May 2027 Festival List: Akshaya Tritiya to Buddha Purnima

Most of May 2027 is Vaishakha, whichever way an almanac counts its months. The bright fortnight of Vaishakha carries the three festival rows the site’s 2027 table places in May: Akshaya Tritiya on Saturday 8 May, Narasimha Jayanti on Tuesday 18 May and Buddha Purnima on Thursday 20 May. Around them sit Varuthini and Mohini Ekadashi, a Pradosh evening the rule cannot settle and one it can, a Thursday Amavasya, two Panchak passages and a Sankashti whose moonrise test is met on two evenings. The table lists 13 observances, and the sections after it explain the dates that need explaining.

May 2027 Festival and Vrat Dates (व्रत त्योहार)

The table is computed for New Delhi from the site’s panchang data, built on NASA JPL’s DE421 ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsa. Tithi start and end instants are the same everywhere in India; what changes by place is the sunrise, sunset or moonrise a rule is tested against, and so a row can move by a day in a distant city. The tithi calculator behind these spans matches 86 rows of the published tables within 1 minute. For local times, use the panchang tool.

Chaitra, Vaishakha, Jyeshtha: Which Month Is It?

An amanta almanac turns the month at each new moon, and a purnimanta almanac, the common reckoning in north India, turns it at each full moon. For the purnimanta count, Vaishakha opened with the full moon of 21 April, so May begins inside its dark fortnight, while the amanta count is still finishing Chaitra. The new moon at 16:28 on Thursday 6 May closes amanta Chaitra and starts amanta Vaishakha. From then until the full moon at 16:29 on Thursday 20 May, roughly 14 days, the two systems use the same name.

That full moon ends purnimanta Vaishakha and starts purnimanta Jyeshtha, while amanta almanacs stay in Vaishakha until the new moon of 5 June. So the days at either end of May carry two month names. Varuthini Ekadashi and the Amavasya are Chaitra rows in an amanta calendar and Vaishakha rows in a purnimanta one; the Sankashti and Kalashtami after Buddha Purnima are Vaishakha in the first and Jyeshtha in the second. The Vaishakh month 2027 page gives both start and end dates.

The First Week: Varuthini, a Split Pradosh and the Amavasya

Varuthini Ekadashi is Sunday 2 May; its Krishna Ekadashi runs from 18:54 on 1 May to 19:52 on 2 May and holds a single sunrise. The Trayodashi that follows gives no clean Pradosh day. It begins at 20:04 on Monday 3 May, after sunset, and ends at 19:31 on Tuesday 4 May, also after sunset, so it covers 77 minutes of the first evening’s pradosh window and 34 of the second, and fills neither. The table names both evenings and does not choose; the Pradosh Vrat 2027 list works through this split, including how the two shares change in other cities.

The Krishna Chaturdashi takes over at 19:31 on 4 May and is current at that midnight, which makes Tuesday the Masik Shivratri. All three of these rows fall inside a Panchak that opened at 09:53 on 30 April and closes at 03:14 on Wednesday 5 May. The Amavasya follows on Thursday 6 May, the new moon arriving at 16:28 that afternoon. Mercury moves into Taurus at 12:34 the same day, a few hours before the new moon.

Akshaya Tritiya and Vinayaka Chaturthi

The festival table puts Akshaya Tritiya on Saturday 8 May, and the reason is the moment it tests. The Shukla Tritiya begins at 11:43 that morning, after sunrise, and ends at 09:03 on 9 May. A sunrise reading would point to 9 May, whose dawn is still in the Tritiya, but the row’s rule is the tithi at madhyahna, and only the 8 May midday has it. The Akshaya Tritiya page goes through that reading at length, along with the customs attached to the day; this list gives the date and nothing more.

The Shukla Chaturthi begins the moment the Tritiya ends, at 09:03 on Sunday 9 May, and holds that day’s madhyahna, so Vinayaka Chaturthi comes on the day after Akshaya Tritiya. Venus moves into Aries at 08:45 on 10 May.

Pushya, Durgashtami and the Sun’s Move into Taurus

The Moon is in Pushya from 16:25 on Tuesday 11 May until 14:55 on Wednesday 12 May. Only a Wednesday sunrise falls in that passage, and no part of it touches a Thursday or a Sunday, so May has neither a Guru Pushya nor a Ravi Pushya; the Guru Pushya and Ravi Pushya 2027 page has the year’s list. Masik Durgashtami is the next day, Thursday 13 May.

The Sun crosses into sidereal Taurus at 12:14 on Saturday 15 May. That is the instant of the ingress; the site does not print a separate Sankranti observance day for it. May contains no Kharmas boundary and no planetary station.

Mohini Ekadashi to Buddha Purnima

The Shukla Ekadashi opens at 18:17 on 15 May, a few hours after the Sun’s ingress, and is current at the next sunrise, so Mohini Ekadashi is Sunday 16 May. Like Varuthini it holds exactly one sunrise; neither of May’s Ekadashis is a vriddhi or a kshaya. The next Ekadashi, Apara, opens on 31 May but holds the sunrise of 1 June, so it belongs to the June list. The Som Pradosh Vrat is Monday 17 May, its Trayodashi covering the whole pradosh window that evening.

Narasimha Jayanti is Tuesday 18 May. Its rule asks for the Shukla Chaturdashi across the whole of sayahna, which the site’s festival generator counts as the last fifth of daylight. The Chaturdashi begins at 16:04, 19 minutes before New Delhi’s sayahna starts at 16:23, and it ends at 16:03 the next afternoon, before the 19 May sayahna. That margin is under half an hour, so an almanac for a city whose evening begins earlier by the clock may read the day differently. Vaishnava households keep it as the appearance day of Narasimha, the man-lion avatara of Vishnu.

The Purnima starts at 16:03 on Wednesday 19 May, the instant the Chaturdashi ends, and runs until the full moon at 16:29 on Thursday 20 May. The 2027 festival table has no rule field on its Buddha Purnima row, and the site’s festival rules take that to mean the sunrise rule, so the date is 20 May, the morning the Purnima holds. The same day is the Vaishakha Purnima, and the table lists it once. The Purnima also holds the Wednesday sunset, which is why calendars that keep a Purnima fast by the evening can print 19 May; the Purnima 2027 list gives both readings. Buddhist communities in other countries set the observance by their own calendars, and their dates can differ from this one.

After the Full Moon: Sankashti and Kalashtami

Only two rows follow Buddha Purnima. The Krishna Chaturthi runs from 20:42 on 23 May to 22:59 on 24 May, and New Delhi’s moonrise falls inside it on both the Sunday and the Monday evenings, at 21:58 and 22:41. The table shows 23 May with a note and does not rule between them; the Sankashti Chaturthi 2027 list discusses this May case. Mercury enters Gemini at 18:28 on 23 May.

The month’s second Panchak opens at 17:49 on Thursday 27 May and continues into June, ending at 12:49 on 1 June. Kalashtami on Friday 28 May falls inside it, the Krishna Ashtami holding that night’s midnight.

Related Pages

The months on either side are the April 2027 and June 2027 vrat and festival lists. The 2027 festival calendar and the festivals hub cover the whole year, and the May 2027 panchang shows each day’s tithi and nakshatra. For single observances across the year, see the Ekadashi 2027, Amavasya 2027 and Panchak 2027 lists; planetary sign changes are on the Sun transit and Mercury transit 2027 pages.