Durga Ashtami: 2026 and 2027 dates by city

Maha Ashtami of Navratri: worship of Durga, kanya puja.

Durga Ashtami, or Maha Ashtami, the eighth day of Sharad Navratri, is one of the holiest days of the Goddess. It honours her form Mahagauri, and in Bengal it is the high point of Durga Puja. The sandhi puja is held at the junction of Ashtami and Navami, when Durga is said to have slain Chanda and Munda.

Devotees fast, offer flowers and 108 lotuses or lamps, and recite the Devi Mahatmya. Many families perform kanya puja, washing the feet of young girls, honouring them as forms of the Goddess and feeding them halwa, puri and chana. In Bengal people gather in the pandals for pushpanjali, offering flowers with the morning prayers.

How the date is set

Ashtami, shukla paksha (waxing Moon), in the month of Ashwin by the amanta calendar (the month ends at the new moon). It is kept on the day whose sunrise falls in this tithi.

Dates in 2026 and 2027

The local date in each city; under it, the time of the part of the day the rule looks at, in local time.

In 2026 Delhi keeps it on 19 October; a day apart from that: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Lviv, Minsk, Riga, Tbilisi, Chișinău, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, London, New York, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Istanbul, São Paulo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Lisbon.

In 2027 Delhi keeps it on 7 October; a day apart from that: Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney.

Smarta rules as published by Drik Panchang. ISKCON and regional calendars can name another day. The time shown is the part of the day the rule looks at, not a muhurat for a particular puja.

How to read the table

Each row is a city from our panchang list, and the date is the local civil date on which Durga Ashtami is kept there by its rule. Under the date is the time of the part of the day that rule looks at, in the city's own local time: for example the pradosh kala, the evening after sunset, or the nishita around midnight. A time past midnight carries (+1). Where the rule names no part of the day, such as a solar ingress or a festival tied to another festival, only the date is given. The city's name opens its panchang for today.

Why the date can differ between cities

A tithi begins and ends at the same moment everywhere, but sunrise, noon and evening come at different local times. If the tithi ends shortly before the evening in one city and shortly after it in another, the two cities keep the festival on different dates. That is why a single date for the whole world is wrong for some places, and why this page gives the date city by city. The difference is almost always one day.

Which calendar this follows

These are the Smarta dates, by the decision rules of the Dharmasindhu and Nirnayasindhu as Drik Panchang publishes them; every city in the table was compared with Drik Panchang's calendar for that city. ISKCON keeps some days, Janmashtami among them, by the Vaishnava rule, and regional calendars can name another day. If your family or temple follows a particular calendar, follow it.

Questions

See also

• Delhi
• Hindu festivals 2026–2027
• Sharad Navratri · Ghatasthapana
• Maha Navami

Positions and tables: sidereal zodiac, Lahiri ayanamsha — the same as professional Jyotish astrologers use, and the same calculation as the charts in JyotiSoft. Updated 2026-10-17.