Chhath Puja 2026: Dates, 4-Day Rituals & Arghya Timings

Har Ki Pauri ghat at Haridwar during the Kanwar Mela · Shiv Kavar Samiti

Of all the festivals that light up North India, few are as demanding, as beautiful, or as deeply moving as Chhath Puja. It is the great four-day vrat dedicated to the Sun God, Surya, and to Chhathi Maiya, kept most lovingly across Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and, today, wherever their people have made a home — including here in Delhi. Picture the riverbanks and ghats at dusk, thousands of devotees standing waist-deep in cold water, arms raised with baskets of fruit and thekua, offering arghya to the setting sun and again to the rising one. This guide walks you gently through Chhath Puja 2026: when it is expected to fall, the sunset and sunrise arghya timings, the four days one by one, the famous strictness of the fast, the prasad, and above all the tender spirit that makes this the most heartfelt of all our festivals.

What is Chhath Puja? The worship of Surya and Chhathi Maiya

Chhath Puja is one of the oldest surviving nature festivals in the world, and perhaps the only major one that worships the Sun directly, both as he sets and as he rises. The word 'Chhath' means 'sixth', for the main day falls on the sixth day (Shashthi) of the bright fortnight of Kartik. Devotees offer their thanks and prayers to Surya Dev, the giver of life and light, and to Chhathi Maiya — revered as a form of the divine mother who protects children and grants wellbeing to the family. There is no idol, no priest, no temple required. The vrat is kept most often by women — the 'vratis' — for the long life, health and prosperity of their children and husbands, though men keep it too. What makes Chhath unique is its purity and its equality: rich and poor stand side by side in the same water, offering the same simple arghya to the same sun.

When is Chhath Puja 2026?

According to the Hindu panchang, Chhath Puja is celebrated on the Shashthi tithi of the Shukla Paksha (bright fortnight) of the Kartik month, a few days after Diwali. In 2026, the four-day festival is expected to begin on Friday, 13 November 2026 with Nahay Khay and to conclude on Monday, 16 November 2026 with the Usha Arghya and paran. The main day of Sandhya Arghya (the sunset offering) is expected on Sunday, 15 November 2026. Please treat these as the anticipated dates: the exact tithi depends on the movement of the lunar day and on your local sunrise, so always confirm with a reliable local panchang for your city before you fix your plans.

Chhath Puja 2026: the four days at a glance

Chhath unfolds over four days, each with its own name, ritual and mood. Here is the expected 2026 schedule at a glance — please confirm the tithis locally:

Sandhya Arghya and Usha Arghya: the 2026 timings

The two arghyas are the very heart of Chhath, and their timings follow the sun itself rather than the clock — so they differ by city and must be checked locally. As a general guide for Delhi in mid-November, the expected timings for 2026 are:

• 🔱Sandhya Arghya (evening offering to the setting sun) — expected on Sunday, 15 November 2026, around sunset (roughly 5:25–5:30 PM in Delhi).
• 🔱Usha Arghya (morning offering to the rising sun) — expected on Monday, 16 November 2026, around sunrise (roughly 6:45–6:50 AM in Delhi).

These are approximate and city-specific: sunrise and sunset shift with your longitude, so a family in Patna, Ranchi or Delhi will each have slightly different moments. Reach the ghat well before the expected time and confirm the exact sunset and sunrise for your location with a trusted panchang or almanac.

Day 1 — Nahay Khay: the beginning of purity

The festival opens with Nahay Khay, meaning 'bathe and eat'. The vrati rises early, bathes in a river, pond or clean water, and brings home a little of that sacred water to cook with. The whole house is scrubbed clean, for from this moment the strictest purity is observed. Then comes the single sattvic meal of the day — the beloved kaddu-bhaat: bottle gourd cooked with rice and chana dal, made without onion or garlic, traditionally in bronze or earthen vessels over a mud stove. This one pure meal sets the tone of restraint and devotion for the days to come.

Day 2 — Kharna: the last food before the great fast

On the second day, Kharna (also called Lohanda), the vrati keeps a fast from dawn without even water, all through the day. After sunset, a special prasad is prepared with utmost purity — rasiao-kheer, a pudding of rice and jaggery, along with roti and banana. The vrati eats this in silence and offers it to the family and neighbours, and from the moment this meal ends the great nirjala vrat begins. This is the last food and water the vrati will take for the next thirty-six hours, until the sun is worshipped twice over.

