Chhath Puja 2026: Offering Water to the Sun

Chhath Puja 2026 culminates on 15 November 2026, the main day, with the festival running across four days from 13 to 16 November. The central worship falls on the sixth tithi of the bright fortnight of Kartika, Shukla Shashthi, the chhath that gives the festival its name. It is the great Sun festival of Bihar, Jharkhand and the eastern plains, kept with a rigour few festivals match.

Worship of the Sun and Chhathi Maiya

Chhath is offered to Surya, the Sun, the visible source of all life and energy, and to Chhathi Maiya, held to be a form of the Sun's sister or consort, the protector of children. In Jyotish the Sun is the soul, vitality and health, the father, and the strength of one's standing in the world. To stand in water and offer arghya directly to the Sun, at his setting and again at his rising, is among the most direct acts of worship in the tradition, the devotee and the source with nothing between them.

The Four Days

The festival moves through four days. Nahay Khay, the first, is the ritual bath and a pure single meal. Kharna, the second, is a day-long fast broken at night with kheer, after which a waterless fast of around thirty six hours begins. The third evening is Sandhya Arghya, the offering of water and fruit to the setting Sun while standing in a river or pond, the most striking image of the festival. The fourth dawn is Usha Arghya, the offering to the rising Sun, after which the long fast is finally broken.

Why the Setting Sun Is Honoured First

Chhath holds a wisdom most worship overlooks. It offers the first great arghya to the setting Sun, not the rising one. Almost every other tradition honours the dawn and the climbing Sun, the symbol of growth and success. Chhath turns first to the Sun going down, the declining, the fading, and only then to the dawn. The teaching is quiet and deep, that we owe gratitude to what is passing as much as to what is rising, to the descent as well as the ascent. It is a festival that thanks the whole arc, the loss and the return together.

What the Festival Asks of You

Chhath is demanding by design, the nirjala fast, the standing in cold water, the offering at both ends of the Sun's day, and it is kept overwhelmingly by women for the wellbeing of their families. If you keep it, keep the purity it asks, of food, of water, of intent, for the festival is exacting about cleanliness. If you do not, the day is still an invitation to honour the Sun directly, to rise for the dawn and offer water with gratitude to the source that the rest of the year we simply take. Few festivals put the worshipper so plainly before the divine.