Kali Puja 2026 and 2027 Dates: The Midnight Amavasya Rule

In Bengal, Assam and Odisha, regional custom keeps the new moon of Diwali as Kali Puja, also called Shyama Puja. The Bengali panjika custom fixes that night by a different test from the one this site’s festival table applies to Lakshmi Puja: it asks whether the Amavasya holds at midnight, not at dusk. In 2026 the two tests agree, and Kali Puja falls on the night of Sunday, 8 November 2026. In 2027 they part company: the midnight Amavasya comes on the night of Thursday, 28 October 2027, one night before the table’s Lakshmi Puja date.

Dusk for Lakshmi, Midnight for Kali (काली पूजा 2026)

The table’s Diwali row is dated by the rule tithi at pradosh: the evening that has the Amavasya running in the hours after sunset is Lakshmi Puja. The Shakta tradition treats Kali’s worship as a rite of the deep night, and Bengali almanacs accordingly look for the Amavasya at nishita, the middle of the night. That is the same day-part this table already uses for Janmashtami, Maha Shivratri and Sharad Purnima.

The program that builds the table checks the nishita condition at one fixed instant, 23:58 Indian time on each civil day. That instant is the generator’s probe and nothing more; it is not a time for the puja. Run on the 2026 and 2027 tables, it returns the printed date of all three nishita-rule rows in both years, and that check is what this page relies on before applying the probe to the two Diwali nights below. This page does not print a nishita window or a muhurat for the puja, because none of the site’s committed calculations produces one.

2026: One Amavasya Holds the Evening and the Midnight

The 2026 Amavasya begins at 11:28 on 8 November 2026 and ends at 12:32 on 9 November 2026. At New Delhi the sunrise of 8 November still belongs to Krishna Chaturdashi, and the Amavasya takes over before noon. By sunset at 17:31, when the table’s pradosh begins, it has been current for hours, so the Lakshmi Puja test is met that evening.

The midnight test points to the same night. The probe on 8 November lands 12 hours 30 minutes after the Amavasya opened, with 12 hours 34 minutes of it still to come. The probes either side miss: the night before, Krishna Chaturdashi is still current, and by the night after, the tithi has moved on to Shukla Pratipada. For a Bengali household that kept Lakshmi Puja at the full moon a fortnight earlier, the night of 8 November is the Kali Puja night; for a household that keeps both rites, the evening lamps and the night worship share a single Amavasya. Sunrise on 9 November at New Delhi, 06:38, still falls inside it, which is why the daily panchang lists Amavasya as that day’s tithi.

2027: The Amavasya Opens After Dark on 28 October

The 2027 new moon is placed differently. The Amavasya opens at 20:48 on Thursday 28 October 2027, well after dusk, and closes at 19:06 on Friday 29 October 2027. On the evening of 28 October the pradosh span the table prints, 17:39-20:03, has closed 45 minutes before the Amavasya begins, so that evening is Narak Chaturdashi in the table. The next evening the Amavasya is still running at sunset (17:38), and the pradosh rule gives Lakshmi Puja to Friday 29 October 2027.

The midnight test reverses the order. The probe on 28 October falls 3 hours 10 minutes into the new Amavasya. The probe on 29 October comes 4 hours 52 minutes after it has ended, with Shukla Pratipada current. The only night of 2027 with the Amavasya at its middle is therefore the night of Thursday 28 October, and by the midnight reckoning that is Kali Puja night: the evening before Lakshmi Puja in the north Indian table. A Bengali calendar that shows Kali Puja on 28 October and Diwali on 29 October has not made a mistake; it is applying two rules to one new moon. The daily table agrees on the mornings: Krishna Chaturdashi at sunrise on 28 October, Amavasya at sunrise on 29 October.

Kolkata to Mumbai: The Same Nights in Every City

Kolkata lies east of the meridian on which Indian Standard Time is set, so the middle of its night comes earlier on the clock than the generator’s 23:58 probe, and Guwahati’s earlier still. That raises a fair question for a reader in Kolkata or Guwahati. The sunset and sunrise function behind the city panchang pages answers it:

In 2026 the Amavasya is already running at least 5 hours 8 minutes before sunset in every one of these cities and lasts at least 5 hours 50 minutes past the next sunrise, so it covers the whole night of 8 November wherever the night is measured from. In 2027 it opens 3 hours 47 minutes after Kolkata’s sunset on 28 October (at least 2 hours 41 minutes after sunset in every listed city), holds the middle of that night and the following sunrise, and is still current at sunset on 29 October, by 2 hours 5 minutes in Kolkata and at least 1 hour anywhere in the table. It then ends hours before the middle of the night of 29 October in every city. Moving east or west changes the clock readings in the table; it does not move either year’s night.

Shyama Puja in Bengal, Assam and Odisha (श्यामा पूजा)

Bengali usage also calls this new moon Dipanwita Amavasya, the Amavasya of lamps. Shyama, “the dark one”, is a name of Kali in Shakta usage. In the Devi Mahatmya, Kali appears in the battle with the asuras Chanda and Munda, and the text names her Chamunda after it.

Bengali household custom keeps Lakshmi Puja earlier, on Kojagari Purnima, the full moon of Ashwina that this site’s table lists as Sharad Purnima, which fell on Sunday 25 October in 2026 and comes on Thursday 14 October in 2027. For those households, then, the Diwali new moon is the night of Kali Puja rather than of Lakshmi Puja. In and around Kolkata, the Kalighat and Dakshineswar temples set the hours of the night’s worship by their own almanacs; this page gives the tithi and leaves the temple schedule to them.

Ashwina or Kartika on the Calendar

The festival table files this Amavasya as the last tithi of the dark half of Ashwina, which is the amanta naming, where a month closes at the new moon. A purnimanta almanac counts the same dark half as part of Kartika, so it may print “Kartik Amavasya” for the identical instants. The Kartik month 2026 page sets the two month spans side by side.

Kali Puja 2026 and 2027 in Brief

• 2026 Amavasya: 11:28 on 8 November 2026 to 12:32 on 9 November 2026
• 2026 night with the Amavasya at its middle: Sunday 8 November 2026, the same date as the table’s Lakshmi Puja
• 2027 Amavasya: 20:48 on 28 October 2027 to 19:06 on 29 October 2027
• 2027 night with the Amavasya at its middle: Thursday 28 October 2027; the table’s Lakshmi Puja is Friday 29 October 2027
• Sunset in Kolkata: 16:55 on 8 November 2026; 17:01 on 28 October 2027

The evening rite is worked through in Diwali 2026 puja muhurat and vidhi, the night before it in Narak Chaturdashi 2026, and next year’s computed row on Diwali 2027. The surrounding fasts are in the November 2026 vrat and tyohar list and the October 2027 list. For sunset and sunrise in your own town use the panchang tool, and the rest of the year’s observances are on the festivals hub. In Hindi: काली पूजा 2026 और 2027: आधी रात की अमावस्या का नियम.