Utpanna Ekadashi 2026: Date, Parana and Its Month

The 2026 Utpanna Ekadashi fast is kept on Friday, 4 December 2026, and broken on Saturday 5 December. It comes ten days after Kartik Purnima, in the waning fortnight that two of India’s calendar systems file under two different months — the usual source of confusion about it, and the thing this page sets out to settle.

The Ekadashi of Ekadashi’s Birth (उत्पन्ना एकादशी)

Utpanna means “arisen” or “born”, and the name is the story. In the katha that the vrat books trace to the Bhavishyottara Purana, Vishnu, worn out by a long war with the demon Mura, withdraws into a cave to rest; Mura follows him there, and a goddess comes forth from Vishnu’s own body and slays the demon. Vishnu names her Ekadashi, for the eleventh tithi on which she appeared. Most Ekadashi kathas tell of someone keeping a vrat that already exists; this one tells where the vrat itself came from.

That is why north Indian vrat manuals single this day out as the place to start. A household or a person taking up the Ekadashi fast as a fortnightly practice, rather than keeping one or two of the famous ones, is advised in those manuals to begin with Utpanna and continue from there through the year. It is a custom about where a discipline begins, not a promise about what the discipline yields, and this page reports it as the former.

Margashirsha or Kartika? Both, Depending on Where Your Calendar Was Printed

Utpanna is the Krishna Ekadashi that comes after Kartik Purnima. The disagreement is only over which month that waning fortnight belongs to, and it is easiest to see on the actual instants of this year’s sky. Here are the boundaries, all of them DE421 values from the site’s tables, with the two Ekadashis placed between them:

• Full moon, 20:23 on 24 November: the end of Kartik Purnima. A purnimanta calendar starts Margashirsha here.
• Friday 4 December: Utpanna Ekadashi, the eleventh tithi of the waning half.
• New moon, 06:21 on 9 December: the end of the Amavasya. An amanta calendar ends Kartika and starts Margashirsha here.
• Sunday 20 December: Mokshada Ekadashi, Margashirsha Shukla Ekadashi in both reckonings.
• Full moon, 06:58 on 24 December: a purnimanta calendar ends Margashirsha here.

Read the list with a north Indian almanac in mind, where months run full moon to full moon, and Utpanna and Mokshada are both Margashirsha Ekadashis, the dark one first and the bright one sixteen days later. Read it with a Gujarati, Marathi or Kannada almanac, where months run new moon to new moon, and Utpanna is the last Ekadashi of Kartika, Mokshada the first of Margashirsha. The fast, the date and the katha do not change; only the label on the month does. A bright-fortnight Ekadashi such as Mokshada never has this problem, which the Mokshada Ekadashi and Geeta Jayanti 2026 page notes from its side. The site’s festival rules are amanta throughout, which is why they file Kartik Purnima under Kartika and Mokshada under Margashirsha.

An Ekadashi That Opens Near Midnight

The tithi runs from 23:04 on 3 December to 23:45 on 4 December, almost a mirror image at both ends: it begins in the last hours before one midnight and ends shortly before the next. The festival tables carry no Utpanna row, so these two instants come from the site’s own lunar code, which matches the generated DE421 tables to within 1 minute on the 86 tithi instants they both give.

At New Delhi sunrise on the 3rd (06:57) falls in Krishna Dashami, on the 4th (06:58) in Krishna Ekadashi, and on the 5th (06:59) in Krishna Dwadashi. The 4th is the only morning that wakes inside the Ekadashi, and the tithi then outlasts that day’s sunset by hours. Because it began the night before, it has been running long before dawn on the 4th, so the Vaishnava test about Dashami lingering into the pre-dawn hours is not engaged either.

The late start makes the eve easy. Households that take a single meal on Dashami and keep it before nightfall have the whole of the 3rd for it: the Ekadashi does not open until more than five hours after that evening’s sunset at 17:23.

A Whole Day of Dwadashi for the Parana (पारण)

Parana is taken on Dwadashi, after sunrise, and the manuals that time it ask that the Dwadashi not be allowed to slip away first. This year the question barely arises. The computed Dwadashi starts at 23:45 on 4 December, before the 5th has even begun, and runs on until 00:52 on 6 December, after it has ended. The whole of Saturday 5 December is Dwadashi, so a household that breaks the fast in the morning after sunrise, as the custom has it, is nowhere near the tithi’s end. Those who follow a printed parana time will find it in a panchang for their own town; for sunrise where you are, use the panchang calculator.

Bhairav Ashtami Before It, the Amavasya After

Three mornings before the vrat, on Tuesday 1 December, the daily table has Krishna Ashtami at sunrise. In the north this Krishna Ashtami is Kaal Bhairav Jayanti, the day kept for Bhairava at his shrines, Varanasi’s Kaal Bhairav temple among them. Because the whole Ashtami falls inside that one civil day, its sunrise, daytime and evening agree on the date; the reckoning is set out in Kaal Bhairav Jayanti 2026.

Four days after the Ekadashi comes the Amavasya, which holds the sunrise of Tuesday 8 December and ends at the new moon of 06:21 on 9 December, just before the next sunrise. It closes the fortnight, and with it the amanta Kartika. For what the full moon at the other end of the fortnight will look like, see Kartik Purnima 2026; for the Ekadashi before Utpanna, see Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2026.

Utpanna Ekadashi 2026 in Brief

• Fast: Friday 4 December 2026
• Ekadashi tithi (computed): 23:04 on 3 December to 23:45 on 4 December
• Parana day: Saturday 5 December 2026, Dwadashi from before the day begins until after it ends
• Month name: Margashirsha Krishna Ekadashi (purnimanta, north India); Kartika Krishna Ekadashi (amanta)
• New Delhi sunrise and sunset on 4 December: 06:58 and 17:23; nakshatra at sunrise Hasta

The rest of the year’s dates are collected in the 2026 festival calendar, and the computed festival pages carry the following years. In Hindi: उत्पन्ना एकादशी 2026: तारीख, पारण और मास का नाम.