Hindu Calendar 2026: Festival Dates for the Diaspora
Hindu calendar 2026 festival dates for Houston, London, Toronto, and Sydney — computed per city, with the dates that diverge from India clearly marked.
Here is the Hindu calendar 2026 lineup for four diaspora cities — Houston, London, Toronto, and Sydney — with the actual civil date for each major festival where you live. Most of these land on the same civil date across all four cities. Thirteen don’t: Sydney lands a day later than the other three on every one of them, and London joins Sydney on one, Karva Chauth. Each case comes down to the same cause — the tithi that decides the date is checked against local sunrise, and that city’s sunrise falls on the other side of the boundary. The bold cells in the table below mark exactly which festivals and which cities.
How to use this table
Each column is computed for one named city — Houston (US), London (UK), Toronto (Canada), Sydney (Australia) — not for “the US” or “Australia” in the abstract. A different city in your own country can land a day off from the one shown here for the same reason any two countries can differ: the tithi boundary and the local sunrise. If you live somewhere else, treat the nearest column as a starting point, not a guarantee.
The 2026 diaspora festival table
This table lists major Hindu festival dates in 2026 for India (as a reference point) and for four diaspora cities — Houston, London, Toronto, and Sydney — so you can see exactly where the local civil date differs from India and from each other.
| Festival | India (ref.) | Houston | London | Toronto | Sydney |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Makar Sankranti | 14 Jan | 14 Jan | 14 Jan | 14 Jan | 15 Jan |
| Maha Shivaratri | 15 Feb | 15 Feb | 15 Feb | 15 Feb | 15 Feb |
| Holika Dahan | 2 Mar | 2 Mar | 2 Mar | 2 Mar | 3 Mar |
| Holi | 3 Mar | 3 Mar | 3 Mar | 3 Mar | 4 Mar |
| Ugadi / Gudi Padwa | 19 Mar | 19 Mar | 19 Mar | 19 Mar | 20 Mar |
| Rama Navami | 26 Mar | 26 Mar | 26 Mar | 26 Mar | 27 Mar |
| Hanuman Jayanti | 1 Apr | 1 Apr | 1 Apr | 1 Apr | 2 Apr |
| Akshaya Tritiya | 19 Apr | 19 Apr | 19 Apr | 19 Apr | 20 Apr |
| Raksha Bandhan | 27 Aug | 27 Aug | 27 Aug | 27 Aug | 28 Aug |
| Krishna Janmashtami (Smarta) | 3 Sep | 3 Sep | 3 Sep | 3 Sep | 4 Sep |
| Ganesh Chaturthi | 14 Sep | 14 Sep | 14 Sep | 14 Sep | 14 Sep |
| Navaratri begins | 11 Oct | 11 Oct | 11 Oct | 11 Oct | 11 Oct |
| Vijayadashami / Dussehra | 20 Oct | 20 Oct | 20 Oct | 20 Oct | 21 Oct |
| Karva Chauth | 28 Oct | 28 Oct | 29 Oct | 28 Oct | 29 Oct |
| Dhanteras | 6 Nov | 6 Nov | 6 Nov | 6 Nov | 6 Nov |
| Naraka Chaturdashi | 7 Nov | 7 Nov | 7 Nov | 7 Nov | 7 Nov |
| Diwali / Lakshmi Puja | 8 Nov | 8 Nov | 8 Nov | 8 Nov | 8 Nov |
| Govardhan Puja | 9 Nov | 9 Nov | 9 Nov | 9 Nov | 10 Nov |
| Bhai Dooj | 10 Nov | 10 Nov | 10 Nov | 10 Nov | 11 Nov |
| Kartik Purnima | 24 Nov | 24 Nov | 24 Nov | 24 Nov | 24 Nov |
Bold marks a date that differs from the India reference column. India’s dates are shown as a reference point only — a festival’s tithi is computed identically everywhere; what differs is which civil day it’s checked against at each location’s own sunrise.
Which festivals diverge, and why
Three separate mechanisms cause a diaspora date to move, and each is covered in more depth elsewhere on this blog:
- Sunrise-relative tithi boundaries. A tithi — the lunar day a festival’s date is pinned to — typically lasts about 20 to 26 hours and is checked against whichever sunrise it’s covering, not against midnight. The exact instant a tithi ends is identical everywhere on Earth; what differs is only whether that instant falls before or after each city’s own sunrise. Two cities can land the same observance a day apart for exactly that reason. This is the same mechanism behind Ekadashi shifting outside India — see why your Ekadashi date is wrong if you live outside India for the worked example.
