Shukla and Krishna Paksha Dates 2026-2028: Start and End

A paksha is half of a lunar month. The Shukla paksha, the bright half, runs from the new moon to the full moon while the Moon waxes; the Krishna paksha, the dark half, runs from the full moon back to the new moon. On 28 October 2026 the Krishna paksha is running. It began at the full moon, at 09:41 on 26 October 2026, and it ends at the new moon, at 12:32 on 9 November 2026, the day after the Diwali night of 8 November 2026.

The Shukla paksha that follows runs to 20:23 on 24 November 2026: Bhai Dooj on 11 November 2026 falls inside it, and the day it closes is Kartik Purnima. Below are the start and end of every paksha to the end of 2028, read off the site’s computed new and full moons, with the month each half belongs to in both of India’s lunar calendars.

Fifteen Tithis to Each Half

Each paksha holds fifteen tithis, the lunar days in which the Moon gains twelve degrees on the Sun. The Shukla paksha counts Pratipada, Dwitiya and so on to Chaturdashi, and its fifteenth tithi is Purnima. The Krishna paksha counts the same names again and ends with Amavasya. So “Shukla Ekadashi” and “Krishna Ekadashi” are the two Ekadashis of one month, a fortnight apart.

The instant a paksha begins is the same everywhere in India, because a tithi is reckoned from the Sun and Moon as seen from the centre of the Earth, not from any one city. The instants in this page are in IST. What does change from city to city is the sunrise, and with it the first civil day on which a printed panchang shows the new paksha. The site’s tithi table also covers 29 of the boundaries below, and each of them is the exact end of a Purnima or an Amavasya in it.

Paksha Dates, October 2026 to December 2027

The last column counts the sunrises at New Delhi that fall inside each paksha: the number of days a Delhi panchang files under it.

Why a Panchang Shows 14, 15 or 16 Days

A panchang names each day by the tithi current at its sunrise, so the days it files under a paksha are the sunrises the paksha contains. In this window that is 14, 15 or 16. Of the 29 pakshas in the table, 15 hold fifteen sunrises, 11 hold fourteen and 3 hold sixteen. The sixteen-day ones, by their amanta names, are Magha Krishna from 21 February 2027, Chaitra Krishna from 21 April 2027 and Kartika Shukla from 29 October 2027.

The count always comes back to the same fifteen tithis. A paksha with fourteen sunrises has a tithi that begins after one sunrise and ends before the next, a kshaya tithi that no day of the panchang is named for. A paksha with sixteen has a tithi that holds two sunrises, a vriddhi tithi that names two days running. A count of fifteen does not mean both are absent: 10 of the 15 fifteen-day pakshas lose one tithi and repeat another. The current Krishna paksha is a fourteen-day one: it began after sunrise on 26 October 2026, so 27 October 2026 is the first day the panchang files under it. The kshaya and vriddhi tithi list names each of those tithis and its dates.

How Long a Paksha Lasts

Averaged over this window a paksha lasts 14 days 18 hours, half of the lunar month. Individual pakshas stray a long way from that. The shortest here is the Jyeshtha Shukla that begins on 24 May 2028, at 13 days 21 hours 52 minutes, and the longest is the Pausha Shukla that begins on 16 December 2028, at 15 days 14 hours 42 minutes: about 41 hours apart. 5 pakshas run under fourteen days and 8 over fifteen and a half.

The reason is the Moon’s orbit, which is an ellipse. The Moon moves fastest near the point closest to the Earth and slowest near the farthest, so a paksha spent mostly near the close point gains its 180 degrees on the Sun quickly and one near the far point slowly. The two halves of one month are therefore seldom alike: in the 26 amanta months whose two halves both fall in this window, the Shukla half is the longer in 12 and the Krishna half in the other 14. The lunar month length page follows the same effect over whole months.

One Paksha, Two Month Names

The two lunar calendars agree on every Shukla paksha and disagree on every Krishna one. An amanta almanac, the reckoning of the Deccan and western India, ends its month at the new moon, so a month opens with its bright half and closes with its dark half. A purnimanta almanac, the north Indian reckoning, ends the month at the full moon, so its dark half opens the next month. The Krishna paksha running now is Ashwina Krishna in an amanta panchang and Kartika Krishna in a purnimanta one, and the Amavasya it ends with is printed under either name. The Kartik month 2026 page sets the two spans of that month side by side.

Months here are named by the sidereal sign the Sun holds at the new moon that opens them, and no adhika month falls between October 2026 and the end of 2028, so no month name is doubled. A fast kept on a Krishna tithi, such as Janmashtami or Karva Chauth, therefore sits under a different month name in a Pune and a Varanasi almanac, though the tithi is the same.

Paksha Dates in 2028

The site’s daily panchang ends with 2027, so the 2028 rows give the instants and lengths without a sunrise count.

In Brief

• Running on 28 October 2026: Krishna paksha, 09:41 on 26 October 2026 to 12:32 on 9 November 2026
• Its month: Ashwina (amanta) or Kartika (purnimanta)
• Next Shukla paksha: 12:32 on 9 November 2026 to 20:23 on 24 November 2026, closing on Kartik Purnima
• Average length: 14 days 18 hours; range 13 days 21 hours to 15 days 14 hours
• Days in the panchang: 14, 15 or 16, by the sunrises inside the paksha

The fasts kept on the two ends of each paksha are dated on the Purnima 2027 list and the Amavasya 2027 list, and the year’s festivals on the festival calendar. How a full date is written with month, paksha and tithi is on the Vikram Samvat page. In Hindi: शुक्ल पक्ष और कृष्ण पक्ष 2026-2028: कब से कब तक.