Chhath Puja 2026 — 13 to 16 November, the arghya is your own sun

Chhath is the four days when a house faces the sun, stands at water, and offers the food it has cooked with its own hands. People search it as a Bihar festival that can be copied from a Patna timetable, or they fold it into the week after Diwali and ask whether Govardhan’s sweets will do. Neither reading is the vrat. On the working calendar I am using, Kartik Chhath 2026 begins with Nahay Khay on Friday 13 November, Kharna on Saturday 14 November, Sandhya Arghya on Sunday 15 November, and Usha Arghya on Monday 16 November. I am writing this on 31 October 2026, from Sultanpur. The sun you offer is the sun you can see. A Patna minute pasted onto every ghat in India is how families miss their own sunset.

If your city, your ghat, or your body’s capacity for the nirjala stretch is unclear, write on WhatsApp. Name the city, and say whether you have a river, a pond, or only a home. I am in Sultanpur. There is no fee on this page. I will not promise health, a child, or a long life in return for the fast.

The four days, written once

Friday 13 November 2026 is Nahay Khay. The house bathes, cleans, and eats one sattvic meal. Saturday 14 November is Kharna, also called Lohanda in many lanes. The day is kept without food, and in the evening the fast is broken with gur ki kheer and roti, after which the nirjala stretch begins for those who keep it. Sunday 15 November is Sandhya Arghya, the offering to the setting sun, with the soop of thekua, fruit, and sugarcane. Monday 16 November is Usha Arghya, the offering to the rising sun, and then the fast is completed. Chaiti Chhath, in the month of Chaitra, is a different occurrence. This page is only the Kartik vrat of 2026.

Diwali night was Sunday 8 November. Govardhan was Tuesday 10 November. Bhai Dooj is Wednesday 11 November. Chhath starts two days after that tilak. A family that tries to ‘finish the festivals’ by offering arghya on Tuesday has offered it to the wrong sun on the wrong tithi. Keep the soop for the weekend. Eat the Annakut when Annakut is the rite. They are neighbours on a calendar. They are not the same sankalp.

Nahay Khay, Friday 13 November

The name is the method. Bathe. Wash the clothes you will wear at the ghat. Wash the kitchen where the thekua will be made. Eat one meal, cooked without onion and garlic if that is the discipline your house already keeps for this vrat. The meal is sattvic and it is a meal. Friday is not the start of thirty-six hours without water. People who have heard a single number, thirty-six, and then refuse a glass of water on Friday morning have compressed four days into a stunt. The long stretch without water, in the houses that keep it, begins after Kharna’s evening meal, not at Friday’s bath.

If you are unwell, eat as you must and tell the house plainly. If you are pregnant, eat. I will not dress hunger as devotion, and I will not tell a doctor’s patient that the ghat outranks the prescription. The bath and the cleaned kitchen can still be kept by someone else in the house if the vrati cannot stand for long. The vrat has a body. The body is not an offering to be spent.

Kharna, Saturday 14 November

Through Saturday the vrati does not eat, until the evening. The prasad is jaggery kheer and roti, sometimes a fruit beside them, prepared in a clean pot and offered before anyone tastes it. Then the house eats that prasad. This is the meal that closes the day’s fast and opens the harder stretch. After it, those who keep nirjala take nothing, not even water, until Monday’s sunrise offering is done. That is the tradition. It is not a medical act, not a cleansing cure, and not a measure of who loves their parents more. A person who must take medicine takes the medicine with whatever water the medicine requires. Tell me that in one line if you write. I will not ask you to skip a dose so the vrat looks classical.

Cook enough kheer for the people who will actually sit. A pot made for a photograph, too sweet to finish, is not a better Kharna. The roti is the roti of this vrat, not a festival menu. Children who are not keeping the fast eat ordinary food and may still receive a little prasad. Do not put a child on nirjala because a cousin’s child did it on a reel.

Sandhya Arghya, Sunday 15 November

Sunday evening the soop goes to the water. Thekua, banana, other fruit the market has, sugarcane, a coconut if you use one, turmeric, and lamps. You stand in the water, or at its edge if standing in it is unsafe, and you offer to the setting sun. On the working Patna figures I am willing to print, sunset on Sunday 15 November is near 5:00 in the evening, and Monday’s sunrise is near 6:07 in the morning. Delhi’s sun that week sits later. Sheets I use for Delhi put Sunday’s sunset near 5:28 in the evening. I will not make one minute serve Patna and Delhi. Ujjain is another clock again. Confirm the sunset of the ghat you will actually stand at. Leave home early enough that you are there before the sun meets the water, not while it is already gone and the crowd is turning back.