- Calculation method. Muhurtha and most contemporary panchangs use true, observable planetary positions (drik ganita); a minority of older almanacs still use a mean-motion approximation (vakya). The two methods can disagree on a tithi boundary by hours, which occasionally shifts a date. See drik ganita vs vakya panchang for how the two methods differ.
- Month-naming convention. Amanta and purnimanta conventions can make the same festival look like it’s in two different months, even on a day both sides agree is correct. This one doesn’t move a date, it only relabels the month — see amanta vs purnimanta if a relative’s calendar names a different month than yours for the same day.
Every divergence in the table above comes from the sunrise-tithi mechanism, not from calculation method or month-naming — those two matter more for other observances, Ekadashi especially, than for this festival list.
Why Sydney diverges the most
Sydney sits at UTC+11 (UTC+10 outside daylight saving), the largest positive offset of the four cities, and that’s why it shows more divergent dates than Houston, London, or Toronto. Take Holika Dahan: the tithi boundary that decides its date falls at one specific instant in UTC, and where that instant lands on the calendar depends entirely on the city’s offset. Convert that instant to Houston’s UTC-6 and it’s still the afternoon of 2 March — Holika Dahan lands that evening. Convert the identical instant to Sydney’s UTC+11 and it’s already past midnight on 3 March — the bonfire falls a full day later on the calendar, even though nothing about the underlying tithi calculation changed. The same gap shows up for Holi the following night, and for eleven other festivals in the table.
This is also why a Melbourne-based family and a Sydney-based family, both in the same time zone, see identical dates to each other but different dates from a Houston or London household — it’s the UTC offset that matters, not the country.
Muhurtha computes every festival’s civil date from your device’s exact latitude, longitude, and altitude via the Swiss Ephemeris — the location you actually select, not a fixed reference city — using a bundled database of over 15,000 locations that covers every city in this table and the diaspora hubs around them. The table above shows the mechanism at work for four cities; the app runs the same calculation for wherever you live.
When your date and your family’s date differ
Some households simply observe on their own local date and don’t think about it further. Others coordinate a shared call or gathering around the India date specifically, treating it as the reference point regardless of where everyone lives. Both are common, and neither is more correct — this is a family and community decision, not a computational one. The table above is there so you can see in advance which festivals are even a live question this year and which ones simply match India and your relatives’ calendars.
FAQ
When is Diwali 2026 in the US?
Diwali (Lakshmi Puja) falls on 8 November 2026 in Houston, and it generally lands on the same date across the US this year — it’s one of the festivals in this table that doesn’t diverge in 2026.
Why is the festival date different in Australia for some festivals?
Sydney’s UTC+11 offset (the largest of the four cities here) means the tithi boundary that decides a festival’s date more often falls on the far side of midnight than it does in Houston, London, or Toronto. It’s a time-zone effect, not a different calculation — see the “Why Sydney diverges the most” section above for the mechanism.
Should I follow the Indian date or my local date?
Both are commonly followed; it’s a family and community choice, not a right-or-wrong one. Some households observe locally, others coordinate around the India date for a shared call with relatives. Muhurtha shows you the local date either way — what you do with it is yours to decide.
Are these dates the same everywhere in my country?
Not necessarily. This table is computed for one named city per region — a different city can land a day off from the one shown for the same sunrise-boundary reason two different countries can differ. Check the date for your own city rather than assuming the whole country matches.
How do I get festival dates for my own city?
Muhurtha computes every festival’s date from your device’s exact coordinates rather than a fixed reference city, so it covers cities well beyond the four shown here.
Sources
Festival dates in the table above are drawn from Drik-computed panchang data: the four non-Australian columns from drikpanchang.com’s location-specific calendar for each named city (accessed 2026-09-07), and the Sydney/Australia column from The 2026 Unified Monthly Panchang Australia (Australian Council of Hindu Clergy / HOTA), cross-checked against Muhurtha’s own festival-determination test suite for Melbourne, which shares Sydney’s time zone. The underlying rule that a festival’s civil date is decided by the tithi prevailing at local sunrise (rather than at midnight) is formalized in Dershowitz & Reingold, “Indian Calendrical Calculations,” and traditionally grounded in the Dharma Sindhu (Kashinatha Upadhyaya, c. 1790s), condensed in English in the Essence of Dharma Sindhu (trans. V.D.N. Rao, Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham). Muhurtha’s own calculations follow the true (Drik) astronomical positions endorsed by the Report of the Calendar Reform Committee (Govt. of India, 1955).
This table updates annually. To get these dates computed automatically for your own exact city, rather than the four shown here, that’s what Muhurtha does: on-device, from your exact coordinates, fully offline. Join the Beta Founders Circle to try it before public launch.