Day 3 — Sandhya Arghya: the sunset offering

The third day, Shashthi, is the main day of Chhath. The whole family prepares the offerings — thekua, fruits, sugarcane, coconut and seasonal produce — arranged in soop (bamboo winnowing baskets) and daura. As evening falls, families walk together to the ghat, the women often in their finest saris with sindoor drawn long down the parting. Standing waist-deep in the cold water, the vrati raises the soop and offers arghya to the setting sun — a rare and profound act of thanksgiving to a star that is about to disappear, honouring not only the light we receive but the light that is passing. The ghats glow with diyas, folk Chhath geet fill the air, and the mood is one of the most moving in all of Hindu worship.

Day 4 — Usha Arghya: welcoming the rising sun

On the final morning, long before dawn, the family returns to the same ghat. In the cold dark they wait, and as the first rays break the horizon the vrati offers arghya to the rising sun — Usha Arghya. It is a prayer of hope and renewal, welcoming the light as it returns. With this offering the thirty-six-hour nirjala vrat is at last complete. The vrati breaks the fast with the paran — a little of the prasad and some sharbat or ginger and water — and the blessed thekua and fruit are shared joyfully with everyone present. The exhaustion of the fast dissolves into the quiet joy of a vow fulfilled.

The strictness of the vrat: 36 hours without water

Chhath is famous, and rightly revered, for the sheer discipline of its fast. From the end of the Kharna meal on the second night until the paran after Usha Arghya on the fourth morning, the vrati takes neither food nor water for roughly thirty-six hours — a full nirjala (waterless) fast, kept while also standing in cold water and preparing the offerings. Few vows in all of Hindu practice ask so much of the body. It is kept not out of severity for its own sake, but as an offering of the self — a mother's endurance turned into a prayer for her children. Those who cannot keep so strict a fast for reasons of health should never force it; the tradition honours sincerity of heart above all, and elders always counsel the very young, the unwell and expecting mothers to keep it in a gentler form.

Chhath is the one festival where we thank the sun not only when it rises to give us light, but also when it sets — for even in leaving, it promises to return.

Thekua and the prasad of Chhath

No festival carries a prasad as beloved as the thekua of Chhath. It is a deep-fried sweet made from whole-wheat flour, jaggery and ghee, often pressed with carved wooden moulds, crisp and fragrant and made to last. Prepared with the strictest cleanliness — the kitchen washed, no salt or onion anywhere near it — thekua is offered in the soop along with a bounty of nature's own gifts. The offerings of Chhath are famously simple and pure, drawn straight from the earth and the season:

• 🔱Thekua and rice-flour laddus, the signature sweets of the vrat.
• 🔱Seasonal fruits — banana (often a whole bunch), sugarcane, sweet lime, custard apple and coconut.
• 🔱Thekua is placed with dry fruits, betel nut and leaves, and vermilion in the soop.
• 🔱Everything is vegetarian, sattvic and free of onion, garlic and salt, prepared in a spotless kitchen.

The devotional spirit of Chhath

Beyond its rituals, Chhath is an act of gratitude and equality that few festivals can match. There is no need for a temple, a priest or an idol — only clean water, the open sky and a sincere heart. At the ghat, distinctions of wealth and status dissolve; everyone stands in the same water and offers the same simple arghya. It is a festival of the family and the community, of clean rivers and shared song, of a mother's love made into a vow. Even for those far from home, keeping Chhath at a city ghat or a rooftop tank knits the migrant heart back to its roots. To witness a Chhath ghat at sunset is to understand something quiet and deep about faith — that the highest worship can also be the simplest.

Chhath, seva and how you can help

Wherever Chhath is kept, seva walks beside it. Devotees who fast for thirty-six hours, families who reach the ghats before dawn, elders and children who wait in the cold — all are served by volunteers who clean the ghats, light the paths, arrange clean water and offer rest and warmth. Our Shiv Kavar Samiti, based on NH-8 at Mahipalpur in New Delhi, has served pilgrims and devotees for over thirty years, and the spirit of that seva does not pause when the season turns from Sawan to Kartik. Feeding the hungry, offering clean water and giving a place of rest is worship in itself — the same worship of the divine in every living being that Chhath, at its heart, teaches us.

How you can be part of the seva

Every meal served, every glass of clean water and every helping hand at a ghat is made possible by the daan of well-wishers. If this guide has helped you plan your Chhath, you might consider helping the seva continue. You can donate online at our /donate page through Razorpay's secure checkout, or by bank transfer to our Punjab National Bank account (A/C 0149000104323988, IFSC PUNB0014900, Khan Market branch). To offer ration and supplies, to volunteer as a sewadar, or simply to ask how to reach us, message us on WhatsApp at +91 98189 08237. May Surya Dev and Chhathi Maiya bless you and your family with light, health and long life. Jai Chhathi Maiya.