Narak Chaturdashi 2026: Date, Tithi and the Dawn Bath

The Short Answer, and Why It Has Two Parts (नरक चतुर्दशी 2026 कब है)

The festival table this site computes places Narak Chaturdashi, the Choti Diwali of north Indian usage, on Saturday, 7 November 2026. That is the evening answer, and for the lamps, the Yama deepa and the household’s small Diwali it is the date to plan around.

There is a morning answer as well, and in 2026 it is a different date. The Chaturdashi tithi opens at 10:48 on 7 November 2026 and closes at 11:28 on 8 November 2026. So the one pre-dawn stretch that lies inside it is the early morning of 8 November 2026 — which is Sunday, Diwali itself. Anyone whose family keeps the abhyanga snan, the oil bath before sunrise, by the Chaturdashi running at dawn will be bathing on the morning of Lakshmi Puja, not on the morning of Choti Diwali. Neither date is a mistake. They answer two different questions, and the rest of this page shows which is which.

Which Moment Decides: Pradosh in the Table, Dawn for the Bath

A tithi is the time the Moon takes to pull twelve degrees further ahead of the Sun, and its edges fall wherever they fall in the clock day. A festival tied to a tithi therefore needs a second instruction: at what moment of the day the tithi is to be checked. For this row the generator’s rule is tithi at pradosh. Pradosh at New Delhi on 7 November 2026 runs 17:31-19:55, opening at sunset, and the Chaturdashi has been running since 10:48 that morning, so the test is met on 7 November. On the following evening it is not: the Chaturdashi has ended at 11:28, and the Amavasya that begins at that same instant is what holds pradosh on 8 November 2026. That is why Diwali, which the table fixes by the same pradosh rule, lands on 8 November 2026.

Now put the two sunrises beside the window. The daily panchang gives sunrise on 7 November 2026 at 06:37, with Krishna Trayodashi still prevailing; the Chaturdashi does not arrive for several more hours. Sunrise on 8 November 2026 is at 06:38, and the daily table names Krishna Chaturdashi at that sunrise, with the tithi running on until 11:28. A calendar that asks “where is the Chaturdashi at dawn?” gets 8 November; a calendar that asks “where is it at dusk?” gets 7 November. Many printed panchangs that follow the older digests key the abhyanga to the hours before sunrise, and a calendar of that kind can list the bath on 8 November beside a Choti Diwali on 7 November. Read both entries before deciding it has made an error.

For anyone keeping the bath on the dawn reckoning, the daily table’s Brahma window at New Delhi on 8 November 2026 is 05:02-06:38, the ninety-six minutes that end at sunrise, and every minute of it lies inside the Chaturdashi. The same window on 7 November 2026 is 05:01-06:37, and all of it falls in the Trayodashi. This page gives no narrower “snan muhurat” than that, because the table carries none, and a minute invented to look precise is worse than a window stated honestly. Sunrise moves with longitude, so if you are far from New Delhi, take the window from a local panchang; the tithi instants hold everywhere.

Ashwina or Kartika? The Month-Name Trap (मास का नाम)

The table files this festival as the fourteenth tithi of the krishna paksha of Ashwina. That is the amanta convention, in which a month ends at the new moon, and it is the reckoning used through Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and the Telugu states. North Indian calendars mostly run purnimanta months, ending at the full moon, and in that system the same dark fortnight already belongs to Kartika, so the identical tithi appears as Kartika krishna Chaturdashi. The two names refer to one lunar day. If a source and this page seem to disagree about the month, check which convention the source uses before assuming the dates differ; the instants 10:48 and 11:28 do not depend on the naming.

Dhanteras, Choti Diwali, Diwali: Three Dates in a Row

The three observances fall on three consecutive dates, and the tithis hand over neatly to one another. Dhanteras is Friday, 6 November 2026, on the Trayodashi that opens at 10:31 that day and runs to 10:48 on 7 November. The Chaturdashi takes over at that instant and holds the evening of Saturday, 7 November 2026. The Amavasya follows from 11:28 on Sunday, 8 November 2026, and that evening is Lakshmi Puja. All three rows carry the same pradosh rule, which is why each one is settled by the evening rather than by the sunrise.

