Govardhan Puja 2026: Annakut Date, Not the Day After Diwali

The Short Answer (गोवर्धन पूजा कब है)

Govardhan Puja, kept in many temples and homes as Annakut, falls on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. It is the first tithi of the bright fortnight of Kartika, Shukla Pratipada, and that tithi runs from 12:32 on 9 November 2026 to 14:00 on 10 November 2026.

The detail that catches people out this year: Diwali is on Sunday, 8 November 2026, and Govardhan Puja is not the next morning. There is a whole date, Monday 9 November, between the two. Anyone counting “Diwali, then Annakut the day after” from habit will be a day early. The rest of this page shows where the gap comes from, using nothing but the tithi instants and the sunrises.

Three Sunrises, Read in Order

The festival table behind this site decides Govardhan Puja by one test: which date has the Kartika Pratipada running at sunrise. That is the plain udaya-tithi reckoning, and unlike Diwali’s row, which names a pradosh rule, this row carries no special day-part condition. Apply the test to the three dates the Amavasya and the Pratipada touch, with sunrises for New Delhi:

• Sunday 8 November. Sunrise is at 06:38, and the daily panchang still shows Krishna Chaturdashi at that moment; the Amavasya opens only at 11:28. It is still running at pradosh that evening, which is why the Lakshmi Puja belongs to this date.
• Monday 9 November. Sunrise is at 06:38, and the tithi at sunrise is Amavasya. The Amavasya ends at 12:32, and the Pratipada begins at that same instant. So the morning of the 9th belongs to the Amavasya, and the Pratipada has the afternoon and evening.
• Tuesday 10 November. Sunrise is at 06:39, and the tithi at sunrise is Shukla Pratipada. This is the first sunrise the Pratipada holds, and the only one: it gives way to the Dwitiya at 14:00, before sunset (17:30).

Under a sunrise rule the answer is the 10th, and there is no second candidate. The Pratipada lasts 25 hours 28 minutes in all, the Amavasya before it 25 hours 4 minutes; each covers one sunrise and no more, so neither tithi is doubled or skipped this year. The gap opens because the Amavasya begins after sunrise on Diwali day and therefore has to borrow the next sunrise as well.

One more check, since a reader in Kolkata or Ahmedabad sees a different sunrise from Delhi. The tithi instants are the same everywhere in India, because they are fixed by the angle between the Moon and the Sun and not by the horizon. Only the sunrises move, by well under two hours from one end of the country to the other. The Amavasya runs 5 hours 54 minutes past the New Delhi sunrise on the 9th, and the Pratipada 7 hours 21 minutes past it on the 10th. Margins that wide do not change the date between Indian cities. If you are outside India, your local panchang still decides.

The New Moon at 12:32 (अमावस्या और प्रतिपदा)

The changeover at 12:32 on 9 November is not just a panchang convention. It is the astronomical new moon. The site’s lunation table puts the conjunction of the Sun and Moon at 12:32 that day, and it has to land exactly where the Amavasya ends. The thirtieth tithi closes when the Moon catches up with the Sun, and the first tithi of the new month opens as it moves ahead.

So what is Monday the 9th? By the sunrise reckoning it is an Amavasya day: the Amavasya’s second calendar date, and the one whose sunrise it holds. Diwali has already been kept the evening before, because by the 9th’s pradosh the Amavasya is over. The site’s festival table lists no observance on this date, and this page will not invent one. You can check the day’s five limbs yourself on the panchang for 9 November, beside the panchang for 10 November.

The month names cause their own confusion. In the amanta reckoning this site’s generator uses, the Diwali Amavasya closes Ashwina, while north Indian purnimanta calendars call the same night Kartika Amavasya. For a Shukla-paksha tithi the two systems agree, so Govardhan Puja is Kartika Shukla Pratipada whichever calendar your family keeps.

If a printed calendar or a family priest gives 9 November instead, ask which moment of the day it tests. The 9th is the only other date the Pratipada touches, and only from 12:32 onwards. A reckoning that tested the afternoon rather than the sunrise could point to that date; a sunrise rule cannot. This page reports the sunrise result because that is what the table computes. It does not claim every lineage uses the same test.