The crowd at a city ghat is part of the danger, not part of the merit. If you cannot stand, if the current is moving, if you are carrying a child who cannot swim, stay on the bank. An arghya from the step is an arghya. A fall in a river is not a stricter vrat. Hold the soop steadily. The lamps should be where they cannot set cloth or sugarcane alight. What you cannot carry back, you do not leave as rubbish on the sand. The ghat belongs to the people who will stand there on Monday morning as well.

Usha Arghya, Monday 16 November

Before the sun is up you return. The same soop, or what remains of it, is offered to the rising sun. Then the vrati drinks and eats. That first tasting is the completion, the parana. Do not break the fast at midnight because someone is impatient, and do not delay it until a hall fills, past the sunrise, because a relative’s train is late. The sun is the clock. The train is a guest.

Here is the line that frightens people who can read a panchang. On the Ujjain-style sheets commonly printed this year, Kartik Shukla Shashthi begins around 11:24 at night on Saturday 14 November and ends around 2:01 in the early morning of Monday 16 November. Those are working figures, not a substitute for your city’s almanac. If they hold, Monday’s sunrise is already Saptami. Families then do one of two wrong things. They cancel Usha because ‘the tithi is over’, or they try to offer arghya at 2 in the morning in a dark room. Neither is the vrat. Usha Arghya is the dawn after Sandhya Arghya. In 2026 that dawn is Monday 16 November, before the sun clears the horizon of your city. The number of the tithi changing while the house slept does not move the offering onto Sunday night. Confirm the end of Shashthi locally. Keep Monday’s sunrise.

The soop, the ghat, and the room

The soop is a winnowing basket. It is the vessel this vrat knows. A plastic tray is what you use when a soop cannot be had, and you do not pretend it is traditional. Wheat, ghee, and jaggery make the thekua. The hands that fry them are the vrati’s hands where the vrati can stand at the stove. Help is allowed. A shop-bought bag, unopened until the ghat, is a purchase. Some houses buy when the kitchen truly cannot fry. Say that honestly. Do not arrange the packet under flowers and call it a night of labour.

A family in Patna, Muzaffarpur, or a Sultanpur lane with elders from those districts already knows its ghat. A family in a Delhi flat, a Mumbai room, or a Gulf apartment often does not. If a safe river or pond is within reach, use it. If it is not, many houses set the soop at a clean threshold or a balcony, facing the sun that is actually setting there, with the same articles. I will not rank the river as real and the balcony as counterfeit, and I will not tell you a bucket of tap water is the Ganga. The sun is the one you see. The water you enter must be water you can enter without harm. Send the city if you cannot tell which of those you are in.

A household outside India must not offer Patna’s 5:00 as if the sun had agreed to wait. The arghya is local sunset on Sunday and local sunrise on Monday. Gulf evening is not an Indian evening with ninety minutes subtracted from a Delhi video. Nepal’s sky is earlier than Delhi’s and is not Delhi plus fifteen minutes. This page keeps the four civil dates. The minute belongs to the place where the soop is held.

What the vrat will not do

The prayer at the ghat asks well-being for the house. I leave the prayer as a prayer. I will not convert it into a result: a cure, a pregnancy, a longer life, a visa, a job, the end of a quarrel. A person who is ill belongs with a physician before they belong in cold water at dusk. A couple who want a child are not given Chhath as a method. The story of Chhathi Maiya is a story the vrati may keep in mind. It is not a contract I am authorised to enforce, and it is not a threat against houses that cannot keep the fast this year.

If you are unsure whether a sick elder should even go to the water, write on WhatsApp the city and the constraint. I am in Sultanpur. Travel when a house has asked and a date is fixed. A sitting in India if you come. A live word if you only need the sunset of your city checked against a screenshot that has already confused two ghats. Dakshina is spoken before any of that, never as a rate for a longer life. There is no online payment.

Questions people ask

When is Chhath Puja in 2026?

Nahay Khay is Friday 13 November. Kharna is Saturday 14 November. Sandhya Arghya is Sunday 15 November. Usha Arghya is Monday 16 November. Confirm sunset and sunrise in the city where you will stand.

Is the fast without water from Friday?

No. Friday has a bath and a meal. The nirjala stretch, for a body that can hold it, begins after Saturday evening’s kheer and roti, and it ends after Monday’s sunrise offering.

Shashthi ends at night. Do we skip Usha?

No. On the sheets I am using, Shashthi ends in the early hours of Monday, and Usha is still Monday’s dawn. Do not move it to 2 a.m., and do not cancel it.

Does Chhath guarantee health or a child?

No. It is a vrat and an offering to the sun. It is not medicine and not a promise of pregnancy or long life.

If the soop is in your city and the time is not

This page is Kartik Chhath 2026, the four days from 13 to 16 November. I am Acharya Krishna Kant. The sittings of this site are the work I have kept from Sultanpur for close to twenty years. If your ghat and your sunset are already clear, keep them. If a forwarded minute has put you in the wrong city, send the city on WhatsApp. I will not add a phal to the thekua.