Chhath Puja 2026: Arghya Times City-Wise — Sandhya 15, Usha 16 November

2026-09-04

Sandhya arghya on Sunday, 15 November 2026 and usha arghya on Monday, 16 November — but the minute is your own city's sunset and sunrise, spread across more than an hour from Purnia to Mumbai. City-wise times from our solar engine, plus the four-day kram, soop contents and ghat etiquette.

In the last week before Chhath the same question travels through every household — arghya kitne baje hai? Most pages answer it with a single time, usually Delhi's, as if the sun set at one minute from Purnia to Mumbai. It does not. In 2026, sandhya arghya falls on Sunday, 15 November and usha arghya on Monday, 16 November — and the minute of each is simply your own city's sunset and sunrise. The table below comes from our solar engine, computed for each city's own coordinates.

Chhath Puja 2026: the dates, verified

Chhath is kept on Kartik Shukla Shashthi, which our panchang places on Sunday, 15 November 2026. The four days arrange themselves around it:

• Nahay-Khay — Friday, 13 November 2026
• Kharna — Saturday, 14 November 2026
• Sandhya Arghya — Sunday, 15 November 2026, to the setting sun
• Usha Arghya and paran — Monday, 16 November 2026, to the rising sun

For Delhi, our engine gives sunset on 15 November at 5:26 pm (17:26) and sunrise on 16 November at 6:45 am (06:45). Those two instants are the parv's two arghyas; the roughly thirty-six-hour nirjala vrat hangs between Kharna evening and the second of them. For the Shashthi window itself, see our tithi timings.

Why arghya has no separate muhurta

For almost every other observance the panchang must locate a window — a lagna, an abhijit, a pradosh kaal — because the deity is not standing in front of you. Chhath is different. The devata is the visible sun, and the arghya is given to the disc itself: setting on Shashthi evening, risen the next morning. The sunset is the muhurta. The sunrise is the muhurta. There is nothing else to compute, and no single "shubh time" printed for the whole country can be right, because the sun does not set over Kolkata and Mumbai in the same minute.

One worry we hear every year: the evening window sometimes overlaps rahu kaal. Let it. Rahu kaal governs the launching of new undertakings; an arghya offered at the sun's own ordained instant, on the parv's own tithi, is not blocked by it. The sun does not wait for Rahu, and neither should the vrati.

Sandhya and usha arghya, city by city

Sandhya arghya = sunset on 15 November. Usha arghya = sunrise on 16 November. All times IST, from our solar engine.

Two practical notes. The times can shift ±2–3 minutes with your local horizon — a treeline, a building, the far bank of the river all move the visible sunset slightly. And the arghya begins as the disc touches the horizon, not after it has gone: reach the ghat at least 15 minutes early, soop arranged, before the light starts to fall.

Why the spread is more than an hour

Purnia's sun sets at 16:50; Mumbai's at 17:59. Nothing mystical is happening — the earth turns eastward, so the east meets both sunrise and sunset first. Each degree of longitude is worth about four minutes of sun, and the Bihar–Bengal belt sits a long way east of the Arabian Sea. The same geometry spreads Karva Chauth's moonrise across the map — see our city-wise Karva Chauth 2026 chandrodaya list. A parv timed to the sky must be timed to your own patch of it.

The four days, briefly

Nahay-Khay (13 November) — the vrati bathes, in a river where possible, and takes the single meal of the day: most commonly kaddu-bhaat with chana dal, cooked in strict shuddhata. The kitchen changes character from this day.

Kharna (14 November) — a full day's fast; in the evening the vrati cooks kheer of gud with roti, offers it, and eats it as the day's only meal. From this prasad the nirjala vrat begins — no food, no water — until the morning arghya of the 16th.

Then the two arghya days. The day-by-day detail — what is cooked, on what fire, what each day asks of the household — is in our full Chhath 2026 kram article; this page stays with the times.

Why the setting sun comes first

Chhath is the only major parv in which the setting sun is worshipped — and it is worshipped first. Tradition reads the two arghyas as offered to the two shaktis of Surya: Pratyusha, the last light of evening, and Usha, the first light of morning. But the plainer reading is the one families actually say at the ghat: you thank the one who has served before you petition the one who arrives. The sun that is leaving has carried the whole day — the whole year — and Chhath will not let it go unthanked. A parv that begins with gratitude to the departing, and only then turns to the rising sun with its requests, is teaching something about how to receive anything at all.

Usha arghya and paran — the morning of 16 November

Families return to the ghat in the dark — many never leave, keeping the whole night at the water — and stand ready before first light. In Delhi the sun rises at 6:45 am; in Kolkata at 5:51. The arghya of water and raw milk goes to the first visible rays, the same soops are raised again, and the vrat is complete. The vrati takes paran — the fast breaks, traditionally with prasad and water, in many homes with adrak and gud — and the thekua begins its journey into every extended hand.

What goes in the soop and daura

The daura — the bamboo basket carried on the head to the ghat — holds the soops, and the soops hold the offerings. The constants:

• Thekua — the parv's signature prasad of wheat, gud and ghee
• Kasar — rice-flour laddoo, in many households
• Fruits offered whole and uncut — a full banana bunch, sugarcane with its leaves, dab nimbu, a water-filled coconut, singhara, suthni, seasonal fruit
• Sindoor, paan and supari, and a diya kept burning in the soop

The wholeness is the point: nothing tasted first, nothing cut, nothing a bird has pecked. Chhath's prasad rules are the strictest of any parv — no salt near the prasad kitchen, no onion or garlic in the house through the four days, everything cooked in shuddhata. The strictness is not fussiness; it is this vrat's entire language of respect.

Ghat etiquette — small things that matter

• The waterfront belongs to the vratis; the crowd's place is behind them.
• Never touch or step over a soop or daura.
• Shoes come off well before the water line, not at it.
• Keep phone flash and reels out of the vratis' faces at both arghyas.
• Watch children at the edge — the arghya happens standing in the water, in dusk and dawn light, and rivers do not observe festivals.
• Follow the local samiti's barricades, and carry back everything you brought.

After the arghya, Kartik keeps climbing: Dev Uthani Ekadashi and then Tulsi Vivah on 21 November open the month's wedding season. But for one evening and one dawn in the middle of November, the whole country faces the water, and the sun — going and then coming — is met by name.