Kaal Bhairav Jayanti 2027 Date: 20 or 21 November?

Kaal Bhairav Jayanti (काल भैरव जयंती), also called Kalabhairav Jayanti or Bhairava Ashtami, has two candidate dates in 2027. Reckoned by the tithi at midnight, it is the night of Saturday 20 November. Reckoned by the tithi at sunrise, it is Sunday 21 November. The lunar day starts after dark on the Saturday and runs out late on the Sunday afternoon, so each rule finds the tithi on a different date, and neither date is the only correct one. What follows is the arithmetic for both; which one a household keeps is set by the calendar it follows.

The Ashtami: 19:18 Saturday to 17:20 Sunday

The site’s lunar code puts the start of this Krishna Ashtami at 19:18 on Saturday 20 November and its end at 17:20 on Sunday 21 November. That code is not a guess: at each of the 86 tithi instants the generated festival tables print, it lands within 1 min. The two instants are the same all over India. Sunrise and sunset differ from town to town, and the figures below are for New Delhi unless a city is named.

• 20 November, sunrise 06:47: Krishna Saptami. Sunset comes at 17:25, and the Ashtami only begins at 19:18, a little under two hours after it.
• Night of 20 November: Ashtami from 19:18 through midnight and on to dawn.
• 21 November, sunrise 06:48: Krishna Ashtami, with more than ten hours of it still to run.
• 21 November, 17:20: the Navami begins; the New Delhi sunset follows at 17:25.
• 22 November, sunrise 06:48: Krishna Navami.

Two Rules, Two Dates

By the night: Saturday 20 November. Calendars that keep Bhairava’s worship to the night look for the Ashtami at midnight. The site’s Kalashtami 2027 list does the same, dating every Krishna paksha Ashtami by the test the festival generator applies to Janmashtami: is the tithi current at its nishita probe, 23:58 on the civil date, with the first date that passes taken. For the Jayanti that probe on 20 November sits more than four hours inside the Ashtami, and by the probe on 21 November the tithi has been over for more than six hours. A probe is a checkpoint, not a puja time, and the page gives no clock window for nishita itself, which moves with each city’s own midnight.

By the sunrise: Sunday 21 November. A printed panchang lists the tithi current when the Sun comes up, and the only Ashtami sunrise in this fortnight is the Sunday’s. Wall calendars that print a festival against its sunrise tithi will therefore show the Jayanti on 21 November, the day after the night above.

Neither reading is close. The midnight of the Saturday night and the Sunday sunrise each lie hours from both ends of the tithi, so the split between the two dates is a real difference of rule and not a rounding question. The page does not choose between them.

The Sunday Evening Is Too Close to Call

One more question comes up: is the Ashtami still running when the Sun sets on Sunday 21 November? In New Delhi the tithi ends at 17:20 and the Sun sets at 17:25, only 5 min apart. The site rests no conclusion on two instants that are under half an hour apart, and this pair is well inside that. Across India the computed order also changes sides: in parts of the east the Sun sets before 17:20, and in the west and south after it.

Of the 38 cities in the site’s panchang list, the tithi is still current at sunset in 9 and has ended in 27, and ends in the sunset’s own minute in 2; in every one the end comes within an hour of dusk. In 12 the gap clears the half-hour margin, the widest being Guwahati, where the Ashtami outlasts sunset by 49 min, and Goa, where it is gone 41 min before; in the rest the two instants are close. Because the Sunday evening sits so near the boundary, nothing on this page leans on it, and neither date above depends on it.

The two readings that do decide the dates hold in all 38 cities. Everywhere the Ashtami begins more than an hour after the Saturday sunset; everywhere the halfway point of the Saturday night, between local sunset and the next sunrise, falls more than three hours inside it; and everywhere it holds the Sunday sunrise by more than eight hours. The panchang tool gives sunrise and sunset for your own town.

Margashirsha in the North, Kartika in the South

The festival rows give Kartik Purnima 2027 as Sunday 14 November, with the full moon at 08:55 that morning. A north Indian purnimanta calendar opens a new month after each full moon, so the dark fortnight that follows belongs to Margashirsha, and the Jayanti is Margashirsha Krishna Ashtami there. An amanta calendar, the kind used in Maharashtra, Gujarat and the southern states, opens its month at the new moon instead: the one at 19:06 on 29 October, which closes Diwali’s amanta Ashwina, began Kartika, and Kartika lasts until the new moon of 28 November. In those calendars the same tithi is Kartika Krishna Ashtami. The Moon is the same; only the month boundaries differ.

Bhairava in the Shiva Purana and at Kashi

The day is kept as the appearance of Bhairava, a fierce form of Shiva. In the Shiva Purana’s telling, Bhairava is brought forth when Brahma claims supremacy, and it is Bhairava who cuts off Brahma’s fifth head. Other Puranas and local temple traditions tell the episode with different details, and this page reports only that outline.

Varanasi’s own tradition calls Kaal Bhairav the kotwal of Kashi, the city’s watchman, and the Kaal Bhairav temple there is the focus of the day in the city. Bhairava’s vahana in the iconography is a dog, and feeding dogs belongs to the customs reported around Bhairava temples and around this Ashtami in homes. The page on dogs and night omens covers that association. This page reports the customs and makes no claim about what keeping them brings. Temple programmes for 2027 are announced by the temples and are not given here.

The Kalashtamis Either Side

The Jayanti is the yearly peak of a monthly series: Kalashtami falls on every Krishna paksha Ashtami. Using the same midnight probe as above, the one before it is the night of Friday 22 October, the lunar day that is also Ahoi Ashtami 2027; there too the sunrise day is the next morning, Saturday 23 October. The one after is Monday 20 December, and in that month the two rules agree: the tithi opens at 03:34 in the small hours, holds that sunrise and is still current at the probe that night. The full year is on the Kalashtami list, and the 2026 Jayanti, an Ashtami that fitted inside one civil day, is worked through on the Kaal Bhairav Jayanti 2026 page.

Kaal Bhairav Jayanti 2027 at a Glance

• Krishna Ashtami (computed): 19:18 on 20 November to 17:20 on 21 November
• Midnight reading: night of Saturday 20 November
• Sunrise reading: Sunday 21 November, sunrise 06:48 at New Delhi
• Sunday evening: too close to sunset to rule on (17:20 against 17:25 at New Delhi)
• Month: Margashirsha Krishna Ashtami (purnimanta); Kartika Krishna Ashtami (amanta)
• Sunrise nakshatra on 21 November: Magha
• Not given: a nishita clock window, puja muhurat, temple timings

The rest of the month is on the November 2027 vrat and tyohar list, and the whole year is in the 2027 festival calendar. The other monthly night of Shiva worship has its own Masik Shivratri 2027 list, and every festival page is indexed on the festival hub.