Rama Ekadashi 2027: 25 or 26 October, and the Parana

Rama Ekadashi has two dates in 2027, and they come from two different questions asked of the same morning. Almanacs that fix an Ekadashi by the tithi current at sunrise keep it on Monday, 25 October 2027. Vaishnava calendars that also inspect the pre-dawn hour find Dashami still running there, and they keep it on Tuesday, 26 October 2027. Neither date is a mistake; which one a household keeps depends on the calendar it follows. The first of the two is four days before Diwali.

A Tithi That Opens Just Before Dawn (रमा एकादशी)

The dark-fortnight Ekadashi runs from 05:41 on Monday 25 October to 03:23 on Tuesday 26 October. These instants are not in the 2027 festival tables, which carry no Rama Ekadashi row. They come from the site’s own lunar code, which has been checked against the 86 tithi instants that the DE421 tables do record and stays within 1 minute of every one.

In New Delhi the sun rises at 06:27 on 25 October, so the Ekadashi is only 46 minutes old when the day begins. That is enough for the sunrise rule: the daily table prints Krishna Ekadashi for that morning, while the mornings on either side show Krishna Navami on 24 October and Krishna Dwadashi on 26 October. One sunrise, one candidate, and the Smarta date is Monday.

The Dashami before it never meets a New Delhi sunrise. It begins at 07:54 on Sunday 24 October, after that day’s 06:27 sunrise, and is over before the next one. The table names 24 October for Krishna Navami, even though most of that day’s daylight is Dashami.

Why Vaishnava Calendars Move to Tuesday

The Hari Bhakti Vilasa, which Vaishnava calendars follow on this point, looks not at sunrise but at arunodaya, the stretch of about 96 minutes before it. An Ekadashi that Dashami still touches during that stretch is, in its terms, Dashami-viddha, and those calendars do not fast on it; they take the following day instead. On 25 October in New Delhi, arunodaya opens at about an hour and a half before 06:27, and the Ekadashi does not arrive until 50 minutes into that window. So the test fails, and the Vaishnava fast goes to Tuesday 26 October, a morning that dawns on Krishna Dwadashi.

This is not a near miss. The Ekadashi 2027 list treats this as the year’s clear case of a pre-dawn hour still held by Dashami; run again here for every city in the site’s panchang, the test comes out the same way everywhere, and the smallest margin anywhere is 35 minutes.

The Sunrise Rule City by City: 27 Clear, 11 Too Close

The sunrise rule is less uniform than the arunodaya one, because the Ekadashi opens so near dawn that a city’s own sunrise can land on either side of it. Using the site’s solar code for 25 October:

• 27 cities, New Delhi among them, see the sun rise at least 30 minutes after the Ekadashi begins. For them the sunrise rule gives Monday with room to spare.
• Nine cities see sunrise inside the Ekadashi but by less than 30 minutes: Bhubaneswar (4 minutes), Ranchi (9 minutes), Patna (12 minutes), Visakhapatnam (12 minutes), Chennai (19 minutes), Varanasi (20 minutes), Raipur (21 minutes), Madurai (25 minutes) and Thiruvananthapuram (29 minutes). On these figures the morning is Ekadashi, but the margin is small enough that this page does not rule on it; a local almanac computed for the city is the one to follow.
• Guwahati and Kolkata, the two easternmost cities on the list, see the sun rise before the Ekadashi begins, by 14 minutes and 4 minutes respectively. On these figures no sunrise there falls in the Ekadashi at all, which would make it kshaya, a tithi that misses every sunrise, and the day would have to be chosen by a further rule. The margins are under 30 minutes, so this page reports them as close and decides nothing by them.

Wherever the sunrise rule lands, the Vaishnava answer does not change: in every city, Dashami holds arunodaya on 25 October, and 26 October dawns on Dwadashi. Local sunrise for any town is on the panchang calculator.

Breaking the Monday Fast on Tuesday (पारण)

For those fasting on 25 October, the parana belongs to Tuesday 26 October 2027. The vrat manuals ask for it on Dwadashi, after sunrise, and the Ekadashi has already ended at 03:23 that morning, so the 06:28 sunrise in New Delhi is Dwadashi. The deadline is generous this time: the Dwadashi lasts until 01:04 on Wednesday 27 October, more than seven hours past the Tuesday sunset, so the whole of that day’s daylight is Dwadashi. The same end instant shows up independently in the festival table, as the start of the Trayodashi on which Dhanteras falls, and the two agree to within the tolerance given above.

