Chhath Puja 2026 dates: the four days and what happens on each
Chhath Puja 2026 runs November 13 to 16, with the main sunset offering on Sunday, November 15. What happens each day, the 36-hour fast and city arghya times.
Why it matters
Holiday lists and festival sites give different single dates for Chhath, but the arghya depends on your local sunset and sunrise. The four dates and city times here come from the main Hindu almanacs.
At sunset on Sunday, November 15, 2026, millions of people across Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and southern Nepal will stand waist-deep in rivers and ponds, lifting bamboo baskets of fruit and sweets toward the sinking sun. That evening offering is the heart of Chhath Puja, a four-day festival that in 2026 runs from Friday, November 13 to Monday, November 16.
Quick answer: Chhath Puja 2026 runs November 13 to 16. Nahay Khay falls on Friday, November 13; Kharna on Saturday, November 14; the evening offering, Sandhya Arghya, on Sunday, November 15; and the dawn offering, Usha Arghya, on Monday, November 16, according to Drik Panchang and other Hindu almanacs. In Patna the sun sets at 5:01 p.m. local time (11:31 GMT) on November 15.
Chhath honors Surya, the Sun god, and Chhathi Maiya, a mother goddess to whom families pray for the health and long life of their children. It is one of the most demanding observances in the Hindu year. The people who keep the vow, mostly women though many men take it too, go without food or water for about 36 hours.
It also arrives late this year. In 2025 the main evening fell on October 27. The extra lunar month that pushed Diwali 2026 back to November 8 pushes Chhath back with it, by almost three weeks.
The four days of Chhath Puja 2026
| Day | Date | Name | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fri, Nov 13 | Nahay Khay | Ritual bath, one plain meal |
| 2 | Sat, Nov 14 | Kharna (Lohanda) | Daylong fast, kheer and roti after sunset |
| 3 | Sun, Nov 15 | Sandhya Arghya | Offering to the setting sun |
| 4 | Mon, Nov 16 | Usha Arghya | Offering to the rising sun, fast ends |
Source: Drik Panchang; SmartPuja; Shubh Panchang; Hindutone, October 2026.
Day 1: Nahay Khay, “bathe and eat”
The name is the instruction. On November 13 devotees bathe, in a river if one is near, clean the house and eat a single meal. The usual plate is bottle gourd (lauki), chana dal and rice, cooked without onion or garlic. It is simple food on purpose: the festival’s kitchen rules tighten from here.
Day 2: Kharna, the last meal
On November 14 the devotee fasts through the day. After sunset they cook rasiya, rice boiled with jaggery, and eat it with roti, then share it with family and neighbors as prasad, food that has been offered to the deity and is treated as blessed.
That bowl of kheer is the last food or water the devotee takes until Monday morning.
Day 3: Sandhya Arghya, the evening offering
November 15 is the day most people mean when they say “Chhath.” Through the day the household fries thekua, a hard sweet made from wheat flour, jaggery and ghee, which is the festival’s signature offering. Late in the afternoon, families walk to the ghat, the steps leading down to a river or pond, carrying fruit, thekua and rice laddoos in bamboo baskets.
The devotee wades in, faces west and makes the arghya, the offering to the Sun, as it goes down. In Patna that is 5:01 p.m.; in Kolkata, farther east, the Sun is gone by 4:53 p.m.
Day 4: Usha Arghya, the dawn offering
Before first light on November 16, the same families return to the same water. This time the devotee faces east and waits. Once the Sun clears the horizon and the offering is made, the fast ends with parana, the first sip of water and the first bite of prasad.
How the 36-hour nirjala fast works
Nirjala means “without water.” The fast that gives Chhath its reputation starts after the Kharna meal on the evening of November 14 and ends after the dawn offering on November 16.
Run the clock in Patna and it comes to roughly 37 hours, from a little after sunset on Saturday to a little after sunrise on Monday. Every festival guide we checked calls it 36 hours, and that is the figure devotees use.
In practice the fasting starts earlier. Kharna day is itself a fast until evening, so between the Nahay Khay meal on Friday and the dawn offering on Monday, the devotee eats once.
This article describes a religious practice and is not medical advice.
Why does Chhath fall on Shashthi, six days after Diwali?
The name comes from Shashthi, Sanskrit for “sixth.” The festival’s main day is Shashthi, the sixth lunar day of the bright half of the month of Kartik, which is why it is also listed as Surya Shashthi or Pratihar Shashthi in government holiday orders.
Diwali falls on the new moon of Kartik. Count six lunar days into the waxing moon and you reach Shashthi; in 2026 that is one week after Diwali night on November 8.
