Sharad Purnima 2026 (25 Oct): Kheer, Kojagiri & 'Who Is Awake?'

Sharad Purnima 2026 is the night of Sunday, 25 October 2026. The Purnima tithi begins at 11:56 AM on 25 October and ends at 9:41 AM on 26 October IST, so the customs of the full-moon night, Kojagiri, the Lakshmi puja and the kheer left out in the moonlight, all belong to the night of the 25th. In Delhi the moon rises at 5:00 PM, and the midnight (nishita) window that decides Kojagiri is 11:40 PM to 12:31 AM, 26 Oct. The customs that follow the Purnima at sunrise, the morning bath and daan, Valmiki Jayanti and the first dawn bath of Kartik, fall on Monday, 26 October.

Sharad Purnima is the full moon of Ashwin, the first after Navratri and Dussehra. It goes by many names. Maharashtra calls it Kojagiri Purnima, Gujarat Sharad Poonam and Mithila Kojagara; Bengal, Assam and Tripura keep it as Kojagori (or Kojagari) Lakshmi Puja, Lokkhi Pujo in Bengali; Odisha keeps it as Kumar Purnima; and the temples of Braj keep it as the night of Krishna's Maha Raas. In the panchang it is Ashwin (or Ashvin) Shukla Purnima.

Sharad Purnima 2026: Date and Timings

Event	Date and Time (IST)
Sharad Purnima 2026 (the night)	Sunday, 25 October 2026
Purnima tithi begins	25 October 2026, 11:56 AM
Purnima tithi ends (the exact full moon)	26 October 2026, 9:41 AM
Moonrise, Delhi	25 October 2026, 5:00 PM (sunset 5:42 PM)
Bhadra (Vishti karana)	25 October 2026, 11:56 AM to 10:52 PM
Kojagiri midnight (nishita) window, Delhi	25 October, 11:40 PM to 12:31 AM, 26 Oct
Purnima at sunrise (morning bath, Valmiki Jayanti)	Monday, 26 October 2026

Why some calendars print 26 October. A panchang names each day by the tithi running at sunrise. At sunrise on 25 October it is still Chaturdashi; at sunrise on 26 October it is Purnima, so calendars that list days this way, our own Purnima calendar among them, show Ashwin Purnima on Monday, 26 October. Sharad Purnima is a night festival, though, and its customs follow the tithi at night: on the night of the 25th the Purnima holds at moonrise, through the evening and at midnight, and by the night of the 26th it is over. If the sunrise rule is new to you, see what a tithi is and how it sets the date.

The tithi start and end, the Bhadra and the nakshatra change are the same clock time everywhere in India. That night the moon moves from Revati into Ashvini at 7:22 PM; the month of Ashwin takes its name from this nakshatra, which is where its full moon falls. Moonrise, sunset and the midnight window change from city to city.

Moonrise and the Midnight Window, City by City

City	Moonrise, 25 Oct	Sunset, 25 Oct	Midnight (nishita) window
Kolkata	4:21 PM	5:04 PM	10:56 PM to 11:46 PM
Delhi	5:00 PM	5:42 PM	11:40 PM to 12:31 AM, 26 Oct
Chennai	5:04 PM	5:45 PM	11:29 PM to 12:18 AM, 26 Oct
Hyderabad	5:07 PM	5:48 PM	11:35 PM to 12:25 AM, 26 Oct
Bengaluru	5:15 PM	5:56 PM	11:39 PM to 12:28 AM, 26 Oct
Mumbai	5:28 PM	6:09 PM	11:58 PM to 12:48 AM, 26 Oct

In each of these cities the moon is up about 40 minutes before sunset and stays in the sky until close to sunrise on the 26th (it sets at 6:23 AM in Delhi), so there is no hurry to catch it. The nishita window is the eighth of the night's fifteen muhurtas, centred on the midpoint between sunset and the next sunrise, which is why it comes about an hour earlier in Kolkata than in Mumbai. Our daily panchang gives your own city's sunrise, sunset and tithi times.

Kojagiri: Why Lakshmi Asks "Who Is Awake?"

Kojagiri comes from the Sanskrit ko jagarti, "who is awake?" Maharashtra Tourism's festival page gives the belief in its plainest form: Lakshmi moves through the world on this night, and those who stay awake in devotion receive her blessing. That is why the night is kept as a jagaran, a vigil, with songs, games and late talk instead of early sleep.

