Durga Puja 2026

About Durga Puja

Durga Puja is the autumn worship of Durga as a daughter coming home, kept most intensely in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Odisha and Jharkhand and by Bengali families everywhere. In 2026 the public days open on Friday, 16 October 2026 and end with Bijoya Dashami and the immersion. UNESCO added Durga Puja in Kolkata to its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2021.

Durga Puja shares its lunar days with Sharad Navratri, but it is not the same festival. Most of India keeps nine nights of fasting and home puja. Bengal keeps four public days around a sculpted image of Durga with her four children, and treats her arrival as a married daughter's visit to her parents' house. The vocabulary follows from that. People ask when she is coming, not when the festival starts, and they cry a little when she leaves.

The autumn timing itself is explained in Bengal as Akal Bodhon, an untimely waking. Rama is said to have woken the goddess out of season, in autumn rather than the usual spring, to ask her help before facing Ravana.

How is the Durga Puja image made?

The Durga Puja image is made months earlier: idol-making begins around Rath Yatra in July, with Pata Puja and the tying of bamboo frames for the seven figures. Straw gives the shape, then layers of clay, jute and finer mud. In Kumartuli, the potters' quarter of north Kolkata, the clay comes from the Ganga. The gold-and-silver foil ornament many images wear is called daaker shaaj, literally postal finery, because the zari once arrived by post.

You will often read that clay from the doorstep of a brothel, punya mati, is required for the image. Sahapedia's account of Kumartuli records the trade in that soil, with bags sold cheaply in the weeks before the pujas, but also notes that many such older practices are no longer followed. Treat it as one custom among several rather than a rule.

The eyes go on last. Chokkhudaan, the painting of the eyes, is done on Mahalaya morning and is understood as the moment the figure becomes the goddess.

What happens on each day of Durga Puja?

Durga Puja runs from Mahalaya through Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami and Navami to Bijoya Dashami, and each day has its own rites.

1. Mahalaya
   Pitri Paksha ends, Devi Paksha begins

   Tarpan for ancestors at the riverbank at dawn, and the Mahishasuramardini recitation on radio before sunrise, in Birendra Krishna Bhadra's voice, which most Bengali households still wake to.

2. Maha Shashthi
   Bodhon, the waking

   The image is unveiled in the pandal. Belur Math does Kalparambha in the early morning and Bodhon at dusk at the foot of a bel tree, followed by Adhivas and Amantran, the formal invitation.

3. Maha Saptami
   Nabapatrika, the Kola Bou

   Nine plants, including a banana stalk and a bel branch, are bundled, bathed in the river before dawn, wrapped in a red-bordered sari and set beside the image. It is a harvest rite, older than the clay figure it stands next to.

4. Maha Ashtami
   Anjali, Kumari Puja, Sandhi Puja

   Flower offerings in new clothes, then Kumari Puja, in which a young girl is worshipped as the Mother; Swami Vivekananda began it at Belur Math in 1901. Sandhi Puja fills the last 24 minutes of Ashtami and the first 24 of Navami, when Durga is worshipped as Chamunda.

5. Maha Navami
   Homa and the last full day

   The fire offering, dhunuchi naach before the image with burning incense held in clay cups, and the longest pandal queues of the year.

6. Bijoya Dashami
   Sindoor khela, then bisarjan

   The goddess is dismissed with a mirror ritual, women smear each other with vermilion, sweets go round, and the image is carried to the river. Elders are touched on the feet, and the greeting changes to Shubho Bijoya.

Sindoor khela was traditionally limited to married women. Across many Kolkata pujas that has loosened, and widows, unmarried women, trans women and sometimes men now take part. If you are visiting a puja you don't know, watch first and join only if you are asked.

Why Bengal's Dashami can fall after everyone else's Dussehra

Bengali almanacs come from two schools. The Gupta Press Panjika, first published in 1869 by Durga Charan Gupta, works from the older Surya Siddhanta reckoning. The Bisuddha Siddhanta Panjika, from 1890, uses observed planetary positions, and the maths and missions, Belur Math among them, follow it. In some years the two disagree about which calendar date carries Ashtami or Navami, and priests consult both before fixing a ritual time.

Separately, Bengal's day count can run one behind the pan-India Dussehra, because the tithi is assigned to the day on which the puja is actually performed rather than to the afternoon rule used elsewhere. When that happens, Bijoya Dashami and immersions in Kolkata fall the day after north India has burnt its Ravana effigies. Both are right within their own systems.

Not only Kolkata

Community pujas grew out of private ones. Eighteenth-century Calcutta zamindars held lavish pujas at home, partly to entertain British officials; the popular story that Nabakrishna Deb started his in 1757 to mark the victory at Plassey is doubted by historians, since he entered Clive's service only afterwards. Collective funding is usually traced to a barowari, or twelve-friends, puja at Guptipara in Hooghly around 1790, and the first documented sarbojanin, or everybody's, puja was held by the Sanatan Dharmotsahini Sabha at Baghbazar in 1910.

Today Cuttack's pujas are known for chandi medha, backdrops worked in the city's silver filigree. Assam and Tripura keep the same four days with their own bhog and dhak traditions. West Bengal's government holiday list stretches across roughly a dozen days around the pujas and Lakshmi Puja, which is why so much of the state simply stops.

What to say, and when

Pandal

The temporary pavilion built to house the image, often an elaborate themed artwork

Anjali

The morning flower offering, made standing, usually repeated in batches

Dhunuchi naach

Dance before the image holding clay cups of burning coconut husk and incense

Bhog

Cooked food offered to the goddess, then served to everyone, usually khichuri with labra

Bisarjan

The immersion of the image at the end of Dashami

Shubho Sharodiya

Greetings of the autumn festival, used up to Navami

Shubho Bijoya

The greeting from Bijoya Dashami onwards, said with a pronam to elders

How to wish someone on Durga Puja

Bengali greetings change partway through the festival, and getting that right matters more than any amount of flourish. Shubho Sharodiya works from Mahalaya to Navami. From Bijoya Dashami onwards it becomes Shubho Bijoya, often with a pronam to elders. Good wishes mention the specific thing: the pandal they always visit, the bhog queue, the first pujo after a move or a wedding, the one they are missing this year.

Write a few lines in your own words, pick a design and share it as one link on WhatsApp, Instagram or anywhere else. They open an animated card made just for them, with no app and no sign-up.

Language tip: English, Hindi + regional language.

When is Durga Puja in 2026 and 2027?

Durga Puja is set by the Hindu lunisolar calendar, so it falls on a different date each year. In 2027 it falls 11 days earlier than in 2026. Durga Puja runs 6 days.

Frequently asked questions