Amavasya and Purnima 2026: Full List, Dates and the Rules for These Days

2026-08-26

Four Amavasyas and four Purnimas fall between 30 July and 24 November 2026. Here is each one with its exact tithi timing read from our panchang engine, what the day is actually for, the snan-daan rules, and an honest look at the fear people attach to Amavasya.

Two tithis return every lunar month without fail. Amavasya closes the dark fortnight with no moon in the sky at all; Purnima closes the bright one with the moon completely lit. Between them they carry most of the Hindu ritual year — shraddha and tarpan, snan and daan, vrat, and several of the largest festivals. This page lists every one our panchang engine can verify, with exact timings, and says where the data stops.

What this page covers, and where it stops

Our panchang database currently holds 118 continuously computed days: 30 July 2026 to 24 November 2026. Every date, tithi start, tithi end, sunrise and moonrise below is read from that engine for New Delhi. Nothing here is recalled from a printed calendar.

Inside it there are exactly four Amavasyas and four Purnimas. Outside — Ashadha Purnima in July, and everything from Margashirsha onward in December — we hold no verified values and will not guess. A reference page that invents dates it cannot check is worse than one that admits the gap.

Every Amavasya from 30 July to 24 November 2026

A tithi is not a day. It is an interval, and it rarely lines up with the calendar. Amavasya is said to fall on the date it is running at sunrise, but the tithi usually begins the previous day and ends partway through the named one. Both edges matter, because tarpan and daan are meant to be done while the tithi is actually running.

Measured for New Delhi by the AstroVedansh panchang engine. No time in this table is estimated.

One line deserves an early warning. On 11 September the Amavasya tithi ends at 08:58, barely three hours after sunrise. Anyone planning tarpan that morning has a short window; a mid-morning start misses the tithi entirely.

Every Purnima in the same window

Purnima has a second time that matters: moonrise. A moon that has not risen cannot be offered arghya, and several Purnima observances are built around seeing it rather than around sunrise.

Measured for New Delhi. Moonrise on 25 October, the Sharad Purnima night, is 16:55 — also measured, not estimated.

What each of these eight days is actually for

• 12 August, Shravana Amavasya. No festival string in our engine, but across north India it is Hariyali Amavasya — tree planting, and Shiva worship in the Sawan month already running.
• 28 August, Shravana Purnima. Raksha Bandhan, and the close of Sawan — both tagged in our data. The tithi ends at 09:48, so the rakhi is tied in the morning.
• 11 September, Bhadrapada Amavasya. Again no festival tag. Regionally it is Kushagrahani Amavasya, when kusha grass is gathered for the year's rituals; in parts of Maharashtra, Pithori Amavasya.
• 26 September, Bhadrapada Purnima. Purnima Shraddha — a customary name our engine does not tag. What it does record: Pitru Paksha begins the next day, 27 September.
• 10 October, Sarva Pitru Amavasya. The closing day of Pitru Paksha and the year's most important Amavasya for ancestors — for anyone whose parent's death tithi is unknown or was missed. See our page on Sarva Pitru Amavasya 2026.
• 26 October, Ashwin Purnima. Sharad Purnima, the kheer-under-moonlight night — with a date subtlety explained below.
• 9 November, Kartik Amavasya. A Somvati Amavasya, and the Amavasya of the Diwali cluster — again, with a subtlety below.
• 24 November, Kartik Purnima. Dev Diwali. The largest snan-daan Purnima of the year, on which river bathing draws the biggest crowds.

Somvati, Shani, Bhaumvati: what the day-name really means

These prefixes describe only the weekday the Amavasya lands on. Somvati is Monday, Shani Saturday, Bhaumvati Tuesday. The tithi is unchanged; only the vara differs.

This window gives us two. 10 October is a Saturday, making Sarva Pitru Amavasya also a Shani Amavasya — an uncommon overlap of the year's principal ancestor day with the weekday associated with Shani. 9 November is a Monday, making Kartik Amavasya a Somvati Amavasya. There is no Bhaumvati Amavasya in our verified window at all.

Somvati Amavasya carries a well-known custom of women fasting and circling a peepal tree. What the classical texts do not supply is a reason why the Monday overlap should matter more than any other. The practice is old and widely followed; the explanation is not written down. We would rather say that than manufacture one.

Two dates people reliably get wrong

Diwali is 8 November, but Kartik Amavasya is 9 November. Both are correct. Lakshmi Puja is fixed by Amavasya running during pradosh, the period after sunset — and Amavasya begins at 11:28 on 8 November, so it is running that evening. By the sunrise rule, the Amavasya day is 9 November. Diyas: 8 November. Snan, tarpan or the Somvati observance: 9 November. Full timings on the Diwali 2026 page.

Sharad Purnima is the night of 25 October, though Purnima by sunrise is 26 October. The tithi runs from 11:57 on 25 October to 09:41 on 26 October, so the full-moon night sitting inside Purnima is the 25th — and our engine tags Sharad Purnima on that date. Kheer goes out under that evening's moon. Snan, daan and any sunrise-keyed Purnima vrat belong to 26 October. The longer version is on our Sharad Purnima 2026 page.

Snan and daan, stated plainly

1. Bathe at or before sunrise, while the tithi is running. A river or tirtha if you can reach one; at home, a few drops of tirtha jal in ordinary water is an accepted substitute. The texts do not require the river.
2. Check the tithi end time first. This is the step most people skip. On 28 August, 11 September and 26 October the tithi is gone before ten in the morning.
3. Amavasya daan leans dark and grain-based — black til, whole grain, cloth, food. Tarpan is done in the forenoon, facing south, with water and til.
4. Purnima daan leans white — rice, milk, sugar, white cloth. Kartik Purnima adds a lamp at a river or under tulsi after dark.
5. Fasting is optional on both. A Purnima vrat is broken after the moon is sighted, not at sunset — which is why the moonrise column is there.

The fear attached to Amavasya — an honest note

Amavasya has a reputation it does not earn from the texts. The shastra treats it as a day of obligation, not danger: it is the day the ancestors are owed water. That is the opposite of an ominous instruction.

The caution comes from muhurta, and muhurta only. Amavasya is not chosen for weddings, housewarmings or new ventures because the tithi is classified unsuitable for those specific initiations. That is a scheduling convention inside a technical system; it says nothing about whether the day is safe or unlucky. Travel, work and ordinary life are untouched.

The folk layer — spirits, not stepping out after dark — has no scriptural basis we can point to, and we will not dress it up in borrowed physics either. The tradition never claimed a physiological effect of a moonless night. We have written at length on is Amavasya really an inauspicious day.

These times are for Delhi

Every clock time here is measured for New Delhi in IST. Tithi start and end are astronomical moments and shift only slightly with location, but sunrise and moonrise change materially by city — a Purnima moon sighted at 18:53 in Delhi will not appear at that minute in Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai. Since these observances turn on exactly those two events, look up your own city before fixing a time. We have extrapolated no city times here; an estimated sunrise is worse than none. For dates before 30 July or after 24 November 2026, check your own panchang — this page will not offer a number it cannot verify.