Margashirsha Month 2026: Start, End and Guruvar Dates

Two Calendars, Two Margashirshas (मार्गशीर्ष मास)

Ask when Margashirsha 2026 begins and the honest reply is a question back: which calendar? North India counts a lunar month from full moon to full moon, the purnimanta reckoning, and calls this one Agahan in Hindi. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana count from new moon to new moon, the amanta reckoning. The two months share a name and half their length, and are otherwise a fortnight apart. Both are worked out below from the DE421 new and full moons in the site’s lunation table, with sunrises and sunrise tithis from the New Delhi daily panchang.

Two rows need a word. The Kartika full moon falls in the evening, at 20:23, so the first morning of north Indian Margashirsha is the next one, 25 November; the same instant closes the Kartik Purnima tithi in the festival table. At the other end, the purnimanta month’s last sunrise is a Chaturdashi, not a Purnima. The closing full moon comes at 06:58, 12 minutes before the New Delhi sunrise of 24 December, and the Purnima opens only after the previous sunrise, so it never holds a morning there; the Datta Jayanti page follows that through city by city.

Each month still contains thirty tithis. They do not map one to one onto sunrises: in the purnimanta month Shukla Pratipada holds two sunrises while Krishna Chaturthi and Purnima hold none, and in the amanta month the doubled tithi is Shukla Pratipada and the lost one Purnima. That is the whole reason for 29 civil days in one and 30 in the other.

The Fortnight Both Calendars Agree On

From the new moon of 9 December 2026 to the full moon of 24 December 2026 runs the bright half, and in both reckonings it is Margashirsha Shukla Paksha. Any shukla-paksha observance of the month, from Vivah Panchami to Mokshada Ekadashi and Geeta Jayanti, carries the same month name in a Varanasi calendar and a Pune one. That fortnight covers 15 sunrises at New Delhi, Wednesday 9 December to Wednesday 23 December.

The dark halves are where the names part. The fortnight from 25 November to 8 December is Margashirsha Krishna Paksha in the north and Kartika Krishna Paksha in the amanta calendars, which close Kartika only at the new moon. The fortnight from 24 December to 7 January 2027 is Margashirsha Krishna Paksha in the amanta calendars, while the north has already moved on to Pausha. A dark-fortnight date therefore needs both names: the Amavasya of 8 December is Margashirsha Amavasya in the north and Kartika Amavasya in the west and south, and the Amavasya of 7 January 2027 is Margashirsha Amavasya in the amanta calendars and Pausha Amavasya in the purnimanta ones.

Margashirsha Guruvar in 2026 (मार्गशीर्ष गुरुवार)

In Maharashtrian households the Thursdays of Margashirsha are kept as the Mahalakshmi vrat, Margashirsha Guruvar, with puja to Mahalakshmi and a reading of the Mahalakshmi vrat katha on each of them. Maharashtra reckons the month amanta, so the Thursdays that count are those from the new moon of 9 December to the new moon of 8 January 2027. This Margashirsha there are five:

1. Thursday 10 December 2026 — Shukla Pratipada at sunrise (07:02, New Delhi)
2. Thursday 17 December 2026 — Shukla Ashtami at sunrise (07:07, New Delhi)
3. Thursday 24 December 2026 — Krishna Pratipada at sunrise (07:10, New Delhi)
4. Thursday 31 December 2026 — Krishna Ashtami at sunrise (07:13, New Delhi)
5. Thursday 7 January 2027 — Amavasya at sunrise (07:14, New Delhi)

The first of them repeats a tithi. The Shukla Pratipada begins at the new moon, a little before sunrise on 9 December, and runs on until 08:46 on 10 December, so it holds both of those sunrises and the first Thursday is a second Pratipada morning. That end-time is not in a festival row; it comes from the site’s lunar code, which agrees with the generated tables to within 1 minute across the 86 tithi instants both of them carry. The third Thursday, 24 December, is the morning the full moon misses at New Delhi by minutes, which is why it prints Krishna Pratipada.

The last Thursday, 7 January 2027, has Amavasya at sunrise. The new moon that ends the month comes in the small hours of the following day, so the whole of that Thursday is still amanta Margashirsha. In Maharashtrian household custom the series is closed with an udyapan on the last Thursday of the month; how a family keeps it, and whether it keeps all the Thursdays at all, is its own practice, and this page does not prescribe one. For the weekly Thursday fast more generally, see Thursday fasting.

Observances Inside the Month

Two of these come from the festival table with their own rows; the rest are dated here by the plain rule of the tithi current at sunrise at New Delhi, and each has its own page with the detail. The last column says which reckoning places the day in Margashirsha.

The first three are dark-fortnight days, so only the north files them under Margashirsha; an amanta calendar prints the same dates under Kartika, and Kaal Bhairav Jayanti in particular appears there as a Kartika Krishna Ashtami. Champa Shashti, the Khandoba festival of Maharashtra and north Karnataka, sits in the shared bright half. Datta Jayanti is an evening observance: the Purnima opens on the morning of 23 December after sunrise and is current at dusk that day, which is when the Datta tradition keeps it, so it is not dated by any sunrise. Vivah Panchami and Mokshada are Margashirsha shukla rows in the site’s festival rules, which is why their month name never changes.

Where the Dhanu Kharmas Begins (खरमास)

The table’s Dhanu Kharmas opens on Wednesday 16 December 2026, inside the shared fortnight, and lasts to 14 January 2027. For the north that covers only the last 8 sunrises of Margashirsha; for the amanta calendars it covers 23 sunrises, everything from that date to the month’s end, and runs on past it into Pausha. Vivah Panchami on 14 December falls just before the line, Mokshada and Datta Jayanti after it. The north Indian custom that keeps Kharmas holds weddings and other samskaras back over that stretch while the month’s vrats go ahead; the Kharmas dates page has the window day by day.

Summary

• Purnimanta Margashirsha: 25 November 2026 to 23 December 2026 by sunrise, ending at the 06:58 full moon on 24 December
• Amanta Margashirsha: 9 December 2026 to 7 January 2027 by sunrise, ending at the 01:54 new moon on 8 January
• Shared shukla paksha: new moon on 9 December to full moon on 24 December; sunrises 9 December to 23 December
• Margashirsha Guruvar: 10 December, 17 December, 24 December, 31 December and 7 January
• Dhanu Kharmas: from 16 December 2026

Sunrise in your own city can differ from New Delhi’s by most of an hour; check the panchang calculator for yours. The year’s other dates are in the festival calendar and on the festival pages. In Hindi: मार्गशीर्ष मास 2026: आरंभ, अंत और गुरुवार की तारीखें.