Chhath Puja 2026: why the November 15 arghya follows local sunset

Chhath Puja 2026 will be observed from Friday, November 13, to Monday, November 16, with the main Sandhya Arghya, the evening offering to the setting sun, on Sunday, November 15, according to published panchangs. Drik Panchang lists the Shashthi tithi (the sixth lunar day, which gives the festival its name) as running from 11:23 pm on November 14 to 2:00 am on November 16 for New Delhi, and sunset on the main day at 5:28 pm in Delhi. In Patna, where Chhath is celebrated on the largest scale, sunset that evening comes about half an hour earlier, at about 5:01 pm.

Chhath is unusual among Hindu festivals because its central rituals are tied directly to the sun's position, not to a muhurat (auspicious window) computed from the planets. Devotees, called vratis, stand in rivers, ponds or specially built tanks and make an offering to the setting sun on the evening of Shashthi, then return before dawn to make an offering to the rising sun the next morning. According to tradition, the festival is dedicated to Surya, the sun.

That makes the timing a matter of local astronomy. A tithi is defined by the moon's position relative to the sun, so it begins and ends at the same moment everywhere, though clocks in each place show that moment by Indian Standard Time. Sunset and sunrise, however, change with longitude and latitude. India uses a single time zone, so places in the east see the sun set earlier on the clock than places in the west. That is why Patna's evening arghya comes roughly half an hour before Delhi's, and why a Kolkata-based almanac lists an even earlier sunset.

For the 2026 festival, the Shashthi tithi covers the whole of Sunday, November 15, from before midnight on the 14th to after midnight on the 16th. That leaves no ambiguity: the evening of November 15 is the Sandhya Arghya, and the sunrise of November 16 the Usha Arghya. Almanacs differ only by a minute or two on the start and end of the tithi, depending on the method of calculation they follow.

Practical planning flows from this. Ghat committees, municipal bodies and police plan crowd management around local sunset and sunrise. Families travelling home to Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh fix their journeys around the four days.

Short-term: Vratis, families and ghat organisers can fix November 15 for the evening arghya and November 16 for the morning arghya, and check exact sunset and sunrise for their own city.

Long-term: The festival's reliance on actual sunset and sunrise shows how traditional calendars combine lunar dates with observed solar events, a system that still governs public planning for one of India's largest gatherings.

Who is affected: Chhath vratis and their families in Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and the diaspora; ghat and temple committees; local administrations; and travellers heading home for the festival.

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