Anant Chaturdashi 2026 at a glance: the computed window

If you came for the date, it is here, and the rest of this guide is what the date is for. Every figure below was computed with the same panchang engine that powers our live Panchang, not copied from a listing.

This year the date is not in dispute, which is worth saying plainly because so many festival dates in this season are. The Chaturdashi tithi opens late on Thursday night and closes late on Friday night, which means it is the tithi running at sunrise on Friday the 25th in every Indian city, and it is running through the whole of Friday midday as well. The sunrise rule and the midday rule agree. There is no city-by-city split to work through, and no two-date disagreement between published calendars.

• Anant Chaturdashi 2026 — Friday, September 25, 2026.
• Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturdashi — begins 11:19 pm IST on Thursday, September 24; ends 11:07 pm IST on Friday, September 25.
• The vrat and the tying of the Anant Sutra — Friday the 25th, most commonly in the morning after the puja, though many families keep it to a midday muhurat.
• Ganesh visarjan, the ten-day close — the same Friday, September 25. The two observances share a tithi; they are not the same rite.
• Ganesh Chaturthi, for reference — Monday, September 14, 2026, eleven tithis earlier.
• The Ekadashi three tithis before this one — Parsva Ekadashi, also called Vamana Ekadashi, the Bhadrapada Shukla Ekadashi.

One tithi, three observances — and the tithi is not named after Ganesha

Search for this date and you will find photographs of idols going into the sea. That is the visarjan, the immersion that closes the ten days of Ganeshotsav, and it is genuinely enormous — in Mumbai and Pune it takes over the city for a day. It is also not what the day is called.

The tithi is Ananta Chaturdashi: the fourteenth lunar day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, named for Ananta (अनन्त), "the endless," a form of Vishnu. The Vishnu vrat kept on it is older than the public Ganesh festival that now shares it — Ganeshotsav in its modern street form dates from the late nineteenth century, while the Ananta vrat is described in the vrat literature long before that. What happened is not that one replaced the other; it is that one became loud.

There is a third observance on the same tithi, from outside the Vaishnava tradition entirely. In the Digambara Jain calendar, Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturdashi is the closing day of Das Lakshana Parva, the ten days of the ten virtues, which is why the day is called Ananta Chaturdashi there too. We mention it because a reader in a mixed neighbourhood will see all three on one street and deserves to know they are three traditions and not one confused festival.

For this guide, everything from here is about the Vishnu vrat. The visarjan half — the ten-day count that gets the date wrong, the city-by-city sthapana windows, the immersion itself — is covered in full in our Ganesh Chaturthi 2026 guide.

Who Ananta is, and why the serpent and the sleeper are one idea

Ananta means endless, and in the Vaishnava imagination it names two things that are really one. Ananta is the great serpent — also called Shesha (शेष), "the remainder," what is left when everything else has been counted — whose coils float on the causal ocean and whose hoods form a canopy. And Ananta is Vishnu himself, reclining on those coils between one cycle of creation and the next.

The point of the image is not zoology. A serpent named "the remainder" is time that does not run out; the god asleep on it is consciousness that persists through the intervals when nothing else does. Ananta is therefore the aspect of Vishnu you address when what you want is continuity — through a bad year, through a loss, through the part of a life where the thread seems to have been cut. That is exactly what the vrat is for, and it is why the emblem you are given to keep is a thread.

In Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka the same vrat is called Ananta Padmanabha Vratam, after Padmanabha (पद्मनाभ), "the lotus-navelled" — the same reclining form, named for the lotus rising from Vishnu’s navel with Brahma seated in it, from which the next creation begins. Different name, same day, same thread. If you would like to sit with this form of Vishnu in words rather than diagrams, the Om Jai Jagdish Hare aarati is the one most families sing to him.

