva — and what is traditionally not

This is the section most people actually come looking for, and it is worth being precise about. The offerings Shiva receives are simple, cooling and mostly wild — leaves and flowers that grow untended, water, ash. The exclusions are equally specific, and each has a story attached. What follows is presented as tradition holds it, with the reasons tradition gives.

Two footnotes. None of these exclusions is a matter of danger or penalty; they are matters of propriety, and families differ — where your kul parampara says otherwise, follow it. And if you have only water and a bilva leaf, that is a complete offering by the tradition's own reckoning.

Mahashivratri puja samagri

The Mahashivratri vrat: forms of the fast, and the parana

The vrat is kept through the daylight of Saturday, 6 March 2027 and through the night, with the parana on Sunday morning. What "kept" means varies, and tradition itself sanctions the variation.

What is eaten in a Shivratri phalahar. The rule is: no grain, no onion, no garlic, and no common table salt. In their place, kuttu (buckwheat) flour, singhara (water chestnut) flour and rajgira are used for puris, rotis and pakoras; sabudana appears as khichdi or vada; samak rice or barnyard millet is cooked as a pulao or kheer. Potato, sweet potato, arbi, pumpkin, raw banana, cucumber and tomato are the usual vegetables. Seasoning is with sendha namak (rock salt), jeera, black pepper and green chilli. Milk, curd, paneer, makhana, fruit, dry fruit and thandai complete the table.

The vigil. Jagran is not incidental to this fast; it is half of it. The night passes in the four prahar pujas, bhajan, path and japa — by tradition's own telling, the watch the devas kept while Shiva held the poison. Households that cannot manage the whole night commonly keep the Nishita Kaal puja from 12:07 AM and rest afterwards.

The parana. Break the fast on the morning of Sunday, 7 March 2027, after a bath and a final puja, and — following the rule most households use — complete it before the Chaturdashi ends at 01:46 PM. Begin with prasad, then water, then something light. After a night without food, a heavy first meal is unkind to the body.

Who should modify or skip the fast

Anyone who is pregnant or nursing, elderly, diabetic, on regular medication, recovering from illness or surgery, or living with any condition affected by food and fluid timing should keep the modified form — the puja, the japa and as much of the vigil as is comfortable, with normal meals and medicines taken as prescribed. Children should not keep a nirjala fast. Tradition is explicit that the intention carries the vrat, and a fast that damages health serves nobody. Please follow your doctor's advice over any custom described here. This article is not medical advice.

What is traditionally done, and what is traditionally avoided

Traditionally done: bathing before dawn in clean clothes; taking a formal sankalp; abhishek with a steady unbroken stream; bilva offered through all four prahars; Om Namah Shivaya kept going quietly through the day, not only at the puja; reading or hearing the Shiva Purana, the Rudrashtakam or the Shiva Tandava Stotram; anna daan or dakshina before the parana; a visit to a Shiva temple; silence and simplicity through the day.

Traditionally avoided: sleeping through the night, the one thing the observance is designed against; onion, garlic, meat and alcohol; arguments, harsh speech and gossip, which tradition treats as breaking the fast as surely as food does; stepping across the jaladhari, the drainage channel of the lingam — pradakshina is made up to it and back, not over it; the excluded offerings listed above; and cutting hair or nails, which many families avoid by custom.

How the night is kept, from Kathmandu to Kanyakumari

The backbone of Mahashivratri pilgrimage is the twelve Jyotirlingas, the shrines where Shiva is worshipped as the pillar of light of the Lingodbhava story, and every one keeps queues that run for hours on this night. At Mahakaleshwar in Ujjain the distinctive rite is the bhasma aarti, performed in the small hours with sacred ash, with a continuous cycle of worship over several days around it. At Kashi Vishwanath in Varanasi the city becomes the festival: Shiva's baraat is taken through the lanes, a wedding procession complete with ganas, ash-smeared sadhus and Aghoris, and the ghats stay lit all night. Somnath in Gujarat, first of the twelve and facing the sea, keeps an all-night abhishek. Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh, where a Jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha stand together, holds a brahmotsavam around it.

Two of the most famous Shiva sites are closed at this season, and it is worth saying so before anyone plans a journey. Kedarnath is shut in early March — the shrine is under snow and its portals do not open until late April or May, with the deity worshipped at Ukhimath through the winter, where the Mahashivratri observance is in fact held. Amarnath in Kashmir is likewise deep in its off-season; the ice lingam yatra belongs to the monsoon months, not to March.

In Himachal Pradesh, Mandi holds one of the most distinctive celebrations in the country. The town's presiding deity is Bhootnath, and the international Shivratri fair brings together devtas from across the surrounding valleys, carried in palanquins to pay their respects, with a week of processions and music. Kashmir keeps something different again: Herath, the Kashmiri Pandit observance, is not a single night but a sequence running roughly three weeks, centred on the vatuk kalash — a pot filled with water and walnuts, installed and worshipped over several days, the walnuts distributed afterwards as prasad. Its rhythm, its foods and its family customs are quite unlike the rest of India's Shivratri.

In the South the night turns on the Lingodbhava. In Tamil temples the Lingodbhava murti, set in the outer niche of the western sanctum wall, receives worship at midnight — the hour at which the pillar of light is said to have appeared. Chidambaram, where Shiva is worshipped as Nataraja and the Mahashivratri abhishek is one of six great annual anointings, keeps its own long night. At Coimbatore the Isha Yoga Centre hosts a night-long Mahashivratri gathering at the foot of the Adiyogi, evening to sunrise, widely streamed.

Beyond India, Pashupatinath in Kathmandu is the great gathering of the night. Nepal keeps Shivaratri as a public holiday, and the temple draws pilgrims from across Nepal and India along with thousands of sadhus who camp on the Bagmati banks, sit at their dhunis and are fed by the temple trust. In Bengal the emphasis turns domestic: unmarried women keep a Shiva vrat through the day, fasting and offering water and bel leaves at a small lingam, with the traditionally stated intention of a good husband, and four small pujas mark the four watches in households that keep it fully. What holds all this together is not a common liturgy but a common hour.

Festivals around Mahashivratri in 2027

There is no adhik maas in 2027 — the last intercalary month was Adhika Jyeshtha in May and June 2026 — so the lunar year runs without an inserted month and the festival spacing above holds.

Visit us or order online

If you are gathering things for the night of 6 March, our rudraksha collection carries natural beads across the mukhi range, and the 5 Mukhi Rudraksha Kantha Mala - 54+1 Beads is the piece most people ask for at Shivratri — the five-faced bead is traditionally associated with Shiva and is the one most commonly used for japa, with the 54+1 kantha worn at the neck or held for counting. It is a natural rudraksha mala, strung as a kantha; you can read more about the bead itself in our 5 mukhi rudraksha guide. Come and see it at the Divine Hindu Store, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011, or order online for delivery across India.

Provided for cultural and informational purposes. Timings are calculated for New Delhi and vary by location; please confirm against a panchang set to your own city. Traditional beliefs are presented as tradition holds them, not as claims of guaranteed outcome. Nothing here is medical advice — anyone pregnant, nursing, elderly, diabetic, unwell or on medication should consult a doctor before fasting.