Kaal Bhairav Jayanti 2026: Date, Tithi and Kalashtami

The Short Answer (काल भैरव जयंती)

Kaal Bhairav Jayanti — also written Kalabhairava Jayanti, and kept under the name Bhairava Ashtami in many temple calendars — falls on Tuesday, 1 December 2026. Many festivals on this site’s calendar need a paragraph of argument before a date can be printed. This one does not, and the reason is worth a look: the whole Krishna Ashtami sits inside that single civil day.

An Ashtami That Fits Inside One Day

The tithi opens at 00:12 and closes at 23:14, both on 1 December 2026. The festival tables have no row for this observance, so these instants come from the site’s lunar code; wherever both that code and the generated tables give a tithi instant (86 of them), they agree to within 1 minute. A tithi is a little shorter than a solar day on average, and this one begins just after one midnight and ends before the next.

The usual reasons for a two-day dispute therefore have nothing to work on. Take the three tests a calendar might apply, using 2026’s figures for New Delhi:

1. The sunrise. Sunrise on the 1st is 06:56, and the daily panchang reads Krishna Ashtami; the tithi will have been running for more than six hours by then. The sunrise either side reads Krishna Saptami (Monday) and Krishna Navami (Wednesday).
2. The daytime. Every hour of daylight on Tuesday lies inside the Ashtami. Nothing of it touches the daylight of Monday or Wednesday.
3. The evening. Sunset is at 17:23, and the Ashtami lasts more than five hours beyond it, so pradosh, the stretch after sunset that some observances are fixed by, falls inside the tithi too. The evening before belongs to Krishna Saptami.

Three rules, one answer, and each with hours to spare, which is enough to hold across India’s spread of sunrise and sunset times. A calendar printed in Kolkata or Ahmedabad has no more room to disagree than one printed in New Delhi.

What the Page Does Not Lean On

The opening instant, 00:12, is only 12 minutes past midnight. The site’s lunar code and the generated tables agree closely, but this page does not rest any conclusion on an instant that is under half an hour from the boundary it is measured against, and that start is one. Nothing above depends on it: the sunrise, the daylight and the evening are all decided by margins of hours. If your temple calendar reckons the observance by the night, take the timing it prints rather than one worked out here.

Margashirsha or Kartika? Both, Depending on the Calendar

Because this is a dark-fortnight tithi, its month has two names. Count the months from full moon to full moon, as the purnimanta calendars of north India do, and the month that begins after Kartik Purnima — the full moon of 24 November 2026 — is Margashirsha, so this is Margashirsha Krishna Ashtami. Count from new moon to new moon, as amanta calendars in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and the rest of the south do, and Margashirsha has not started yet: the month that opens with the new moon of 9 November 2026, right after Diwali, is still Kartika, and runs to the new moon of 9 December 2026. There the same day is Kartika Krishna Ashtami. A Varanasi panchang and a Bengaluru one, printing different month names over the same date, are reading the same Moon.

For the full moon that marks the north Indian change of month, see Kartik Purnima 2026.

Whose Birthday: the Shiva Purana Account

The observance marks the manifestation of Bhairava, the fierce form of Shiva. The Shiva Purana places that manifestation in a story of Brahma’s pride, which ends with Brahma’s fifth head severed by Bhairava. Retellings in the Puranas and in temple tradition differ on the details, and this page keeps to that core.

The Kotwal of Kashi

In the Varanasi tradition Kaal Bhairav is the kotwal of Kashi, the city’s guardian and keeper of its order, under Vishwanath. The Kaal Bhairav temple in Varanasi is the centre of the day there, and the city’s pilgrimage custom pairs a visit to it with darshan at Kashi Vishwanath. Ujjain has a Kal Bhairav temple of its own. Neither temple’s programme for the 2026 Jayanti is given here; the temples announce their own.

Bhairava’s vahana is a dog, and in Bhairava temple practice, at Kashi and elsewhere, dogs are fed as part of the worship; the custom carries over into homes on Bhairava Ashtami. The site’s page on dogs and the night-howling omen discusses that association. Feeding an animal is a kindness on its own terms, and this page attaches no promised result to it.

Every Month’s Krishna Ashtami: Kalashtami

In Bhairava worship the Jayanti heads a monthly series: Kalashtami is kept on the Krishna Ashtami of every month, and the daily panchang shows the next two Krishna Ashtami sunrises after this one:

• Thursday, 31 December 2026: Krishna Ashtami at sunrise (07:13, New Delhi)
• Friday, 29 January 2027: Krishna Ashtami at sunrise (07:11, New Delhi)

Those are sunrise-tithi days read straight off the table, not vrat rulings. Calendars that fix Kalashtami by the night rather than the morning can print the day before when the Ashtami begins in the evening, so check a printed panchang for those two months. The daily panchang gives the sunrise tithi for any date, and how to read a panchang explains the columns.

Figures at a Glance

• Kaal Bhairav Jayanti: Tuesday, 1 December 2026
• Krishna Ashtami (computed): 00:12 to 23:14, both on 1 December 2026
• Sunrise and sunset (New Delhi): 06:56 and 17:23
• Sunrise nakshatra and yoga: Magha, Vaidhriti
• Month: Margashirsha Krishna Ashtami (purnimanta); Kartika Krishna Ashtami (amanta)

Other dates for the year are collected in the 2026 festival calendar and on the festival pages. In Hindi: काल भैरव जयंती 2026: तारीख, तिथि और कालाष्टमी.