The Anant Sutra: a turmeric thread with exactly fourteen knots

The emblem of this vrat is a cord called the Anant Sutra (अनन्त सूत्र). It is ordinarily cotton — silk in some families — soaked or dyed in turmeric water until it is deep yellow, and tied with exactly fourteen knots. It is placed before the deity and worshipped along with him, and only then is it worn: it is not a bracelet you buy and put on.

The fourteen knots are traditionally read as the fourteen lokas, the worlds of Puranic cosmology, seven above and seven below — Ananta being the one who pervades all of them, so that a knot for each is a way of saying "everywhere, without a gap." That is the standard explanation and the one you will hear at the puja. It is worth knowing that it is an explanation rather than a rule stated in a single authoritative place: other households will tell you the fourteen are the fourteen years the vrat is kept, and both readings are old. Where a tradition offers two accounts we would rather give you both than pick one and sound certain.

The lists of the lokas themselves vary slightly between Puranas, most often in the ordering of the lower seven. The enumeration below is the common one.

Which arm it goes on is family practice with a widely-followed default: men on the right arm, women on the left. Some households tie it on the wrist rather than the upper arm; in some the thread from the previous year is removed and released into flowing water on the same day the new one is tied. None of these is a mistake. Keep your family’s form — that continuity is itself the point of this particular vrat.

• The seven upper worlds — Bhuh, Bhuvah, Svah, Mahah, Janah, Tapah, Satya.
• The seven lower worlds — Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talatala, Mahatala, Rasatala, Patala.
• Material — cotton thread, dyed deep yellow in turmeric water; silk in some families.
• Knots — fourteen, tied before the puja, not after.
• Worn — men on the right arm, women on the left, by the most widely-followed custom; wrist rather than upper arm in many households.
• Replaced — a year later, on the next Anant Chaturdashi, the old sutra removed as the new one is tied.

The katha, and an honest answer about where it comes from

Every Anant vrat has a katha read at the end of it, and it is the same story almost everywhere. A woman named Sushila keeps the vrat after seeing other women worshipping Ananta by a river, and ties the fourteen-knot thread. Her husband, the brahmin Kaundinya, prospers greatly. In time he grows proud, decides the wealth is his own doing, and tears the thread from her arm and throws it into the fire. Everything is lost. He goes into the forest looking for Ananta, is refused by everything he asks, despairs, and is finally met by the god himself, told to keep the vrat for fourteen years, and restored.

Read as a teaching, it is a story about attributing a good year to the right cause, and about what it costs to break a continuity you did not create. That much is not in doubt, and it is why the story is worth reading aloud on the day.

The sourcing is where we will be more careful than the internet is. This katha is credited to the Mahabharata almost universally — usually to the Pandavas’ forest years, with Krishna telling Yudhishthira to keep the vrat to recover what was lost at dice — and that frame is genuinely the one the vrat-katha tradition gives. What we are not able to do is hand you a chapter and verse for it. Our own Mahabharata encyclopedia follows the constituted Critical Edition of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, which is explicit about the difference between what the constituted text carries and what reaches us through later retelling, and we have not been able to place this narrative in the former.

So we will say exactly what we know. The story is the katha of the Ananta vrat, carried by the vrat-katha and Puranic literature and recited at the rite for centuries. The Mahabharata frame is the setting that tradition gives it. Whether the narrative also stands as a chapter of the epic itself is a question we are leaving open rather than answering with a citation we cannot check — because a portal whose whole claim is accuracy should be most careful precisely where a confident-sounding answer is easiest to give.

The vrat at home, step by step

The full temple form of this vrat is elaborate. The household form below is the one most families actually keep, and it takes about forty minutes. Do it after a bath, in the morning, at a clean spot facing east or north.

One element deserves a note before you start, because it surprises people who expect to buy something. In many households the object worshipped is not a purchased image at all: it is a serpent made on the spot from darbha grass (दर्भ, also called kusha) — a cord of grass coiled into a snake with seven hoods, laid in a vessel or on a plank, sometimes with a small image of Vishnu beside it. Where darbha is not available, a picture of the reclining Vishnu, or the sutra alone, is accepted. The vrat is not fussy about the material; it is particular about the intent.

