Chhath Puja 2026: Four Days, and the Two Arghya Times

Why Chhath needs no muhurat window

Most festival timing questions are about choosing a window inside a day. Chhath is not one of them, and that is worth saying first because it saves a lot of confusion.

The two central rituals are offerings made standing in water to the Sun: one to the setting Sun and one to the rising Sun. The time is therefore sunset and sunrise. There is no ascendant to select and no segment of the day to prefer, because the event defines its own moment.

What you do need is the right day, which is a tithi question, and accurate local sun times, which is a geography question. Both are computable exactly.

This also makes Chhath the festival where a generic calendar is least useful. A sunset time for Delhi is simply wrong in Patna, which is roughly nine degrees of longitude east and where a very large share of observance happens.

The four days, from the tithi

Chhath is anchored to Kartik Shukla Shashthi, the sixth lunar day of the waxing fortnight of Kartika. In 2026 Shashthi begins on 14 November at 23:25 IST and ends on 16 November at 02:02 IST. It therefore covers all of 15 November, which removes the ambiguity that affects festivals whose tithi starts mid-afternoon.

Working backwards along the same sequence: Chaturthi begins 12 November at 18:10 IST and so covers 13 November, which is Nahay Khay, the day of bathing and the first cooked meal. Panchami begins 13 November at 20:43 IST and covers 14 November, which is Kharna or Lohanda, the day of the fast broken at evening with kheer and roti, after which the long fast begins.

Then Shashthi on 15 November carries Sandhya Arghya at sunset. The fast continues overnight without water. Saptami begins 16 November at 02:02 IST, and Usha Arghya is made at sunrise on the 16th, after which the fast is broken.

The nirjala fast therefore runs from the evening of 14 November to the morning of 16 November, roughly thirty six hours. That duration is the reason the arghya times matter to people in a way an ordinary muhurat does not.

The two arghya times, and how far they move

In Delhi, sunset on 15 November 2026 is 17:27 IST and sunrise on 16 November is 06:47 IST.

Those figures are for Delhi only, and the error from using them elsewhere is large enough to matter for a ritual performed at the moment the Sun touches the horizon. India keeps one clock across about thirty degrees of longitude, which is close to two hours of solar time.

The practical consequence: in Patna, Bhagalpur or Muzaffarpur, where Chhath observance is heaviest, both sunset and sunrise occur meaningfully earlier in clock terms than in Delhi. In Mumbai or Ahmedabad, meaningfully later. Using a Delhi figure in Bihar means arriving late for the evening offering.

So compute it for your ghat, not for the capital. The muhurat finder takes a location, and why muhurat differs by city shows how big the spread gets.

What the festival is actually addressing

Chhath is one of the few surviving public observances directed at Surya, the Sun, rather than at a deity of a temple. Usha, the dawn, and Pratyusha, the setting light, are both honoured, which is why there are two offerings rather than one.

In chart terms the Sun governs vitality, authority, the father, and the self as it appears in the world. It is read primarily from its house, its sign and its dignity: exalted in Aries, debilitated in Libra. A Sun afflicted by conjunction or by placement is the classical reading behind weak vitality, friction with authority, or a difficult relationship with the father.

That is the honest connection between the festival and the chart, and it stops there. Observing Chhath is not a remedy prescribed by a chart, and no reading of your Sun tells you whether to keep the fast. The festival is a devotional practice with its own logic. If you want to know where your own Sun sits and what it governs in your chart, that is a separate and answerable question.