December 2026 Vrat and Festival List: Every Date

December 2026 starts in the dark fortnight that north India names Margashirsha and the west and south name Kartika, and ends in Pausha by the north’s count. It has fewer pan-Indian festivals than November and more that are strongest in one region: Vivah Panchami in Mithila and Ayodhya, Champa Shashti at Jejuri and across Maharashtra and Karnataka, and Datta Jayanti in the same two states. Halfway through, the Sun enters Sagittarius and the month of Kharmas begins. The 16 rows below are every vrat and festival the site computes for the month, with the reading that fixes each one.

December 2026 Vrat and Festival Dates (व्रत त्योहार)

The reference city is New Delhi. Tithi boundaries are single instants valid across the country; what changes from city to city is the time of sunrise, sunset and moonrise that each rule tests, and so a row flagged as close or as holding no sunrise is the kind most likely to read differently in a Kolkata or Mumbai almanac. Instants are from the site’s generated panchang, which uses NASA JPL’s DE421 ephemeris and the Lahiri ayanamsa.

The First Week: Kaal Bhairav to Margashirsha Amavasya

Kaal Bhairav Jayanti opens the month on Tuesday 1 December. Its Krishna Ashtami begins at 00:12, just after the midnight that starts the date, and ends at 23:14 the same evening. So the sunrise, the day and the evening all have the tithi, but neither midnight does: the night test that fixes the monthly Kalashtami has nothing to hold, and the date is the civil day the Ashtami occupies. The month’s second Kalashtami, on Wednesday 30 December, is an ordinary one by that test and is the first night on the Kalashtami list.

Utpanna Ekadashi follows on Friday 4 December. Then come three days in a row kept for Shiva or for the ancestors: the Ravi Pradosh Vrat of Sunday 6 December, whose Trayodashi fills the whole pradosh span; Masik Shivratri on Monday 7 December; and the Amavasya on Tuesday 8 December. A Tuesday Amavasya is the one almanacs call Bhaumavati, and the Margashirsha Amavasya page gives its tithi and the afternoon in which tarpan is offered.

Rahu, Ketu, Saturn and Jupiter Shift

All four of the slowest-moving grahas shift in the first half of the month. On 5 December Rahu passes back into Capricorn and Ketu into Cancer, ending the Aquarius-Leo axis they have held since May 2025; the Rahu Ketu transit page covers the change. The nodes in this table are mean nodes, an averaged position, so the day is given and the minute is not. Saturn ends its retrograde in Pisces on 11 December, and Jupiter turns retrograde in Leo on 13 December, the same date as the Vinayaka Chaturthi; the Jupiter retrograde 2026 page follows it back into Cancer. Mercury enters Scorpio at 17:24 on 2 December and Sagittarius at 07:36 on 22 December.

Vivah Panchami, Champa Shashti and the Start of Kharmas

Three days in the middle of the month run straight into each other. Vinayaka Chaturthi is Sunday 13 December; Vivah Panchami, the day tradition gives to the marriage of Rama and Sita, is Monday 14 December; and Champa Shashti, the last day of Khandoba’s navratra, is Tuesday 15 December.

The next morning, at 10:20 on 16 December, the Sun enters sidereal Sagittarius, and the Dhanu Kharmas runs from that day to 14 January 2027. Families that follow the custom do not fix weddings, griha pravesh or other beginnings in this month; the Kharmas December 2026 page gives both edges. The custom is about beginnings rather than worship, so the vrats after 16 December in the table above are kept in the ordinary way.

Panchak from Vivah Panchami Night

The Moon enters Kumbha at 22:35 on Monday 14 December, late on the night of Vivah Panchami, and leaves Meena at 15:57 on Saturday 19 December. That Panchak holds Champa Shashti, the first day of Kharmas and Masik Durgashtami on 17 December. Panchak is a muhurta condition for starting certain work, which the Panchak page lists, and it is separate from the vrats that fall inside it.

Mokshada Ekadashi to Datta Jayanti

Mokshada Ekadashi is Sunday 20 December, kept also as Geeta Jayanti, the day tradition assigns to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita at Kurukshetra. The Trayodashi that follows reaches only one evening and does not fill it, 136 of the pradosh span’s minutes on Monday 21 December, so that evening is the month’s Som Pradosh Vrat on the rule that a part counts when no evening has the whole.

The full moon is the hardest date of the month. The Purnima opens at 10:47 on Wednesday 23 December and ends at 06:58 on 24 December, 12 minutes before New Delhi’s sunrise, so no New Delhi morning carries it. The table keeps 23 December for Datta Jayanti and Annapurna Jayanti, the evening the Purnima holds; the Datta Jayanti page explains why calendars for Kolkata and Chennai give the morning of 24 December. In purnimanta reckoning that full moon ends Margashirsha, and the Paush 2026 page takes the month from there.

The Last Week: Sankashti and Pushya

The year’s last Sankashti Chaturthi is Saturday 26 December, and it is a close call. The Krishna Chaturthi opens at 20:05 and New Delhi’s moonrise is at 20:14, 9 minutes later. In Kolkata, Lucknow and Patna the Moon is already up when the tithi opens, and the Sankashti list explains what that does to the date there.

The Moon is in Pushya from 22:49 on Friday 25 December to 20:12 on Saturday 26 December. That passage touches no Thursday or Sunday by either reading, so December has neither a Guru Pushya nor a Ravi Pushya; the Guru Pushya page lists the next ones.

Related Pages

The month before is on the November 2026 vrat and festival list and the month after on the January 2027 list. The December 2026 panchang gives every day’s tithi and nakshatra, the festivals hub links every festival page, and the 2026 festival calendar has the year’s major dates.