The story told with the Kojagara vrata, which the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha attributes to the Sanatkumar Samhita, is about Valit, a poor but learned Brahmin of Magadha. Angered by a quarrelsome wife, he left home to seek his fortune and wandered into a forest on the Ashwin full moon, where Naga maidens who were keeping the vrata sat down to gamble with him. He lost everything and stayed awake the whole night, keeping the vigil without knowing it. Lakshmi, passing that way with Vishnu, blessed him for it with great beauty; the Naga maidens married him and gave him their wealth, and he went home a rich man. The telling ends with the promise behind the festival: whoever stays awake on this night is blessed with prosperity.

• Maharashtra (Kojagiri Purnima): masala doodh, milk boiled with spices and nuts, is kept out under the moon and drunk late at night as prasad. Maharashtra Tourism notes that in some places the moon is seen as a reflection in a vessel of boiling milk instead of directly.
• Mithila, Bihar (Kojagara): the big celebration is in the house of a newly married groom. The bride's family sends a bhaar of makhana (fox nuts), paan, batasha, fruit and sweets; the groom wears clothes from his in-laws, the women perform the chumaun, the elders bless him with the durvakshat mantra, and he plays pachisi with his brother-in-law with cowries and dice sent by the bride's side while the women sing Maithili songs. Makhana kheer kept in the moonlight is fed to the groom.
• Gujarat (Sharad Poonam): garba under the full moon, and dudh-pauva, beaten rice soaked in milk, offered and then eaten as prasad. Swaminarayan devotees also keep the day as the birth anniversary of Gunatitanand Swami.

Kheer in the Moonlight

Across North and Central India the best-known custom of the night is a bowl of kheer, rice cooked in milk and sugar, left out on the roof or balcony and eaten the next morning as prasad. The reason usually given is that on this night the moon's rays carry amrit, and the kheer collects it. Ayurveda's own advice for the season points the same way: the Charaka Samhita's regimen for Sharad ritu, the autumn season, praises the moon's rays in the early part of the night (Sutra Sthana 6.48).

• Make the kheer in the evening and set it out after moonrise, covered with a thin cloth or net so dust and insects stay out.
• Households that do not begin a puja during Bhadra (Vishti karana) set it out after Bhadra ends, at 10:52 PM IST on 25 October, the same moment all over India. The moon is up all night, so nothing is lost by waiting.
• If you are doing a puja, offer the kheer to Lakshmi and to the moon that night, then eat it as prasad on the morning of 26 October.
• Those keeping the Purnima vrat break the fast on the evening of the 25th after offering arghya (water) to the moon.

Bengal, Assam and Tripura: Kojagori Lakshmi Puja

Bengal keeps its main household Lakshmi puja on this full moon, the first after Durga Puja, and gives Diwali night to Kali. West Bengal's 2026 holiday list puts Lakshmi Puja on Sunday, 25 October, with an additional holiday on Monday the 26th. The writer Jawhar Sircar, who traces this full-moon Lakshmi puja across Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Tripura, describes the Bengali household customs:

• Women draw alpana in white rice paste, with pairs of small footprints leading into the house and through its rooms, even up the stairs, so that Lakshmi finds her way in.
• The bhog includes khichuri, fried vegetables, taaler bora and narus of grated coconut and jaggery, with fruit and moa.
• The Lakshmir Panchali, the verses of the goddess, is read aloud to the household.

Sircar also notes that some Ghoti households of western Bengal, and households of North Indian origin, worship Lakshmi on Diwali night, Dipanwita in Bengali, instead. That puja, with Ganesha in the evening muhurat, is covered in our Lakshmi puja vidhi and samagri guide; Diwali 2026 is on 8 November (Diwali 2026 dates).

Odisha: Kumar Purnima and Gajalaxmi Puja

In Odisha the day is Kumar Purnima, kept by unmarried girls. Kumar is Kartikeya, and the prayer is for a husband like him. As the Orissa Post describes the day, anjali, water with flower petals, is offered to the rising sun, jhoti (rice-paste patterns) are drawn in front of the tulsi, and in the evening the full moon is offered a crescent-shaped prasad called chanda, made of banana, chhena, coconut and flowers. Then come songs, folk dances and, in the villages, the game of puchi.

The same night opens Gajalaxmi Puja, eleven days of Lakshmi worship across the state. In Dhenkanal the market pandals are known for their silver chandi medha backdrops. Check your Odia panjika for the date of Kumar Purnima: in 2025, when the Purnima ran from one day into the next morning, as it does this year, the almanacs split, Gajalaxmi Puja was kept on the first night, and the Puri Jagannath temple kept Kumar Purnima on the second day. In 2026 that means 25 or 26 October.