• Bathe, and set a clean low table or plank facing east or north. Spread a fresh cloth, red or yellow.
• Make or place the form of Ananta — the darbha-grass serpent with seven hoods in a vessel, or an image of the reclining Vishnu.
• Prepare the Anant Sutra if you have not already: cotton thread soaked in turmeric water, dried, and tied with fourteen knots. Place it in front of the deity, not on your arm.
• Sankalp (संकल्प) — say aloud, in whatever language you think in, who is keeping the vrat, for what, and that it is Ananta Chaturdashi. A resolution said in a language you do not speak is not a stronger resolution.
• Offer the ordinary sixteen hospitalities as your family keeps them — water, seat, bathing, cloth, sandal paste, flowers, incense, lamp, food. Yellow flowers and yellow cloth are the usual choice for this day.
• Worship the sutra along with the deity — turmeric, kumkum, akshat, a flower on the knots.
• Read or listen to the katha.
• Aarti, then tie the sutra: men on the right arm, women on the left, or as your family does it. The traditional verse said at this moment is a prayer to Vasudeva to lift the one drowning in the endless ocean of samsara — a request for rescue, addressed to the endless form.
• Prasad. In many households the offering is counted in fourteens — fourteen puris, fourteen sweets — one for each knot; this is family practice rather than a rule.
• Remove last year’s sutra if you are wearing one, and release it into flowing water or leave it at the tulsi.

The samagri, grouped so you can shop from it

Nothing here is difficult to find, and every item has an ordinary substitute. If you are assembling this abroad, read the substitutions rather than skipping the item.

• The thread — plain cotton thread and turmeric powder. Silk if your family uses it. A ready-made Anant Sutra is sold at temples, but tying the fourteen knots yourself is part of the rite.
• The form of Ananta — darbha or kusha grass if you can get it; otherwise a printed image of the reclining Vishnu, or a small brass Vishnu.
• Vessels — a kalash or any clean pot, a plate for the sutra, a lamp, a small spoon for water.
• Puja items — kumkum, haldi, akshat (unbroken rice), sandal paste, incense, camphor, a ghee lamp, cotton wicks.
• Flowers — yellow, if the season gives you any; marigold is the usual stand-in and is in season in September.
• Cloth — a fresh yellow or red cloth for the plank, and a piece of cloth offered to the deity.
• Naivedya — the food you would cook for a guest. Fourteen puris and a sweet is the common form; anything cooked with attention is accepted.

The fast, and what the vrat asks besides food

The Anant vrat carries a fast, and like most vrats it is kept at whatever level the person can genuinely sustain. The tradition is clear that the intent matters more than the severity, and it is equally clear that overreaching and abandoning the fast halfway is worse than keeping a modest one properly.

It is not the same instrument as the Ekadashi fast three tithis earlier — that one has a specific grain prohibition and a timed breaking window called parana, both of which our Ekadashi fasting guide works through, and the Ekadashi calendar pillar dates for the whole year. The Anant fast is a single-day observance broken after the puja and the katha, not at a computed time.

• Nirahar — nothing until the puja and katha are complete, then a full meal. Kept by those who can.
• Phalahar — fruit, milk, and non-grain foods through the day, the meal after the rite. The commonest form.
• Ek-bhukta — one full meal, taken after the puja, and nothing else that day. The gentlest form and entirely legitimate.
• Exempt in the ordinary way, as with every vrat — the ill, the pregnant, the very young, the very old, and anyone for whom fasting is medically unwise. Keep the rite and skip the fast; that is not a lesser observance.
• Beyond food — the vrat asks for truthfulness, for a day without anger, and for not attributing to yourself what came to you. The katha is entirely about the last of these.

