Diwali 2026: The Five Days, Lakshmi Puja Muhurat and What to Book

Last updated: September 2026 · By Acharya Alok Pandit, Divine Hindu, Jayanagar 3rd Block East, Bengaluru 560011 · ~18 min read

Diwali 2026 is an awkward year for calendars, and it is worth understanding why before you fix anything. The Amavasya tithi begins in the late morning of Sunday 8 November and does not end until the early afternoon of Monday 9 November, which means the new moon touches two civil days. Different rules pick different days for different rituals, and the result is a week in which a printed calendar, a temple noticeboard and a WhatsApp forward can each say something different and none of them be careless.

Every date and timing on this page was checked twice: against Drik Panchang set to the relevant city, and against an independent computation of tithi boundaries, sunrise, sunset and ascendant timings using the Swiss Ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsa. Where they differ by a minute or two, we say so rather than pretending to a precision nobody has.

The five days of Diwali 2026

Both Drik Panchang and mypanchang give exactly this sequence for India, and our own computation of the tithi boundaries agrees. Our companion guides go deeper on each day: Dhanteras 2026, the home Diwali Lakshmi Puja vidhi, Govardhan Puja 2026 and Bhai Dooj and Govardhan Puja 2026.

Why Diwali is the 8th and not the 9th

The Amavasya tithi begins at about 11:27 AM on Sunday 8 November and ends at about 12:31 PM on Monday 9 November (Drik Panchang; our computation gives 11:28 AM and 12:32 PM, a one-minute difference that comes from the ayanamsa used and does not matter).

The rule for Lakshmi Puja is that it is performed after sunset, in pradosh, on the day when Amavasya prevails during pradosh. On 8 November, Amavasya has been running since late morning and is fully present at sunset — so the puja belongs to that evening. On 9 November, Amavasya has already ended by half past twelve in the afternoon, hours before sunset, so there is no Amavasya at pradosh at all. The 9th keeps the Amavasya snan and daan, because Amavasya is the tithi at sunrise, but not the Lakshmi Puja.

This is why a few calendars will print Diwali on 9 November. They are applying the sunrise rule that governs most tithis, rather than the pradosh rule that governs this one. For the lamp and the puja, the evening of Sunday 8 November 2026 is the answer, and every source we checked agrees.

Why Govardhan Puja is the 10th and not the 9th

The same long Amavasya causes the second confusion. Govardhan Puja and Annakut need Kartik Shukla Pratipada, and Pratipada only begins at about 12:31 PM on Monday 9 November — too late for a morning rite. At sunrise on Tuesday 10 November Pratipada is running, so that is the day, together with Bali Pratipada and the Gujarati New Year. Bhai Dooj follows on Wednesday 11 November.

Calendars that simply count “the day after Diwali” will print 9 November for Govardhan and 10 November for Bhai Dooj. For London, Dubai and the western hemisphere those earlier dates are in fact correct, because the tithi boundaries land differently there. For India they are a day out. Drik Panchang and mypanchang both give 10 and 11 November.

The Lakshmi Puja muhurat: how it is actually calculated

There is no single Lakshmi Puja time for India, and any page that prints one has quietly picked a city and hoped you live in it. The window is built from three things, and all three move with where you are.

Step 1 — Amavasya must be present

This one is settled for 2026: Amavasya runs from late morning on the 8th right through the evening everywhere in India, so the tithi condition is satisfied for every city.

Step 2 — Pradosh kaal

Pradosh is the stretch beginning at sunset — traditionally reckoned as roughly three muhurtas, about two and a half hours, though publishers differ slightly on where they close it. It is the classical window for Lakshmi Puja, and Drik Panchang's own note is that no other Diwali puja muhurat is as good as one falling in pradosh, even if only a ghati of it is available. Because pradosh starts at your sunset, it starts later the further west you are: sunset on 8 November 2026 is about 4:56 PM in Kolkata and about 6:02 PM in Mumbai, more than an hour apart on the same evening in the same country.

Step 3 — Sthir lagna, which usually means Vrishabha

The twelve rashis are grouped into chara (movable), sthir (fixed) and dvisvabhava (dual) signs. The four sthir signs are Vrishabha, Simha, Vrischika and Kumbha. The traditional reasoning for Lakshmi Puja is that a rite for something you wish to retain should be performed while a fixed sign is rising, so that what is invoked settles rather than passes through — Lakshmi is asked to stay, not to visit. In the Diwali season, the sthir lagna that falls in the early evening is Vrishabha, which is why almost every panchang's Lakshmi Puja muhurat is simply the Vrishabha lagna window.

Two consequences that most guides skip. First, the ascendant is a local phenomenon: which sign is rising depends on your longitude and, for how long it rises, on your latitude. Vrishabha takes noticeably longer to rise in Delhi than in Chennai. Second, this is why the muhurat is not simply “two hours after sunset” — pradosh and Vrishabha are two different clocks that happen to overlap for most of India during Diwali, and the muhurat is the overlap.

The method in one line

Take your city's sunset on 8 November 2026. Pradosh runs from there for roughly two and a half hours. Find the Vrishabha lagna window for your city that evening. Where the two overlap is your Lakshmi Puja muhurat. If Vrishabha runs past the end of pradosh, most publishers close the muhurat at the end of pradosh; if pradosh opens before Vrishabha, the muhurat starts when Vrishabha does.

City-by-city windows for 8 November 2026

These are Drik Panchang's published figures for each city, and each was independently cross-checked against our own ascendant computation, which agreed to within about two minutes in every case. Treat them as accurate to the nearest five minutes rather than to the minute.

