Durga Puja 2026 in Kolkata, day by day: Shashthi to Dashami, and what each day means

This year the Puja runs over from Ashwin into Kartik. The tithis still belong to the bright fortnight of Ashwin, but by then West Bengal's panjika has turned the page on the Bengali month: Shashthi is 29 and 30 Ashwin 1433, and Saptami to Dashami are 1 to 4 Kartik. If you write one thing in your diary, though, make it a time rather than a date. 10.51 am on Monday 19 October is when Ashtami ends, and this year anjali and Sandhi Puja both crowd in around that minute.

When is Durga Puja 2026? Every day, date and tithi

In Kolkata the Puja begins on Shashthi, Friday 16 October, and ends on Bijoya Dashami, Wednesday 21 October. The days and tithi times here are from drikpanchang's Durga Puja calendar for Kolkata and its pages for each rite. The Bisuddha Siddhanta panjika ends each tithi a minute or two later; Ashtami, for instance, at 10.52 am. The West Bengal government's holiday list and Belur Math's programme keep the same days from Saptami to Dashami. If your para's puja follows the Gupta Press or Benimadhab Sil panjika, Saptami and Ashtami each come a day earlier, Saptami on Saturday 17 and Ashtami on Sunday 18 October, and the Sandhi Puja runs from 7.26 to 8.14 am on Monday. Pujas on that reckoning do not all agree on Navami and Dashami, so check your mandap's notice. All times are IST, so they hold in Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune too.

Your own puja may hold a rite on another day, and the notice at the mandap is what counts. The dates announced in Bangladesh are not covered here.

Mahalaya to Panchami: the days of waiting

Mahalaya is Saturday 10 October, the new moon that ends Pitri Paksha, with Devi Paksha beginning the next day: Mahishasura Mardini on the radio before dawn, tarpan at the ghats after it. The broadcast, and what its hour is where you live, are in our Mahalaya 2026 guide.

Panchami, Thursday 15 October, is the last day before the rites begin. Why do they begin on a Friday? The answer is arithmetic. Bilva Nimantran has to fall in the late afternoon while Shashthi is running. Shashthi begins at 3.25 am on Friday and ends at 5.54 am on Saturday, so Friday afternoon is the only afternoon it covers. That is where the rite goes.

What happens on Shashthi? Bilva Nimantran, Kalparambha and Akal Bodhon

Shashthi runs across two days this year, and its rites split with it. Friday 16 October is Bilva Nimantran: the goddess is invited to dwell in a bel tree, or a branch of one, so that she can be worshipped the next day. Drikpanchang gives 2.51 to 5.11 pm for it in Kolkata.

Kalparambha, the formal start, falls on Friday at some pujas and Saturday at others this year. Belur Math holds it at 6 am on Friday 16 October, its Bodhon at 6.15 that evening, and Amantran and Adhivas on Saturday evening; drikpanchang puts all four on the Saturday. Belur Math's account of its own Durga Puja describes Kalparambha as a vow, made early in the morning, to carry the puja through its three days, with a water-filled copper ghat installed in a corner of the mandap. Shashthi itself is gone by 5.54 am, so which rite a puja does on Friday and which on Saturday is the priest's call this year.

Akal Bodhon means an untimely awakening. The gods are held to sleep through the six months of the sun's southward course, and autumn falls inside them; Durga's own season was spring. In Krittivas's Bengali Ramayana, Rama wakes her out of season, in autumn, to ask for her blessing before his war with Ravana. That is the story Bengal keeps for why its Puja is an autumn one.

2:11

Jago Durga Dashapraharanadharini

Saregama Bengali

Dwijen Mukherjee's song in Mahishasura Mardini, a call to the goddess to wake. About two minutes, for Friday evening or Saturday's dawn.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

Saptami: why the Kola Bou goes to the river at dawn

The Kola Bou goes to the river to be bathed: she is brought into the mandap only after her Saptami-morning bath, and this year Saptami tithi lasts only until 8.27 am. At dawn on Sunday 18 October the priest carries the nabapatrika on his shoulder to the nearest river or pond, the dhakis behind him and the women blowing conch shells and giving ulu. Sunrise in Kolkata is at 5.34. If you want to see the bath this year, you will have to be up for it.

The nabapatrika is what people call the Kola Bou, the banana bride. The Bengali Wikipedia article on the nabapatrika puts it plainly: not nine leaves but nine plants. A banana plant, leaves and all, is bound with eight others, among them bel, turmeric, pomegranate, ashoka and paddy, and each of the nine stands for a form of Durga. After the bath she is dressed in a new sari, her head covered like a bride's, and seated on a wooden stool to the goddess's right.

Then comes the mahasnan: a mirror is set before the image and the goddess is bathed through her reflection. After it, pran pratishtha brings the image to life. That happens once in the whole Puja, on Saptami.