A lunar day, or tithi, does not start at midnight. Drik Panchang puts the 2026 Shashthi from 11:23 p.m. Indian time on November 14 (17:53 GMT) to 2:00 a.m. on November 16 (20:30 GMT on November 15). Shubh Panchang gives the same window, a minute later at each end.
That timing explains the schedule. Shashthi begins after dark on Saturday, so Saturday’s sunset is still on the fifth lunar day; Kharna belongs there. Sunday’s sunset is the only one that falls inside Shashthi, which makes November 15 the evening of Sandhya Arghya. The dawn offering then comes on the seventh lunar day, Saptami, on Monday morning.
Many accounts tie the two offerings to Usha and Pratyusha, the first light of dawn and the last light of dusk, both associated with the Sun. The dawn offering takes Usha’s name.
There is a second, smaller Chhath in spring, Chaiti Chhath, held on the same lunar day in the month of Chaitra, usually in March or April. When people search for Chhath Puja in October or November, they mean the Kartik festival.
Where the calendars disagree
On the four dates themselves, the main almanacs line up. Drik Panchang, Shubh Panchang, SmartPuja and Hindutone’s city tables all put Nahay Khay on November 13 and Usha Arghya on November 16. We found no Hindu almanac that places the main evening on any day but November 15.
The confusion comes from holiday lists and from times.
Single-date listings. Holiday websites often write “Chhath Puja” against one date, and they pick different ones. BankBazaar’s holiday page gives the festival as starting on Friday, November 13, which is Nahay Khay, not the main day. The HR site Greythr’s 2026 Bihar table carries a stray “Chhath” entry on October 14 alongside November 15 and 16; no almanac supports the October date.
Which day is the office holiday. Bihar holiday trackers such as Keka and Cleartax list both November 15 and 16. For Jharkhand, Factohr lists both days as state holidays, while Keka lists only November 16 as a gazetted bank holiday, since November 15 is a Sunday. We could not find the original 2026 state notifications online as of October 27, so treat these as provisional. In Delhi, Chhath is on the 2026 restricted (optional) holiday list, Sakshi Post reported, though in 2025 the Delhi government declared a one-off holiday on October 27 for the festival. Nepal’s government declared a public holiday for Chhath in 2025, and Madhesh Province added an extra day; no 2026 notice had appeared by October 27.
Arghya times with no city. Shubh Panchang gives a sunset arghya of 5:58 p.m. and a sunrise arghya of 6:50 a.m. without naming a place. Those figures are about an hour off for Patna and closer to western India. Sunrise and sunset depend on where you stand, so a time with no city attached tells you little.
Sunset and sunrise arghya times by city
| City | Sunset, Sun Nov 15 | Sunrise, Mon Nov 16 |
|---|---|---|
| Patna | 5:01 p.m. | 6:07 a.m. |
| Ranchi | 5:04 p.m. | 6:03 a.m. |
| Varanasi | 5:10 p.m. | 6:16 a.m. |
| Kolkata | 4:53 p.m. | 5:50 a.m. |
| New Delhi | 5:28 p.m. | 6:44 a.m. |
| Kathmandu | 5:12 p.m. | 6:25 a.m. |
Source: Drik Panchang city pages (sunset); Hindutone’s city table compiled from Drik Panchang (sunrise), October 2026. Local time: India is GMT+5:30, Nepal GMT+5:45.
In GMT, the Patna offering falls at 11:31 on November 15 and the dawn offering at 00:37 on November 16. Drik Panchang’s own pages give the sunrise for November 15, a minute or so earlier than the figures above; the difference does not matter at a ghat.
What does matter is the horizon. These are astronomical times for a flat horizon. On a riverbank lined with buildings or trees, the Sun can be visible a few minutes later in the morning and lost a few minutes sooner in the evening.
Who celebrates Chhath, and where
The festival’s home is Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh in India, and the plains of southern Nepal, Madhesh Province above all, along with Koshi, Lumbini and other provinces.
Migration carried it to the big cities. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Kathmandu all hold large Chhath gatherings, and Delhi has treated it as a holiday in some years.
Abroad, Chhath follows two waves of departure. The older one, of 19th-century indentured laborers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, left a large Bhojpuri-speaking population in Mauritius, where Chhath is a public occasion; in 2025 Mauritius’s president attended Chhath events, IANS reported. The newer wave of students and professionals celebrates in the United States, Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Australia.
Watch for: state holiday notices from Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi, and Nepal’s government holiday announcement, which in 2025 came only days before the festival. For the arghya itself, check your city’s almanac or ghat committee for the sunset on November 15 and sunrise on November 16, not a national figure.
