Bhishma Panchak 2026: Dates, Five Tithis, Four Sunrises

Bhishma Panchak (भीष्म पंचक) is the last five tithis of Kartika’s bright fortnight, from the Ekadashi to the Purnima. In 2026 the site’s festival table puts the first of them on Friday, 20 November 2026, which is Dev Uthani Ekadashi, and the last on Tuesday, 24 November 2026, which is Kartik Purnima. The five tithis themselves run from 07:16 on Friday 20 November to 20:23 on Tuesday 24 November. One wrinkle this year: five tithis, but only four sunrises at New Delhi.

What Bhishma Panchak Is

Vaishnava writers usually cite the Kartika Mahatmya of the Padma Purana as the source for the observance, which takes its name from Bhishma, the Kuru elder of the Mahabharata. Gaudiya Vaishnava calendars, ISKCON’s among them, keep it as the closing stretch of the Kartika (Damodara) month, and North Indian almanacs print it under the Hindi name. Where it is kept as a vrat, the fast varies by family, from leaving out grains to a much narrower diet; anyone with a medical condition should ask their doctor before undertaking it.

“Panchak” here just means a group of five, and the five are tithis. That makes it a different thing from the panchak that almanacs mark roughly once a month, which is a stretch of five nakshatras. The two are compared further down, because this year they overlap.

The Five Tithis, One by One

Both ends of the Ekadashi and both ends of the Purnima are festival-table instants. The two joins in the middle, where Dwadashi gives way to Trayodashi and Trayodashi to Chaturdashi, are not in any festival row, so they are worked out with the site’s lunar code; across the 86 festival rows where that code can be set beside the generated tables, the worst gap is 1 minute.

Not one of the five reaches a full day, and each is a little shorter than the one before, ending with a Purnima of 20 hours 41 minutes. Laid end to end they cover 4 days 13 hours 7 minutes, comfortably under five days, so five tithis cannot each claim a sunrise of its own.

Day by Day at New Delhi

The daily panchang records the tithi current at each sunrise. From the Thursday before the five tithis to the Wednesday after them:

• Thursday 19 November, sunrise 06:46: Shukla Navami, Moon in Purva Bhadrapada
• Friday 20 November, sunrise 06:47: Shukla Dashami, Moon in Purva Bhadrapada
• Saturday 21 November, sunrise 06:48: Shukla Dwadashi, Moon in Uttara Bhadrapada
• Sunday 22 November, sunrise 06:49: Shukla Trayodashi, Moon in Ashwini
• Monday 23 November, sunrise 06:49: Shukla Chaturdashi, Moon in Bharani
• Tuesday 24 November, sunrise 06:50: Purnima, Moon in Krittika
• Wednesday 25 November, sunrise 06:51: Krishna Pratipada, Moon in Rohini

Ekadashi is absent from the list. On 20 November the Sun is up at 06:47 and Dashami is still running; the Ekadashi opens 29 minutes later, at 07:16, and closes at 06:32 the next morning, 16 minutes before that sunrise. An Ekadashi that holds no sunrise is a kshaya tithi. Each of the other four holds exactly one, which is why the count comes out at four sunrises for five tithis, with no vriddhi anywhere in the run to add one back.

The Purnima is the easy end. It opens at 23:42 on 23 November, long after that day’s sunset, holds the 24 November sunrise alone, and lasts until 20:23, well into that evening (17:24 is sunset). At New Delhi, then, there is nothing to decide at this end: the observance closes on Tuesday.

Which Day It Starts: 20 November or 21 November

Because the Ekadashi is kshaya at New Delhi, the first day of Bhishma Panchak is a matter of convention. The generator behind the festival table observes a kshaya tithi on the day it begins, which gives Friday 20 November, and on that reckoning the observance spans five civil days, 20 November to 24 November. A calendar that keeps the Ekadashi fast on Saturday 21 November instead, as the rule in the Hari Bhakti Vilasa can lead a Vaishnava calendar to do this year, starts on that day and covers four civil days, still reaching the same Purnima. The reasoning, and the cities in the east where the Ekadashi does hold the 21 November sunrise, are set out on the Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2026 page.

This page does not reproduce ISKCON’s published calendar. Temples that follow it issue their own dates for their own location, and a devotee keeping Bhishma Panchak with a temple should take the start from that calendar rather than from either date here.

Not the Same as Nakshatra Panchak

The monthly panchak is defined by the Moon, not by the tithi: it runs while the Moon crosses Kumbha and Meena, from the second half of Dhanishtha to the end of Revati. In 2026 one of those passages lies across the start of Bhishma Panchak. The Moon enters Kumbha at 15:30 on Tuesday 17 November and moves on through Shatabhisha, Purva Bhadrapada, Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati, leaving Meena for Ashwini at 05:54 on Sunday 22 November.

So the nakshatra panchak has been running since 17 November when the Ekadashi opens at 07:16 on 20 November, and the two run together for 46 hours 38 minutes: through the whole Ekadashi, the whole Dwadashi, and roughly the first hour of the Trayodashi, which begins at 04:56 on 22 November. The sunrise nakshatras in the list above show the same thing from the ground: Purva Bhadrapada on 20 November and Uttara Bhadrapada on 21 November, both panchak nakshatras, then Ashwini on 22 November. The only New Delhi sunrise that falls inside both kinds of panchak is Saturday 21 November. From 22 November to the Purnima there is no nakshatra panchak at all.

The two carry different associations in the almanacs. The nakshatra panchak comes with a list of activities that the almanac tradition sets aside while it lasts, given on the Panchak 2027 list page with every passage to the end of 2027; Bhishma Panchak is a period of vrat and worship. The almanac restrictions attach to the Moon’s passage, not to the Kartika observance, and how a household reconciles the two for the overlapping days is for its own priest or almanac to say.

Bhishma Panchak 2026 at a Glance

• First day by this site’s table: Friday, 20 November 2026 (Dev Uthani Ekadashi, kshaya at New Delhi)
• Also defensible as the first day: Saturday, 21 November 2026
• Last day: Tuesday, 24 November 2026 (Kartik Purnima)
• The five tithis: 07:16 on Friday 20 November to 20:23 on Tuesday 24 November
• Overlap with nakshatra panchak: 07:16 on Friday 20 November to 05:54 on Sunday 22 November

The figures above are for New Delhi; for your own town, the panchang tool gives the sunrise and the tithi at it. The rest of the month’s observances are in the November 2026 vrat and festival list, and the year’s computed dates on the festival pages. In Hindi: भीष्म पंचक 2026: तारीखें, पाँच तिथियाँ, चार सूर्योदय.