Fourteen years, and the udyapan that closes them

The Ananta vrat is traditionally not a single-year undertaking. It is begun with the intention of keeping it for fourteen consecutive years, one thread a year, each replacing the last — which is the second reading of the fourteen knots, and the reason a family that keeps this vrat will often tell you the number of years rather than the number of worlds.

At the end of the fourteenth year comes the udyapan (उद्यापन), the concluding rite that formally closes a vrat kept over a term. Its form varies by family and region and is usually done with a purohit: a fuller puja, a homa in many traditions, the feeding of brahmins or of guests, and gifts given rather than received. The essential idea is that a vrat is a promise with a beginning and an end, and the end is marked rather than allowed to simply lapse.

If you miss a year, the ordinary counsel is to resume rather than to start the count again — the vrat is a continuity, and a broken year is exactly the situation Ananta is addressed about. If your family has its own rule here, follow it.

Where regional practice differs

This is one of those days where what you have seen depends almost entirely on where you grew up, and it is worth naming the differences plainly instead of describing one region’s practice as though it were the whole tradition.

• Maharashtra and Goa — the day is publicly dominated by the Ganesh visarjan, and the household Anant vrat is kept quietly alongside it. Many families do both on the same morning.
• Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka — the vrat is the principal observance and is called Ananta Padmanabha Vratam. It is a major household rite here, often with the whole family present.
• North India — kept as Anant Chaturdashi, with the sutra and the katha, and without a large public festival attached.
• Gujarat — the visarjan is prominent in the cities; the vrat is kept at home.
• Among Digambara Jains — the same tithi closes Das Lakshana Parva, a ten-day observance of a quite different tradition that happens to end here.

If you are keeping the vrat outside India

The tithi is a global fact — the Moon does not consult a timezone — but the local clock time at which it opens and closes is not, and that is what decides which of your days carries the observance. In 2026 the Chaturdashi runs from late Thursday night to late Friday night in Indian time, and shifting that window west by five to twelve hours puts most of it inside Friday for the Gulf, the UK and Europe, and inside Thursday night to Friday for North America.

The practical rule is the same one that governs every tithi-fixed observance: keep it on the day the tithi is running at your local sunrise, unless your family follows the temple calendar of a particular place, in which case follow that and do not try to reconcile the two. Our live Panchang computes the tithi boundaries for your own location, and the muhurat finder will place the puja inside a clean window on the day you choose.

One note for families abroad who keep the vrat without a purohit: nothing in the household form above requires one. The sankalp is said by the person keeping the vrat, in their own words. The only step where a purohit is genuinely usual is the udyapan at the end of the fourteen years, and even that is kept by families on their own where none is available.

Where our dates come from

The tithi boundaries in this guide were computed rather than copied. They come from the same engine that serves our live Panchang and the 2026 festival calendar, using the Lahiri ayanamsa, and they agree with the entry our own Ganesh Chaturthi guide publishes for the visarjan on the same tithi — which is the useful check, because that guide was written first and independently.

Where this guide states a ritual detail rather than a time, it says whose practice it is. Where the tradition carries two accounts — the fourteen knots, the arm the sutra goes on, the enumeration of the lower lokas — both are given. And where a story’s source is genuinely uncertain, as with the katha, that is said in as many words rather than smoothed over with a citation.

Where to go from here

If you are keeping the vrat this year, the two things worth settling in advance are the time you will do the puja in your own city and what you will do with last year’s thread. Both are a two-minute conversation with Purohit Ji, and both are easier to decide before the morning itself.

If you came here for the other half of the day, the Ganesh Chaturthi 2026 guide has the sthapana windows for eight cities and the visarjan reasoning in full. If the Vishnu vrat is what drew you, the Satyanarayan Puja guide covers the other great household Vishnu vrata and its five-chapter katha, and Dev Uthani Ekadashi is the day, later in the year, when the same reclining Vishnu is woken.