Read the spread rather than the rows. Between Kolkata and Mumbai the window opens one hour and seven minutes apart on the same evening. A family in Guwahati should be finishing while a family in Rajkot has not started. This is not a difference of opinion between panchangs — it is the sun setting at different times in a country that spans nearly thirty degrees of longitude on a single clock.

If your city is not listed, do not interpolate from the table. Take your sunset and your Vrishabha lagna from a panchang set to your own location. Publishers also differ from one another by a few minutes on the same city, because some quote geometric sunset and others allow for refraction and horizon height, which is another reason to treat any printed muhurat as accurate to five minutes and not to the second.

Nishita kaal, and the other window on the same night

Two further windows are sometimes quoted for the night of 8 November and it is worth knowing what they are for. Nishita kaal, around true midnight, is the window used for the Mahanishita Lakshmi puja in some traditions and for Kali Puja in Bengal, which falls on this same night. Simha lagna, the other sthir lagna available that night, rises in the small hours — around 12:25 AM in Delhi and 12:54 AM in Mumbai — and is used mainly by households and establishments that keep a late-night puja by long family custom. Neither replaces the pradosh muhurat for an ordinary household Lakshmi-Ganesha puja.

What about choghadiya?

Choghadiya divides the day and night into eight parts each and labels them auspicious or otherwise. It is a secondary tool. Where a proper muhurat exists — and on Diwali it does — the muhurat takes precedence, and choghadiya is used mainly to pick a moment within it or to find a usable slot when the main window has passed. A page that offers you only choghadiya timings for Lakshmi Puja has given you the rough tool and skipped the precise one.

What each day traditionally calls for, and what corresponds

Dhanteras · Friday 6 November 2026

The day metal is customarily brought into the house, and Dhanvantari is remembered. The Yama Deepam — a lamp of four wicks set outside the door facing south after dark — is kept in many households on this evening. See Dhanteras 2026 and, for the customs rather than the claims about them, what is traditionally bought on Dhanteras and Akshaya Tritiya. The corresponding seva is the Shri Sukt and Durga Chalisa Puja.

Kali Chaudas · Saturday 7 November 2026

The night observance in Gujarat and much of western India. Across the Hindi belt the same day is kept for Hanuman, which is why the Hanuman Chalisa is read in so many houses that evening. The corresponding seva is the Hanuman Chalisa and Sundarkand Puja performed at Ayodhya.

Narak Chaturdashi and Lakshmi Puja · Sunday 8 November 2026

The morning belongs to the abhyang snan before sunrise — the oil bath kept as Narak Chaturdashi in the north and as Deepavali itself across Tamil Nadu. The evening belongs to the Lakshmi-Ganesha puja in the pradosh window above, with the ghee lamp, the chowki, the kalash and the account books in business households. The home vidhi is in Diwali Lakshmi Puja 2026, the kalash step in kalash sthapana vidhi, and the recitation in the Lakshmi mantra guide. The corresponding seva is again the Shri Sukt and Durga Chalisa Puja, at the family tier if the whole household is to be named.

Govardhan Puja and Bhai Dooj · Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 November 2026

The annakut mound on the Tuesday, the sister's tilak on the Wednesday, and Chitragupta worshipped with pen and ink in Kayastha households on the same day. Both are family observances that are kept at home rather than commissioned; see Bhai Dooj and Govardhan Puja 2026.

Six honest cautions for the Diwali week

• No pooja guarantees prosperity. Lakshmi Puja is a traditional observance kept on a traditional night. It is not a financial instrument, and we do not present it as one.
• Do not chase the minute. The muhurat is a window of roughly two hours, not an instant. A family that begins at 6:10 PM in Delhi has not missed anything.
• Do not take a national time from a forward. The single most common Diwali error is a Delhi muhurat circulated to a family in Chennai, which is a twelve-minute error at the start and a nineteen-minute error at the end.
• Do not use a printed time for a city you are not in. Travelling for Diwali? Use the muhurat of the city where you will actually be sitting.
• Watch the lamps. Ghee and oil lamps, cotton and synthetic clothing and small children are a genuinely dangerous combination, and this is the week for it. Keep diyas off the floor where a saree can catch them.
• Book early if you are booking. Diwali is the single most crowded muhurat in the year. A late booking may have to be kept on an adjacent window, and you should be told that before you pay rather than after.

After Diwali

Chhath Puja follows from Friday 13 to Monday 16 November, with Sandhya Arghya on Sunday the 15th and Usha Arghya on Monday the 16th. Dev Uthani Ekadashi falls on Friday 20 November for smarta households and Saturday 21 November for vaishnava households, with Tulsi Vivah on the Saturday. Kartik Purnima closes the month on Tuesday 24 November, kept as Dev Diwali at the Varanasi ghats and as Guru Nanak Jayanti. The whole of Kartik month carries the deep daan that Diwali begins. If you are working out what to arrange across the season, our festival-by-festival guide to which pooja suits which day lays out the whole run, and the Hindu festival calendar 2026 has the rest of the year.

Looking back rather than forward: this festive run opened with Karwa Chauth on 29 October and Ahoi Ashtami on 1 November, and before that with the fortnight covered in our Pitru Paksha shradh and tarpan guide. If you are weighing up whether to have a rite performed for you at all, our page on whether online puja is authentic sets out the case and its limits.

This guide is for educational and devotional purposes and reflects traditional practice, which varies by region, community and family. Muhurat timings are calculated from local sunrise, sunset and ascendant and differ by city; publishers also differ by a few minutes on the same city, so confirm the window with a current panchang for your own location before you observe. Nothing here is medical, financial or legal advice, and no ritual is offered as a remedy or guarantee of any material outcome.