After Diwali the run pauses for a day. The Amavasya still holds sunrise on 9 November 2026, so Govardhan Puja, which the table fixes by the Pratipada at sunrise, falls on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. The timings for the main night are worked through in Diwali 2026 puja muhurat and vidhi, and the evening before this one in Dhanteras 2026 shopping muhurat.

Narakasura and the Name of the Day (नरकासुर वध)

The name comes from Naraka, the asura king of Pragjyotisha. The Bhagavata Purana tells the episode in its tenth book: Krishna rides against the city with Satyabhama, Naraka falls, and the many thousands of women he had seized and held captive are released. The Bhagavata does not itself date the battle to a tithi; it is the festival tradition that attaches the story to this Chaturdashi, and some regional retellings, the Telugu among them, give the decisive part to Satyabhama rather than to Krishna. Families that keep the dawn bath often tell it alongside the story of the oil bath Krishna took on returning from the battle.

In Goa the story becomes public theatre: neighbourhoods build effigies of Narakasura through the preceding days and burn them in the small hours, before the bath. In Bengal the same Chaturdashi carries a different emphasis entirely. It is Bhoot Chaturdashi there, and households light fourteen lamps and cook fourteen leafy greens in honour of fourteen generations of ancestors — the lamp-lighting is shared, but the story behind it is not.

The Yama Deepa on the Evening (यम दीपदान)

The evening rite most north Indian families associate with Choti Diwali is a lamp for Yama. In the common household form, an earthen diya, often an old one, is lit after dark and set outside the door or beside the drain, facing south, the quarter assigned to Yama in the Puranic map of the directions. Some families make it a four-wicked lamp; some light it on Dhanteras evening instead, which is the other common placement. Because the custom belongs to the evening, it follows the table’s date: on 7 November 2026, pradosh begins at 17:31, inside the Chaturdashi, and runs to 19:55.

The rest of the evening is a rehearsal for the next night: the house cleaned, and a few lamps at the threshold and in the corners rather than the full array. Families who use the day for Hanuman or Kali worship keep their own timing for it, and this page does not try to supply one.

Roop Chaudas, Kali Chaudas and the Southern Deepavali

The day travels under several names. In Rajasthan it is widely called Roop Chaudas, from roop, form or appearance, and the custom there is an ubtan of gram flour and turmeric worked in before the bath. In Gujarat the name is Kali Chaudas, and the observance leans towards Kali and Hanuman, with lamps and offerings at night. North Indian usage settles on Choti Diwali, the small Diwali before the large one, which says more about its place in the sequence than about what is done.

In Tamil Nadu and much of the south, the order is inverted. There the Naraka Chaturdashi bath is the heart of Deepavali, taken in the dark with oil on the head; in Tamil households the bath is called Ganga snanam, and the morning greeting asks whether you have had yours. New clothes and fireworks follow the bath. This is where the dawn reckoning matters most. A calendar that fixes the bath by the Chaturdashi before sunrise points to 8 November 2026, so do not be surprised to see a southern Deepavali printed on the same date as the northern Diwali; check your own regional panchang for the date your community uses.

The Figures in One Place

• Narak Chaturdashi (table, pradosh rule): Saturday, 7 November 2026
• Chaturdashi tithi: 10:48 on 7 November 2026 to 11:28 on 8 November 2026
• Tithi at sunrise, 7 November 2026: Krishna Trayodashi; at sunrise, 8 November 2026: Krishna Chaturdashi
• Brahma window (New Delhi): 05:01-06:37 on 7 November (Trayodashi); 05:02-06:38 on 8 November (Chaturdashi)
• Sunrise and sunset, 7 November 2026 (New Delhi): 06:37 and 17:31
• Pradosh, 7 November 2026 (New Delhi): 17:31-19:55
• Rahu Kaal, 7 November 2026 (New Delhi): 09:21-10:42
• Nakshatra at sunrise: Chitra on 7 November, Swati on 8 November; neither is a condition of the festival
• Dhanteras / Diwali / Govardhan Puja: 6 November 2026 / 8 November 2026 / 10 November 2026

The same quantities for any other date are in the daily panchang; the full year of festival rows is in the 2026 festival calendar and the festivals hub; and next year’s computed window is on Narak Chaturdashi 2027: in 2027 the Chaturdashi holds both the sunrise and the pradosh of 28 October 2027, so the morning and evening answers fall on one date. In Hindi: नरक चतुर्दशी 2026 कब है: तिथि और भोर का स्नान.