Chhath Puja 2026 छठ पूजा

Why Chhath Puja is celebrated

Chhath is a festival of thanks to Surya Dev, the Sun, whom devotees see as the giver of light, warmth, health and harvest. It also honours Chhathi Maiya, the mother goddess whom families pray to for the health and long life of their children. Folk belief often calls her the sister of the Sun. The prayers ask for a healthy family, good crops and the fulfilment of wishes.

The festival stands out for its discipline. The person who keeps the vrat, called a vratin or parvaitin, fasts without water for about 36 hours, stands in a river or pond at sunset and again at dawn, and prepares every offering with great care for purity. Most vratins are women, though many men also keep it.

Chhath has no idol and needs no priest. The devotee speaks directly to the Sun with water, fruit and home made prasad. Offerings come from the farm and the forest, and worship takes place on river banks that families clean together before the festival.

Chhath is also the one time in the year that many migrant workers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh travel home. For families spread across India, the ghat on Chhath evening is a place to meet again.

History and story of Chhath Puja

Sun worship in India is very old. Hymns to Surya appear in the Rigveda, and the Gayatri mantra itself is a prayer to the light of the Sun. Chhath carries this ancient practice in a folk form that women of the Gangetic plains have handed down through generations.

Several legends are linked to the festival. One tradition says that after Rama and Sita returned to Ayodhya, Sita kept the Chhath vrat on the Shashthi of Kartik and worshipped the Sun. Munger in Bihar has a site known as Sita Charan, where devotees believe she performed the ritual. The Mahabharata gives two more stories. Karna, the son of Surya, is said to have stood in water for hours each day to pray to his father, and Draupadi and the Pandavas are believed to have kept the vrat to win back their lost kingdom.

Old Sun temples in Bihar, such as the one at Deo in Aurangabad district, draw huge crowds during Chhath. The festival comes twice a year: in Chaitra as the smaller Chaiti Chhath, and in Kartik as the main celebration.

How Chhath Puja is celebrated

The first day is Nahay Khay. The vratin bathes, ideally in a river, and cleans the house. She cooks a simple meal of rice, chana dal and bottle gourd in ghee with rock salt, without onion or garlic, and eats it as the first meal of the vrat.

The second day is Kharna. She fasts through the day without water. In the evening she makes rasiya, a kheer of rice and jaggery, with roti or puri, often on a new earthen stove fired with mango wood. After offering it to Chhathi Maiya she eats it in private, and the family takes it as prasad. The 36 hour fast without food or water begins here.

The third day is the Sandhya Arghya. The family fries thekua and arranges fruit, sugarcane and coconut in bamboo baskets. In the afternoon everyone walks to the ghat, often with men carrying the baskets on their heads. The vratin stands in waist deep water and offers arghya of milk and water to the setting sun while women sing Chhath songs. At night many families do kosi bharai, lighting earthen lamps under a canopy of sugarcane stalks.

The fourth day is the Usha Arghya. The family returns to the ghat before dawn and waits in the cold for first light. The vratin offers arghya to the rising sun, then breaks the fast with a little prasad and water, a rite called parana. Prasad is shared with everyone at the ghat.

Symbols, food and customs of Chhath Puja

The rising and setting Sun are the heart of Chhath. No idol is set up, so the sky itself becomes the shrine, and the devotee standing in water facing the Sun is the most familiar picture of the festival.

The soop and the daura are its other symbols. The soop is a flat winnowing basket and the daura a deeper basket, both woven from bamboo, often by local craftspeople. They carry the offerings to the ghat, and the arghya is given from the soop held in both hands.

Thekua is the main prasad. It is a crisp sweet of wheat flour, jaggery and ghee, pressed in a wooden mould and fried. Kasar laddoos of rice flour and jaggery sit beside it. The baskets also hold whole sugarcane, bananas, coconut, sweet lime, radish, sweet potato, water chestnut, and fresh ginger and turmeric plants. Everything is seasonal and local, and nothing is cooked with onion, garlic or common salt.

Customs centre on purity. New earthen stoves, brass or bamboo vessels and fresh cloth are used. Women wear yellow or orange saris and draw long lines of sindoor from the nose to the parting. Folk songs such as "Kaanch hi baans ke bahangiya" are sung on the way to the ghat.

Chhath Puja across India

Bihar is the heart of Chhath. Patna's ghats along the Ganga hold lakhs of devotees, and towns and villages across the state turn ponds and canals into ghats. Jharkhand keeps the festival with equal devotion on its rivers and dams, and in eastern Uttar Pradesh, from Varanasi to Gorakhpur and Ballia, the Ganga, Ghaghra and Rapti banks fill up on both evenings.

Across the border, the Madhesi people of the Nepal Terai observe Chhath much as Mithila does, with Janakpur as a major centre. On the Dhouns river at Madhwapur in Madhubani district, devotees of India and Nepal stand on opposite banks of a shared ghat to offer arghya together.

With migration the festival has travelled far. Delhi's Yamuna banks and hundreds of temporary ghats across the city fill with Purvanchali families, and Mumbai's Juhu beach sees vratins standing in the Arabian Sea at sunset. Kolkata's Hooghly ghats draw large crowds as well.

In Uttarakhand, Dehradun has a sizeable Purvanchali population, and families gather on river banks such as the Tons river ghat at Premnagar. Devotees in Haridwar, Rishikesh and Udham Singh Nagar also keep the festival on the Ganga, canals and ponds.

Offices, banks, markets and travel during Chhath Puja

Chhath is a restricted holiday for central government staff on Sunday, 15 November 2026. Bihar closes its offices on 15 and 16 November, and Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand list it as a restricted holiday.

In 2026 the main Chhath day, the Sandhya Arghya, falls on Sunday, 15 November, and the morning arghya on Monday, 16 November. Bihar treats Chhath as a public holiday on both days, so state offices are closed on 15 and 16 November. Kharna on Saturday, 14 November is a restricted holiday for Bihar government staff. Banks in Patna are closed on Monday, 16 November.

For central government employees, Chhath, also called Pratihar or Surya Shashthi, is a restricted holiday on 15 November. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand also keep it as a restricted holiday for their staff on that date. Schools under the UP Basic Shiksha Parishad and schools in Uttarakhand are closed on 15 November, though it is a Sunday this year.

Trains and buses towards Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh run very full in the week before Chhath, so book early. In cities, roads near river ghats see heavy crowds and diversions on both the evening and the dawn arghya. Markets sell bamboo baskets, sugarcane and seasonal fruit in large quantities in the days before.