The Story the Day Recalls (गोवर्धन लीला)

The source text is the tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana. In its account the cowherds of Vraja are getting ready for their yearly sacrifice to Indra, the giver of rain. The boy Krishna asks Nanda what the rite is for, then argues that the herders’ living comes from the hill, the cows and the forest pasture, not from a distant sky-god. He proposes that the offerings already prepared go to Govardhan, the cows and the brahmanas instead, and the community agrees.

The Purana then has Indra answer with a storm, and has Krishna lift the hill and hold it up like an umbrella while the people and herds of Vraja shelter beneath it for seven days, until the rain stops. The episode ends with Indra’s submission. Two threads of the festival come straight out of this account. One is the turn from Indra to the hill. The other is the food: what the Bhagavata describes is a village’s prepared offering redirected, and that is the root the Vaishnava tradition gives for Annakut.

Annakut: the Mountain of Food (अन्नकूट)

Annakut means a heap, literally a peak, of food. In the Vaishnava temples where the day matters most, it is the offering of a very large number of dishes, prepared over the preceding days and set out before the deity in a form that recalls the hill. The Pushtimarg, the sampradaya of Vallabhacharya, worships Shrinathji at Nathdwara as Krishna lifting Govardhan, the left arm raised. For the havelis of that tradition, Annakut is one of the great days of the year. ISKCON temples likewise keep Govardhan Puja with a hill built from prepared food, which is distributed as prasad afterwards.

In the villages of Braj and in many north Indian homes, the custom is humbler. A small Govardhan is modelled in cow dung in the courtyard, decorated, offered food and circumambulated, and the household cattle are bathed and garlanded. At the hill itself in Mathura district, the parikrama path around Govardhan is walked by pilgrims through the year and especially on this day. Which of these a family keeps, and in what detail, is a matter for the family’s own practice, not for a website.

The Same Pratipada Elsewhere: Bestu Varas and Bali Pratipada

Kartika Shukla Pratipada carries more than one name across India. In Gujarat, the Vikram Samvat year as reckoned there begins on this tithi, and the day is kept as the Gujarati New Year, Bestu Varas, with “Saal Mubarak” as the greeting. In Maharashtra the same tithi is Bali Pratipada, or Diwali Padwa, recalling Bali, the king of the Vamana story. This page gives no separate date for either. Both key to the same tithi, which in 2026 runs 12:32 on 9 November to 14:00 on 10 November, and how each community fixes the day inside that window is its own calendar’s call. For both, the first sunrise inside the Pratipada is the 10th.

The 10th in Figures (New Delhi)

• Sunrise and sunset: 06:39 and 17:30
• Shukla Pratipada: 12:32 on 9 November to 14:00 on 10 November, so the morning and early afternoon of the 10th lie inside it
• Nakshatra, yoga, karana at sunrise: Vishakha, Shobhana, Bava
• Rahu Kaal: 14:47-16:08, the interval households that watch Rahu Kaal leave alone for beginning a rite

The table gives no separate Govardhan Puja muhurat, and this page does not make one up. What the figures do show is a practical edge: the Pratipada closes at 14:00, so a family that wants its puja inside the tithi itself has the morning and the early afternoon. Every clock time here is computed for New Delhi. The tithi instants hold across India, but the sunrise-based figures move with your longitude.

Where It Sits in the Festival Week

The five days of the Diwali festival run in 2026 from Dhanteras on 6 November to Bhai Dooj on 11 November. That is six calendar dates, and the extra one is the 9th. Bhai Dooj follows directly on the 11th. Its row is decided by the Dwitiya at madhyahna, and the Dwitiya opens at 14:00 on the 10th, after that day’s midday window, so the next day’s middle hours are where it falls. The full sequence, with pradosh and Lakshmi Puja timings, is in the Diwali 2026 puja muhurat and vidhi and the day-by-day Diwali 2026 timings.

The spacing is a property of 2026, not of the festival. In 2027 the same table puts Govardhan Puja on 30 October 2027, the day straight after Diwali on 29 October 2027, worked out on the Govardhan Puja 2027 page. The rest of the year’s dates are in the 2026 Hindu festival calendar and the festivals index. If the tithi-at-sunrise reasoning on this page is new to you, how to read a panchang sets out the five limbs. The daily panchang lets you check any other date the same way. In Hindi: गोवर्धन पूजा 2026 कब है: अन्नकूट दीपावली के अगले दिन नहीं.