Braj: The Night of the Maha Raas

In Vrindavan and Mathura, and at Shrinathji's temple in Nathdwara, the night is kept as Raas Purnima, the night of Krishna's Maha Raas with the gopis. The Bhagavata Purana's account of the Raas (Book 10, chapters 29 to 33) opens on autumn nights with the jasmine in full bloom (10.29.1). At the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan this is the one night of the year the deity holds the flute.

Bengal's Rash Purnima, Odisha's Rahas (Rasa) Purnima and Manipur's Maha Ras are a different night: all three are kept on Kartik Purnima, which falls on 24 November 2026 (see Kartik Purnima 2026).

Valmiki Jayanti and the Start of Kartik

Valmiki Jayanti, the birth anniversary of the poet of the Ramayana, follows the Purnima at sunrise, so in 2026 it falls on Monday, 26 October, the day after the Sharad Purnima night. It is a holiday in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, and the Balmiki community also keeps it as Pargat Divas.

This Purnima also closes the month of Ashwin in the North Indian (purnimanta) calendar: Kartik begins as it ends, at 9:41 AM on 26 October. Those who keep the month-long Kartik snan, the bath before sunrise every day of the month, start it from Sharad Purnima. This year the Purnima is current at dawn only on 26 October, so the snan begins that morning, and the vow ends on Kartik Purnima, 24 November. ISKCON keeps its Month of Kartik, also called the Damodara month, over the same stretch in India, from 26 October to 24 November.

A Lakshmi or Satyanarayan Puja at Home

Two pujas are commonly done at home on Sharad Purnima. The Kojagiri or Kojagori Lakshmi puja is done at night, in the evening after moonrise or in the midnight window above, followed by the vigil. A Satyanarayan puja, done on a Purnima, fits the evening of 25 October, or the morning of 26 October before 9:41 AM while the Purnima still runs; the procedure and samagri are in our Satyanarayan Puja guide.

If you would like a purohit to perform either puja at home, you can request a verified purohit through Purohit.app. We arrange priests for Lakshmi Puja in Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Say in your request which tradition you follow, Bengali Kojagori, Marathi Kojagiri or a North Indian Purnima puja, because the vidhi differs, and ask a few days ahead.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Sharad Purnima in 2026?

Sharad Purnima 2026 is the night of Sunday, 25 October. The Purnima tithi runs from 11:56 AM on 25 October to 9:41 AM on 26 October IST, so Kojagiri and the kheer in the moonlight are on the 25th. Calendars that name the day by the sunrise tithi show Ashwin Purnima on Monday, 26 October.

When should the kheer be kept in the moonlight on Sharad Purnima 2026?

On the night of 25 October, after moonrise (5:00 PM in Delhi, 5:28 PM in Mumbai, 4:21 PM in Kolkata), and it is eaten as prasad on the morning of 26 October. Households that avoid Bhadra set it out after 10:52 PM IST, when the Vishti karana ends.

What time does the moon rise on Sharad Purnima 2026?

On 25 October 2026 the moon rises at 4:21 PM in Kolkata, 5:00 PM in Delhi, 5:04 PM in Chennai, 5:07 PM in Hyderabad, 5:15 PM in Bengaluru and 5:28 PM in Mumbai, about 40 minutes before sunset in each city, and stays up until close to sunrise.

When are Kojagiri Purnima and Kojagori Lakshmi Puja in 2026?

Both are on the night of Sunday, 25 October 2026, because Kojagiri is decided by the Purnima at midnight. The midnight (nishita) window is 11:40 PM to 12:31 AM in Delhi, 11:58 PM to 12:48 AM in Mumbai and 10:56 PM to 11:46 PM in Kolkata. West Bengal's holiday list also puts Lakshmi Puja on 25 October.

When is Kumar Purnima 2026 in Odisha?

The Sharad Purnima night is Sunday, 25 October 2026, and Gajalaxmi Puja begins that night. In 2025, when the Purnima ran the same way, the almanacs split between the two days and the Puri Jagannath temple kept Kumar Purnima on the second, so check your panjika for 25 or 26 October.

Is Valmiki Jayanti on the same day as Sharad Purnima in 2026?

No, it is the next day. Valmiki Jayanti follows the Purnima at sunrise, so it falls on Monday, 26 October 2026, while the Sharad Purnima night is Sunday, 25 October.

Can Satyanarayan Puja be done on Sharad Purnima?

Yes. Satyanarayan Puja is done on a Purnima, and Sharad Purnima is one. In 2026, do it on the evening of 25 October, or on the morning of 26 October before 9:41 AM, while the Purnima still runs.

Is there a lunar eclipse on Sharad Purnima 2026?

No. The two lunar eclipses of 2026 were on 3 March and 28 August. The question comes up because in 2023 a partial lunar eclipse did fall on the Sharad Purnima night, 28 October.