What holds the parana back is the other end. Panchangs that print a parana window keep the fast through Hari Vasara, the first quarter of the Dwadashi. Because this Dwadashi begins in the small hours of Tuesday, its first quarter is not over at dawn: in New Delhi it runs more than two hours past sunrise, and in every city on the list it is still running at sunrise by well over an hour. A parana that respects it therefore comes in the later morning, not at first light. This page gives no clock time for the end of Hari Vasara; panchangs that print one are the place to read it.

If You Keep the Tuesday Fast

A fast moved to Tuesday 26 October is kept on a Dwadashi day, and its own closing meal falls on Wednesday 27 October. By then the Dwadashi has ended, at 01:04 in the night, so 27 October, which is Dhanteras, dawns on Krishna Trayodashi in every city on the list. The calendars that move the fast set their own parana for that morning, city by city, and this page leaves the timing to them rather than print one it has not derived.

Ashwina or Kartika: One Fortnight, Two Names

The waning fortnight that holds this Ekadashi begins at the full moon of 19:17 on Friday 15 October, which is Sharad Purnima, filed in the site’s festival rules as the Purnima of Ashwina. It ends at the new moon of 19:06 on Friday 29 October, the Amavasya of Diwali. Calendars that count months from new moon to new moon (amanta) are still in Ashwina for the whole stretch, which is why the same rules list Dhanteras and Diwali as Ashwina dark-fortnight days and Govardhan Puja, the day after that new moon, as the first of Kartika; for them this is the Ashwina Krishna Ekadashi. Calendars that count from full moon to full moon (purnimanta), the reckoning of most north Indian almanacs, began Kartika with the waning fortnight after Sharad Purnima, and call it the Kartika Krishna Ekadashi. The tithi and the dates above are the same in both.

Countdown to Lakshmi Puja

This year the parana day carries no festival row of its own. Dhanteras arrives a day later, and Diwali four days after the Smarta fast. Sunrise tithis from the daily table, with the festival rows beside them:

• Monday 25 October: Krishna Ekadashi at sunrise; Rama Ekadashi by the sunrise rule
• Tuesday 26 October: Krishna Dwadashi at sunrise; parana for the sunrise-rule fast, and the Vaishnava fast day
• Wednesday 27 October: Krishna Trayodashi at sunrise; Dhanteras
• Thursday 28 October: Krishna Chaturdashi at sunrise; Narak Chaturdashi / Choti Diwali
• Friday 29 October: Amavasya at sunrise; Diwali / Lakshmi Puja

Dhanteras and Lakshmi Puja are both placed by the tithi current in the evening rather than at sunrise, and the festival pages for Dhanteras 2027, Narak Chaturdashi 2027 and Diwali 2027 work those evenings out one at a time.

Muchukunda’s Kingdom: The Padma Purana Katha

The story read on Rama Ekadashi comes, in the vrat-katha books, from the Padma Purana. It is set in the realm of King Muchukunda, where the Ekadashi fast was the king’s order for all his subjects. His daughter Chandrabhaga is married to Shobhana, and when Shobhana comes to stay at her father’s court on this Ekadashi he has to keep the fast too, though in the Purana’s telling he is too frail for it. The rest of the katha follows the couple from that day on. Retellings vary in their details, so this page gives only the people and the situation they start from, reports the story as the Purana’s, and makes no claim about what keeping the fast does for anyone.

At a Glance

• Sunrise-rule fast: Monday 25 October 2027 (sunrise 06:27, sunset 17:42, New Delhi; nakshatra at sunrise Magha)
• Vaishnava fast (Dashami at arunodaya): Tuesday 26 October 2027
• Ekadashi (computed): 05:41 on Monday 25 October to 03:23 on Tuesday 26 October
• Dwadashi (computed): 03:23 on Tuesday 26 October to 01:04 on Wednesday 27 October
• Parana for the Monday fast: Tuesday 26 October, after Hari Vasara, which outlasts the 06:28 sunrise by more than two hours in New Delhi
• Too close to call by sunrise: Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Patna, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Varanasi, Raipur, Madurai, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Kolkata

The year’s other Ekadashis, including its kshaya and vriddhi cases, are in the Ekadashi 2027 list, and the rules used on this page (arunodaya, Hari Vasara, the Dwadashi parana) are set out in Ekadashi vrat niyam. The month around it is in the October 2027 vrat and tyohar list; last year’s fast has its own Rama Ekadashi 2026 page. For the rest of the year, see the 2027 festival calendar and the festival pages.