Radha Ashtami 2027: Date, Sunrise and Midday Test

Radha Ashtami (राधा अष्टमी) falls on the eighth lunar day of the bright half of Bhadrapada, and Krishna devotion keeps it as the day Radha appeared. By the tithi current at sunrise, the 2027 date is Wednesday, 8 September 2027. Some almanacs, though, date this festival by a different question: on which day is the Ashtami current at midday? In 2027 that second question does not settle on one day as neatly as the first, and this page shows why, city by city.

Bhadrapada Shukla Ashtami: 11:28 on 7 September to 12:44 on 8 September

Neither end of this Ashtami appears in the site’s 2027 festival table, so both come from its tithi code. That code is checked at every build against the 86 festival rows that do print a start and end, and its worst disagreement with them is 1 min. On that working the Saptami gives way to the Ashtami at 11:28 on Tuesday 7 September, late in the morning, and the Ashtami hands over to the Navami at 12:44 on Wednesday 8 September, a little after the middle of the day. It runs 25 hours 16 min in all. The instants are the same everywhere in India; what differs from city to city is where sunrise and midday fall against them.

One Sunrise, Two Middays at New Delhi

For the midday reading, the page takes a single instant each day, halfway between that day’s sunrise and sunset. That instant is a test point. It is not a madhyahna window and not a time for any rite; almanacs that print a madhyahna span compute it for their own place, and no such span is given here.

• Tuesday 7 September (sunrise 06:01, sunset 18:36): Shukla Saptami at sunrise; at the midday test point, the Ashtami
• Wednesday 8 September (sunrise 06:02, sunset 18:35): Shukla Ashtami at sunrise; at the midday test point, the Ashtami
• Thursday 9 September (sunrise 06:02, sunset 18:33): Shukla Navami at sunrise; at the midday test point, no longer the Ashtami

Only one dawn belongs to the Ashtami: Wednesday’s, at 06:02, by which time the tithi is 18 hours 34 min old. The 7 September sunrise comes before it opens and the 9 September sunrise after it has closed, so there is neither a doubled nor a skipped sunrise to argue over. Midday is a different matter. On 7 September the Ashtami has been current for 50 min by the test point; on 8 September it still has 26 min to run. Both middays pass.

Which Convention Keeps Which Day

A calendar that dates the festival by the sunrise tithi has one candidate, Wednesday 8 September. A calendar that asks only whether the Ashtami is present at midday finds two, Tuesday 7 September and Wednesday 8 September, and has to settle the tie by its own rule for a tithi present at two middays. The 8 September day meets both tests at once, while 7 September meets only the midday one. This page does not choose between the rules for your almanac, and it would be wrong to call either day the only possible date. If your temple or family calendar gives 7 September, it is reading the midday rule one way; if it gives 8 September, it is reading it the other way or following the sunrise.

Thirteen Cities on Their Own Sunrise and Sunset

The same two tests, run on each city’s own sun with the solar function behind the city panchang pages. Each cell gives the tithi at sunrise, then the tithi at the midday test point. Agra is the closest city on the list to Mathura and the Braj villages.

The 8 September column is uniform: Ashtami at sunrise and at midday in every city. The 7 September column is not. Guwahati, the eastern end of the list, reaches the middle of its day 8 min before the Ashtami opens, so there the midday test, like the sunrise test, points only to 8 September. The other twelve cities see the Ashtami at their 7 September test point, though Kolkata only by 6 min. At the far end of the tithi, Ahmedabad’s 8 September test point comes 7 min before the close, the slimmest margin that day. Both margins are wider than the tithi code’s 1 min disagreement with the tables, but a city whose madhyahna is drawn as a span rather than a point can read them differently.

How Far After Janmashtami

The usual reckoning puts Radha Ashtami fifteen days after Janmashtami, counting from the Krishna Ashtami of the dark half to the Shukla Ashtami of the bright half that follows. The 2027 table dates Janmashtami to Tuesday 24 August 2027 by the tithi at nishita, midnight; the Krishna Ashtami opens at 20:25 that evening, and the following morning, 25 August, is the one it holds at sunrise. Counted from the Janmashtami date, Wednesday 8 September is fifteen days on; counted from the Krishna Ashtami sunrise it is fourteen. Calendars that observe Janmashtami on the sunrise day therefore show a gap one day shorter. In between, Ganesh Chaturthi falls on Saturday 4 September, four days before Radha Ashtami.

Where Radha Appears in the Texts

The Bhagavata Purana, which tells Krishna’s childhood in Braj at length, does not name Radha anywhere in its text. Its account of the rasa dance in the tenth book has one gopi whom Krishna leads away from the others, and later commentators in the Vaishnava schools read her as Radha. Her name and her pairing with Krishna come into full view in Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, the twelfth-century Sanskrit poem, and in the Brahmavaivarta Purana, which gives her a central place. The festival itself belongs to that later devotion.

Barsana, Vrindavan and a Fast Until Noon

Braj tradition names Barsana as Radha’s village, and the hilltop temple there dedicated to her is a centre of the day, as are the temples of Vrindavan. ISKCON’s Gaudiya Vaishnava calendar marks Radhashtami with a fast kept until noon, which is one reason the midday question matters to the households that follow it. The page reports these customs as their keepers describe them and makes no claim about what the fast does. For the order of worship, follow your own temple or family priest.

Radha Ashtami 2027 in Brief

• By sunrise tithi: Wednesday, 8 September 2027, in every city tested
• Days whose midday test point falls in the Ashtami: 7 September and 8 September in twelve of the thirteen cities; 8 September only in Guwahati
• Bhadrapada Shukla Ashtami (computed): 11:28 on 7 September to 12:44 on 8 September
• Sunrise and sunset on 8 September (New Delhi): 06:02 and 18:35
• Janmashtami 2027: Tuesday, 24 August 2027, fifteen days earlier

The rest of the lunar month is laid out on the Bhadrapada month 2027 page, and the month’s other observances are on the September 2027 vrat and tyohar list. For your own town’s sunrise and sunset, open the panchang tool; the festival hub indexes the observances in the site’s festival tables. In Hindi: राधा अष्टमी 2027 कब है: तारीख, सूर्योदय और दोपहर की कसौटी.