Vivah Panchami 2026: Date, Tithi and Janakpur

The Date (विवाह पंचमी 2026 कब है)

Vivah Panchami 2026 falls on Monday, 14 December 2026. The day is the fifth lunar day of the bright fortnight of Margashirsha, and the tradition that keeps it treats that tithi as the anniversary of the wedding of Rama and Sita. In Hindi-speaking households the month goes by its everyday name, Agahan or Aghan; panchangs print the Sanskrit Margashirsha. Both name the same lunar month, and because the festival sits in the bright fortnight the amanta and purnimanta reckonings agree on that name; the two systems differ only over which month a dark fortnight belongs to.

The Panchami tithi opens at 16:48 on Sunday, 13 December 2026, and closes at 19:16 on 14 December 2026. The whole of the festival day’s daylight therefore lies inside it, and so does the start of that evening. Every clock figure on this page is computed for New Delhi from the JPL DE421 ephemeris; the tithi instants hold everywhere, while sunrise and sunset shift with your longitude.

Why the 14th and Not the 13th: Two Sunrises Compared

A tithi rarely begins at dawn, so a calendar has to say which moment of the day it tests. For Vivah Panchami the generator behind this site’s festival table tests the tithi at sunrise. Sunrise is the generator’s default, so the generated row does not print it at all — rows decided at madhyahna or at pradosh carry a rule field, and this one carries none.

Apply it to the two candidate days. At sunrise on 13 December 2026 (07:04 at New Delhi) the running tithi is still Shukla Chaturthi; the Panchami does not arrive until 16:48 that afternoon, 9 hours 44 minutes later. At sunrise on 14 December 2026 (07:05) the tithi is Shukla Panchami, and it has 12 hours 11 minutes still to run. Only the 14th begins its day on the Panchami, so the 14th is the festival.

Those margins are wide, and that is what makes the date safe across regions. Sunrise at Janakpur, Darbhanga or Ayodhya differs from sunrise at New Delhi by well under two hours, and neither margin is anywhere near that small, so no sunrise in north India or the Nepal Terai flips the answer. A Mithila panchang reckoned for its own town should therefore show the same day. Where a printed panchang still disagrees, the likelier cause is method rather than place: almanacs that compute tithis by an older siddhantic procedure can put the instants hours away from an ephemeris-based table like this one. If yours names a different day, follow the panchang your family and temple use.

One more figure is useful for evening worship. The Panchami outlasts sunset at 17:25 and closes at 19:16, partway through pradosh kaal (17:25-19:49). An aarti or a recitation that the household wants to keep on the tithi should be finished by 19:16; after that the Shashthi has begun. The daily panchang shows the same quantities for any date, and how to read a panchang explains the five limbs.

Two Days Before Kharmas (खरमास)

What makes this year’s date unusual is its neighbour. The Sun crosses into sidereal Sagittarius at 10:20 on 16 December 2026, and the site’s Kharmas table opens its December period that same day, two days after Vivah Panchami. Kharmas follows the Sun rather than the Moon: it lasts as long as the Sun stays in Sagittarius, which carries it into the new year.

North Indian muhurat practice does not fix weddings, griha pravesh or other samskaras while Kharmas lasts. That puts Vivah Panchami at the very end of the year’s wedding season, and in this site’s festival table it is the last festival of 2026 before Kharmas begins. The next entry, Mokshada Ekadashi & Geeta Jayanti on Sunday, 20 December 2026, already falls inside it. If you are planning a wedding around these weeks, the open and closed periods are set out in wedding dates for 2026 and 2027. This page names no muhurat of its own.

The Wedding in the Ram Katha (राम विवाह)

The story is told in the opening book of both great tellings. In the Valmiki Ramayana’s Bala Kanda, Vishvamitra brings Rama and Lakshmana to King Janaka’s court at Mithila. Rama strings the great bow of Shiva, which Janaka had made the condition for Sita’s hand, and it breaks in his hands. The four sons of Dasharatha are then married together: Rama to Sita, Lakshmana to Urmila, Bharata to Mandavi and Shatrughna to Shrutakirti.

Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, written in Awadhi, retells the episode in its own Bala Kand and stages it as a public svayamvar. That version includes the first meeting of Rama and Sita in Janaka’s garden, the kings who fail to move the bow, and Parashurama’s anger when it breaks. Where the day is kept with a recitation in north India, the text read is usually the Manas. Note one limit on what this page can cite: the link between the wedding and Margashirsha Shukla Panchami comes from the festival calendar and the Ram katha tradition that keeps it, not from a verse of Valmiki this page can point to.

Janakpur, Ayodhya and the Mithila Custom (जनकपुर)

Janakpurdham in Nepal’s Terai identifies itself as Janaka’s capital, and the Janaki temple there treats Vivah Panchami as its main festival of the year. The temple and the town re-enact the wedding, from the arrival of the groom’s party to the ceremony itself, and the celebration draws pilgrims from India as well as Nepal. Ayodhya keeps the same day from the groom’s side: by the accounts of the festival there, its temples dress the images of Rama and Sita as bride and groom and take out a wedding procession. In both cities the day is kept as a wedding, celebrated again every year, rather than as a vrat.

Many accounts from Mithila itself report a custom that runs the other way: families there avoid fixing their own daughters’ weddings on Vivah Panchami. The reason those accounts give is the hardship of Sita’s married life in the Ramayana — the exile, the abduction and the later separation. The custom is regional rather than universal, and families elsewhere who face the question decide it with their own elders and purohit.

How Households Keep the Day (रामचरितमानस पाठ)

The common home observance is short. Rama and Sita are worshipped together as a newly married couple, and the household reads or sings the wedding portion of the Manas Bala Kand. Some families keep a full akhand path of the Ramcharitmanas that ends on the day, and some keep a fast until the puja is done. Temple custom varies on all of this, and the vidhi your family learned outranks any printed version, this one included.

• Sunrise and sunset (New Delhi): 07:05 and 17:25
• Panchami tithi: 16:48 on 13 December to 19:16 on 14 December
• Brahma Muhurat (New Delhi): 05:29-07:05
• Abhijit Muhurat (New Delhi): 11:54-12:36
• Rahu Kaal (New Delhi): 08:23-09:40, which muhurat practice avoids for beginning a puja
• Nakshatra, yoga, karana at sunrise: Shravana, Vyaghata, Balava

The Moon is in Shravana at both sunrises compared above. The site’s nakshatra table gives it the Moon as ruler and Vishnu as presiding deity, places it at Capricorn 10°00′ – 23°20′, and glosses its symbol as the ear. On a day observed mostly by listening to katha, some readers will enjoy that coincidence. Vivah Panchami, though, has no nakshatra condition. The tithi fixes the day, and the nakshatra changes from year to year.

What This Day Is Not

Vivah Panchami commemorates a wedding. Pages that sell the day as a cure for a delayed marriage, or promise that a puja on it will bring a proposal, go beyond anything the tradition described here supports, and this page makes no such claim. If the question in front of your family is a match, the tools for it are kundli matching and a conversation with a purohit. Kundli matching for marriage explains how the eight kootas are scored, and the Kundali Milan report sets the koota scores of two charts side by side with the factors the kootas leave out. Neither is a forecast.

In Short

Vivah Panchami 2026 is Monday, 14 December 2026. The Margashirsha Shukla Panchami opens at 16:48 on 13 December 2026, after that day’s sunrise, and closes at 19:16 on the festival day, so the 14th is the only one of the two days with the Panchami at sunrise. Kharmas opens two days later with the Sun’s entry into Sagittarius, which makes this the last festival in the table before Kharmas. In 2027 the festival falls on Friday, 3 December 2027; its computed page is at Vivah Panchami 2027, and the rest of the year is in the 2026 festival calendar and the festival index.

In Hindi: विवाह पंचमी 2026 कब है: तिथि, समय और जनकपुर.