Dhanteras 2026: 6 or 7 November? When to Light the Yam Deepam

2026-09-03

Our panchang puts Kartik Krishna Trayodashi at Delhi's sunset on Friday, 6 November 2026 — so the Dhanteras puja, the shopping and the Yam Deepam all belong to that evening. Why the festival follows pradosh rather than sunrise, and the honest case for Saturday-morning shopping.

Every year, the week before Diwali, the family group splits over the calendar. In 2026 the split is between 6 and 7 November — and both sides are reading the same tithi, just applying different rules to it. Our panchang puts Dhanteras — puja, kharidari and Yam Deepam alike — on Friday, 6 November 2026. The reason fits in one sentence: this festival goes by the tithi burning at sunset, not the one present at sunrise.

Dhanteras 2026: the date, verified

Dhanteras is kept on Kartik Krishna Trayodashi. For Delhi, our panchang gives the tithi as:

• Trayodashi begins — Friday, 6 November 2026 at 10:31 am
• Trayodashi ends — Saturday, 7 November 2026 at 10:48 am

Sunset in Delhi on 6 November is 5:31 pm. Trayodashi has been running for seven hours by then and holds through the whole evening; on the 7th it is gone by mid-morning, and that evening belongs to Chaturdashi. So Dhanteras is Friday, 6 November 2026.

Why Dhanteras goes by pradosh, not sunrise

Here is where the 7 November listings come from, and they are not careless. At sunrise on Saturday, 7 November, Trayodashi genuinely is the running tithi, and it lasts until 10:48 am. Apply the familiar udaya rule — the one that settles most vrats — and the 7th wins.

But the udaya rule is for daytime observances, and Dhanteras is not one. Its two defining acts — the Yam Deepam and the evening Lakshmi–Kubera puja — are prescribed for pradosh kaal, the period just after sunset. A rite fixed to the evening must take the day whose evening holds the tithi; a sunrise the tithi happens to touch settles nothing. The same logic fixes Diwali's Lakshmi puja two tithis later — see our 8-or-9 November piece.

Saturday evening, already Chaturdashi, has its own appointment instead — the lamps of Narak Chaturdashi.

The day at a glance (Delhi)

All times are IST, for Delhi. Sunset shifts a few minutes by city — never enough to move the date this year — but for your own numbers, check the tithi timings.

When exactly to light the Yam Deepam

On Friday, 6 November, after sunset — from 5:31 pm in Delhi, through the pradosh period, conventionally the first couple of hours of the night. Anywhere in that window is proper; a lamp lit a little later the same evening has missed nothing. This is the year's one lamp offered not for a deity's darshan but to Yama — set at the threshold, at dusk, on the border between light and dark that the hour itself is.

The tradition holds that a lamp given to Yama this evening turns aside untimely death — akaal mrityu — for the year. The katha is the newlywed prince fated to die of snakebite, and the bride whose gold and rows of lamps at the door dazzled Yama's messenger until the hour passed. Take the story as you will — the rite's shape has been stable for centuries: one lamp, at the door, facing south, at dusk, on Trayodashi.

Yam Deepam vidhi: the diya, the direction, the name

1. Knead a little atta and shape a chaumukha diya — a four-faced lamp with four wicks. A plain clay diya with one wick also serves; the atta lamp is custom, not commandment.
2. Fill it with mustard oil, the oil traditional to Yama's lamp.
3. Place it outside the main door, to the right of the threshold as you face out — many set it on a small heap of wheat or rice.
4. Turn the flame — or one of the four — to face south, Yama's direction: the one night of the year a south-facing flame is deliberately sought.
5. It is lit in Yama's name, for the whole household — traditionally by the eldest member, with the family present. The verse recited: mrityuna pasha-dandabhyam kalena shyamaya saha, trayodashyam deepadanat suryajah priyatam mama.
6. Let it burn out on its own. Nobody needs to sit up guarding it.

What to buy, and when

The custom of bringing home new metal — a utensil, silver, gold, a gadget — attaches to the tithi, not to pradosh, so the honest window is broader than most muhurat lists admit: anything bought while Trayodashi runs is bought on Dhanteras. That means Friday from 10:31 am through the evening — and also Saturday morning until 10:48 am, which is why some lists print the 7th. They are not wrong; they are reading the tail of the same tithi. The fuller choice remains Friday evening, where the puja and the deepam anchor.

If you like to check rahu kaal before a purchase, see your city's window — but a purchase made on Trayodashi itself is not undone by the clock. For the item-by-item tradition — why utensils, why not empty ones, what the jhadu is about — see our full Dhanteras shopping guide.

Dhanvantari puja: the older layer of the day

Before Dhanteras was a shopping festival it was Dhanvantari Jayanti: on this tithi Dhanvantari — physician of the gods, source-figure of Ayurveda — rose from the churning ocean with the kalash of amrit. The dhan in the day's name has been read as wealth for so long that its older reading — arogya, health as the first wealth — gets forgotten. A diya for Dhanvantari inside the evening puja, a prayer for the household's health, and in many families a purchase for the kitchen — the room where health is actually made.

A Shukra Pradosh on the same evening

The sunset that fixes Dhanteras also fixes the fortnight's Pradosh vrat, kept on the Trayodashi that touches pradosh kaal — the rule is identical. So the vrat lands on Friday too, a Shukra Pradosh; its keepers will do Shiva's puja in the very window the Yam Deepam goes out. And until 10:31 am the morning of the 6th is still the tail of Dwadashi — the Govatsa Dwadashi tithi — so the day opens with one observance closing and ends with two running together.

What not to over-believe

Dhanteras attracts more manufactured dread than almost any festival. Plainly:

• Buying nothing is not inauspicious. The purchase is custom — an enjoyable one — not a commandment with a penalty clause. Lakshmi does not audit receipts.
• There is no doomed metal. Lists of forbidden purchases — steel, glass, black objects — vary wildly between sources because none of them is shastra.
• The deepam is a prayer, not an insurance premium. A family that lights it at 8 pm instead of 6 has not left a gap for anything to slip through.
• Thirteen diyas, five, one — counts differ by region and family. The one lamp with a settled rule is the south-facing Yam Deepam; the rest is your own tradition, and yours is valid.

The five days from here

Dhanteras opens the Diwali sequence — Narak Chaturdashi on Saturday, then Lakshmi puja, Govardhan, Bhai Dooj — and this year's dates hold more than one genuine dispute, so the whole run is laid out in our five-day Diwali 2026 calendar. For Friday the brief is simple: shop while the tithi runs, and as the sun sets at 5:31, put the season's first lamp at the door — facing south, with the whole house's name on it.