Durga Puja 2026: Shashthi to Dashami, 16 to 20 October

2026-08-26

Bengal's Durga Puja 2026 runs 16 to 20 October. Mahalaya on 10 October, bodhon on Shashthi, the kola bou bath, sandhi puja from 10:28 to 11:16 on 19 October, and visarjan on Dashami, 20 October, with the Saptami vriddhi that reshuffles the middle of the sequence explained.

Durga Puja in Bengal runs on the same tithis as Navratri in the north and is a different festival. The north keeps nine nights of fasting and closes with Ravana burning. Bengal keeps five ritual days around a clay image, opens them with an out-of-season awakening, and ends by putting the image into the water. In 2026 those days sit between 16 and 20 October, and this year the tithi table has a wrinkle that shifts the middle of the sequence.

Every figure below comes from our panchang engine, computed for Delhi and given in IST. Where a number is derived rather than read, we say so.

Bengal's five days, mapped to the 2026 tithi table

Tithi boundaries, sunrise and moonrise are engine readings for Delhi. The ritual column is the Bengali sequence laid over them, not an engine output.

Mahalaya, 10 October: the summons, not the start

Mahalaya falls on Ashwin Amavasya, which runs from 21:36 on 9 October to 21:20 on 10 October. Sunrise on 10 October is 06:19, so that Saturday carries Amavasya on the horizon: tarpan closes Pitru Paksha, and the fortnight turns over to Devi Paksha. It is not day one of the puja; nearly a week separates it from Shashthi in 2026. The pre-dawn Mahishasuramardini broadcast most Bengalis wake to is a radio programme first aired in 1931, beloved but not shastra, and there is no point pretending the texts prescribe it.

Shashthi, 16 October: bodhon, amantran, adhivas

Shashthi begins at 03:26:02 on 16 October and runs until 05:54:58 the next morning, so the whole of Friday sits inside it. The morning brings kalparambha, the formal resolve; the evening brings bodhon, the awakening. The Devi is woken outside her season, which is why Bengal calls it akal bodhon. The story of Rama invoking her before her time comes from the Bengali Krittivasi Ramayana; the Valmiki text does not carry it. Amantran and adhivas follow at sandhya, traditionally at the bel tree. Rahu kaal that day is 10:40 to 12:06.

Saptami and the kola bou, and why Saptami has two sunrises

Saptami begins at 05:54:58 on 17 October and ends at 08:28:28 on 18 October. Sunrise is 06:24 on both mornings, so the tithi is on the horizon twice. That is vriddhi, a tithi with an extra day, and it is why the sequence bunches up at the far end: our engine puts Ashtami and Navami both on 19 October.

Saptami morning belongs to the nabapatrika: nine plants, banana at the centre, bound with an aparajita creeper, bathed before the puja and set to the right of Ganesha in a red-bordered sari. The nickname kola bou, banana bride, and the reading of her as Ganesha's wife are folk custom. The ritual texts give the nine plants, the bath and the nine goddesses they stand for; they do not give her a marriage. On that point the shastra is silent, and we will not fill the silence in.

Which morning is Maha Saptami, then? The requirement is only that Saptami be current when the nabapatrika is bathed, and both mornings satisfy it. Panjikas break the tie by keeping the sequence unbroken, which puts Maha Saptami on 18 October with Ashtami's puja the next morning. Bengal has a second reason: Shashthi ends at 05:54:58 IST, an instant that falls after sunrise in eastern India, so a Kolkata almanac can show Shashthi still on the horizon on 17 October where a Delhi table shows Saptami. That is reasoned from the tithi instant and Kolkata's longitude, not read off our engine. If your para begins on 17 October, that is a reckoning choice, not an error.

Ashtami, and sandhi puja from 10:28 to 11:16 on 19 October

Ashtami runs from 08:28:28 on 18 October to 10:52:04 on 19 October. Sandhi puja occupies the last 24 minutes of Ashtami and the first 24 of Navami, so in 2026 it falls on Monday 19 October from 10:28 to 11:16 IST: 48 minutes, 108 lamps, 108 lotuses, and the loudest dhak of the five days.

This window behaves in the opposite way to most muhurat. A tithi ends at a single instant, set by the angular distance between moon and sun, and that instant is the same in Kolkata, Delhi and London. Sunrise moves from city to city; 10:52:04 does not. Sandhi puja is the one item here you can put in a shared calendar without adjusting for where you are. Rahu kaal on 19 October is 07:50 to 09:15, safely before it.

Navami, split across 19 and 20 October

Navami begins at 10:52:04 on 19 October, the moment sandhi's first half ends, and runs to 12:50:40 on 20 October. Because Saptami took two sunrises, Ashtami and Navami are pressed into one calendar day, a collision we have written up for the north Indian calendar in why Ashtami and Navami fall together this year. Bengal generally takes Navami puja and the homa on the afternoon of 19 October, straight after sandhi; 20 October is the day Navami is on the horizon at sunrise, and households anchoring the homa to udaya tithi will do it then, before Dashami begins.

Dashami, 20 October: darpan visarjan, sindoor khela, immersion

Dashami begins at 12:50:40 on 20 October and runs to 14:11:35 on 21 October. Vijayadashami is fixed by Dashami's presence in aparahna, the fourth of five equal parts of daylight. Taking sunrise 06:25 and sunset 17:45 for 20 October, aparahna works out to roughly 13:13 to 15:29, a division computed from the engine's sunrise and sunset rather than read from it. Dashami runs through all of it, so 20 October is the day. It also touches aparahna on 21 October before ending at 14:11, but the rule takes the earlier day.

The order is specific. Bisarjan puja first, in which the Devi is worshipped in her reflection in a mirror held over water, and the reflection, not the image, is dissolved. Then aparajita puja, then sindoor khela and boron, and only then the procession to the river. Bengal does not burn Ravana; that is the north's ending, covered in the Vijayadashami muhurat piece.

Why the Bengali reckoning and the north Indian one drift apart

Both traditions use the same tithis of Ashwin Shukla Paksha and ask different questions of them. The north asks when to install the kalash on Pratipada and how to run nine nights of fasting to kanya pujan, the calendar we lay out in the nine-day Navratri guide. Bengal asks only where five image-worship days land, and treats Shashthi through Dashami as one continuous rite. Bengal's almanacs also disagree among themselves: Bishuddhasiddhanta computes on modern drik principles, the Gupta Press tradition retains older siddhanta values, and some years the two print different days for the same rite.

Times are for Delhi, so read your own city

Sunrise, sunset and moonrise move with longitude and latitude; tithi instants do not. Kolkata's mid-October sunrise runs roughly three quarters of an hour ahead of Delhi's, a figure extrapolated from longitude rather than read from our engine, and that gap is enough to change which tithi is on the horizon at dawn on 17 October. Pull your own city's figures on the daily panchang first.

The fixed points of Durga Puja 2026 are the ones the tithi boundaries hold in place: bodhon on the evening of 16 October, sandhi puja from 10:28 to 11:16 on 19 October, and Dashami with visarjan on 20 October. Everything between them is a reckoning choice your panjika makes for you.