5:00

Gouri Elo

Bengali Music Directory | BMD

Kalikaprasad Bhattacharya's Dohar singing agomoni. Five minutes of Uma coming home to her parents, which is what Saptami morning is.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

Ashtami 2026: anjali, Kumari Puja and the Sandhi Puja time

Monday 19 October is Ashtami, and this year it is a short morning. Ashtami tithi begins at 8.27 am on Sunday and ends at 10.51 am on Monday. The day opens with pushpanjali, the flower offering most of us just call anjali, and Sandhi Puja starts at 10.27 am. So go for anjali early. Most pujas will probably finish it before the Sandhi, and if you join the queue at ten you may not get your turn. At a mandap that follows the Gupta Press or Benimadhab Sil panjika, Ashtami falls on Sunday instead, and Monday's Sandhi is at 7.26 am. Your mandap's notice has the last word.

Join the anjali queue at ten and you may not get your turn.

Many pujas hold Kumari Puja on Ashtami, the worship of a young girl as the goddess. Belur Math's Kumari Puja goes back to its first Durga Puja in 1901, when, by the Math's own account, Swami Vivekananda worshipped several girls. Now one girl is worshipped, and senior monks offer flowers at her feet.

Sandhi Puja is the join between two tithis: the last 24 minutes of Ashtami and the first 24 of Navami, 48 minutes in all. It marks the moment Durga, as Chamunda, kills the demons Chanda and Munda. Wikipedia's article on Durga Puja describes 108 lotuses offered and 108 lamps lit in that window. At Belur Math no animal is ever sacrificed: Swami Vivekananda wanted a bali at the first puja in 1901, Sarada Devi forbade it, and a banana has been offered as the symbolic bali ever since. This year the 48 minutes run from 10.27 to 11.15 am.

5:05

Ashtami, Pujar Dhak

Saregama Bengali

Saregama's five minutes of dhak, credited to Phani Natta, Joydeb Nandy, Manindra Das and Brajakanta Nandy. If we were far from a mandap at 10.27, this is what we would put on.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

What time is Sandhi Puja in London, New York or Dubai?

10.27 am on Monday in Kolkata is 5.57 am that Monday in London, and 12.57 am in New York and Toronto, with Sunday night just turned into Monday. On the US west coast it is still Sunday night, three minutes to ten. The clock below counts from 10.27 am IST; the puja runs 48 minutes from there. The UK stays on summer time until 25 October and North America until 1 November, and Sydney and Melbourne put their clocks forward an hour for summer time on 4 October, before the Puja.

The tithi times are Kolkata's. A puja abroad may work from its own city's reckoning, so check its notice before you set an alarm.

Why is Navami on Tuesday in Bengal, and Dussehra a day earlier?

Because Bengal sets Navami by the tithi in the morning, and the rest of India by the afternoon before. Navami tithi starts at 10.51 am on Monday and ends at 12.50 pm on Tuesday. Most states keep Maha Navami on Monday and Vijayadashami, Dussehra, on Tuesday 20 October. Bengal keeps both a day later: Navami on Tuesday and Dashami on Wednesday 21. Drikpanchang's note on Bengal's Navami gives the rule. Elsewhere, if Navami has begun three muhurtas (a muhurta is 48 minutes) before sunset, that day is Navami. Bengal takes the day on which Navami is still running at least one muhurta after sunrise.

So if your office in Delhi or Pune closes for Dussehra on Tuesday, Bengal's Bijoya is still Wednesday. Navami itself is the mahasnan, the puja, bhog and the homa, the fire offering; at Belur Math the bali is a white pumpkin and sugarcane. It is also the last full evening before the immersions, and the film songs in our Durga Puja songs list were made for it.

Bijoya Dashami 2026: sindoor khela, bisarjan and Bijoya

Wednesday 21 October is Bijoya Dashami in Bengal, and Dashami tithi runs until 2.11 pm. The morning puja is short. At Belur Math it closes with the visarjan rite, in which the priest asks the goddess, invoked in the image and the nabapatrika, to return to her own abode. The image itself leaves later.

Then sindoor khela. Married women first do the boron, greeting the goddess with betel leaf and sweets and touching sindoor to her forehead and feet, then smear it on one another: foreheads, the shankha and pola on their wrists, faces. Nobody knows when it began. Wikipedia's article on Sindur Khela gives two theories, one placing it in zamindar households about two hundred years ago, the other making it as old as the Puja. By custom only married women play, which is also why the ritual has its critics.

In many neighbourhoods the image goes to the river that evening. At Belur Math the shanti jal, water from the spot, is sprinkled on everyone afterwards, and people embrace. In Bengali homes that embrace is kolakuli, with pronam to the elders and sweets for whoever comes to the door, and the pronams go on for days.

10:10

Dashami, Pujar Dhak

Saregama Bengali

Ten minutes, the same four drummers as the Ashtami track. For the walk to the ghat, or for the evening at home if the ghat is an ocean away.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

▶2:27Play: O Maa Go: Mom wants son to go for Bijoya Pronaam

O Maa Go: Mom wants son to go for Bijoya Pronaam

Mirchi Bangla

Mirchi Bangla, a two-and-a-half-minute comedy: a mother sends her son out to do his Bijoya pronam, and he would rather not. You will remember which side of that you were on.

▶ Play hereWatch on YouTube · Mirchi Bangla

The Pujo mood keeps the week's music playing on its own after the dhak has stopped, and the whole list, from agomoni to Bijoya, is in our Durga Puja songs guide.

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