Makar Sankranti 2027 is Friday 15 January in India, and Thursday 14 January in New York and London

Makar Sankranti 2027 falls on Friday, 15 January across India. It falls on the same Friday in Dubai, Singapore, Sydney and Auckland. Across the United States, Canada and Britain, by the same rule applied to the daylight where you live, it falls a day earlier, on Thursday, 14 January. Many temples and families abroad keep India’s Friday instead; the section on keeping it abroad, below, sets out both readings, and either is an honest choice.

Most Hindu festivals follow the Moon: they are dated by a tithi, a lunar day. Makar Sankranti follows the Sun. A sankranti is the Sun’s entry into a new sign of the zodiac, and each one opens a solar month. Makar Sankranti is the Sun’s entry into Makara (Capricorn). It is one festival with many names: Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Uttarayan in Gujarat, Poush Sankranti in Bengal and Magh Bihu in Assam.

Because the festival belongs to one moment, many people expect it to have one date everywhere. It does not. The moment falls at a different clock time in each city, and the rule that turns the moment into a day reads that city’s own sunset. In 2027 the moment falls on the evening of 14 January in India and on the morning or afternoon of 14 January in the West. That is the whole reason for the two dates.

If you only need your own answer, open the Makar Sankranti festival page; on the web it shows the 2027 date for your saved city or your device’s time zone. The rest of this guide explains why that date is what it is, so that you can explain it to a relative whose calendar prints the other day.

One moment, two dates: the rule for a Sankranti at night

The moment first. Astronomers call the Sun’s entry into a sign its ingress, and this guide uses that word for the minute the Sun enters Makara. Our engine computes the Sun’s position against the stars (the sidereal zodiac, measured with the Lahiri ayanamsa, the standard correction between the star-fixed and the season-fixed zodiacs, explained further down) and finds the minute it reaches 270 degrees, the start of Makara. For 2027 that minute is 3:36 pm UTC on Thursday, 14 January. In India that is 9:06 pm. Published almanacs differ from this by a few minutes, because they use different astronomical tables. Drik Panchang, for example, prints 9:14 pm for New Delhi. A difference of a few minutes changes no date in this guide.

Now the rule. The rites of the day, the bath, the gifts and the offering to the Sun, are daytime rites, so the question is which daylight receives the Sankranti’s merit, its punya. The Dharma Sindhu, a widely used eighteenth-century digest of dharma rules, states the case for the night plainly in its chapter on Pausha, the lunar month that runs from about December into January: if the Sankranti occurs at night, the next day is the day of punya.

Our engine turns that into one test that any household can apply: the Sankranti day is the first daylight, sunrise to sunset, that holds the ingress or comes after it. There are three cases.

• The ingress falls between sunrise and sunset: that day. London 2027 is this case: 3:36 pm, before its 4:19 pm sunset, so Thursday 14 January.
• The ingress falls after sunset: the next day. India 2027 is this case: 9:06 pm, at least two and a half hours after every Indian sunset in the list below, so Friday 15 January.
• The ingress falls after midnight and before sunrise: that day, which is already the next calendar day. Sydney 2027 is this case: 2:36 am on Friday 15 January, before its 5:59 am sunrise, so Friday 15 January.

Your city’s day, computed

Every line below comes from the same engine, for 14 January 2027, at the city centre. Sunrise and sunset are the moment the upper edge of the Sun’s disc meets the horizon, with standard atmospheric refraction, the convention our live Panchang uses. Times are local, rounded to the minute.

India is not close: the ingress comes at 9:06 pm, and the latest of the Indian sunsets below, Mumbai’s, is at 6:21 pm. No Indian city is near the line, so every Indian almanac that applies the night rule will print Friday 15 January.

• Kolkata — sunset Thu 5:12 pm · ingress Thu 9:06 pm · Makar Sankranti Friday 15 January
• Delhi — sunset Thu 5:45 pm · ingress Thu 9:06 pm · Friday 15 January
• Chennai — sunset Thu 6:01 pm · ingress Thu 9:06 pm · Friday 15 January
• Bengaluru — sunset Thu 6:12 pm · ingress Thu 9:06 pm · Friday 15 January
• Ahmedabad — sunset Thu 6:15 pm · ingress Thu 9:06 pm · Friday 15 January
• Mumbai — sunset Thu 6:21 pm · ingress Thu 9:06 pm · Friday 15 January
• Dubai — sunset Thu 5:50 pm · ingress Thu 7:36 pm · Friday 15 January
• Singapore — sunset Thu 7:15 pm · ingress Thu 11:36 pm · Friday 15 January
• Sydney — ingress Fri 2:36 am · sunrise Fri 5:59 am · Friday 15 January
• Melbourne — ingress Fri 2:36 am · sunrise Fri 6:14 am · Friday 15 January
• Auckland — ingress Fri 4:36 am · sunrise Fri 6:17 am · Friday 15 January
• London — sunrise Thu 8:00 am · ingress Thu 3:36 pm · sunset Thu 4:19 pm · Thursday 14 January
• New York — sunrise Thu 7:18 am · ingress Thu 10:36 am · Thursday 14 January
• Edison, New Jersey — sunrise Thu 7:19 am · ingress Thu 10:36 am · Thursday 14 January
• Toronto — sunrise Thu 7:48 am · ingress Thu 10:36 am · Thursday 14 January
• Chicago — sunrise Thu 7:16 am · ingress Thu 9:36 am · Thursday 14 January
• Houston — sunrise Thu 7:17 am · ingress Thu 9:36 am · Thursday 14 January
• San Francisco Bay Area (Fremont) — sunrise Thu 7:22 am · ingress Thu 7:36 am · Thursday 14 January
• Vancouver — ingress Thu 7:36 am · sunrise Thu 8:03 am · Thursday 14 January

Two cities near the line, and one that only looks near it

Two cities in the list sit close enough to a sunrise or a sunset that a reader should know the margin.

The San Francisco Bay Area is the tightest. The ingress comes at 7:36 am and sunrise at 7:22 am, so the ingress falls 14 minutes into Thursday’s daylight. An almanac whose ingress minute is about a quarter of an hour earlier than ours would put it before sunrise, and that is still Thursday by the third case above. So the date holds either way: Thursday 14 January.

London is the other. The ingress comes at 3:36 pm and the Sun sets at 4:19 pm, a margin of 43 minutes. No almanac we know of is that far from ours, so London keeps Thursday 14 January.

Vancouver only looks near the line. Its ingress, 7:36 am, comes before its 8:03 am sunrise, so it falls in the night. But that night is the night before Thursday’s sunrise, not after Thursday’s sunset, and the first daylight after it is Thursday’s. Vancouver keeps Thursday 14 January, the same day as the rest of North America. A rule that read only "is it night?" would get Vancouver wrong; the rule as the engine applies it, "the first daylight that holds the ingress or comes after it", gets it right.

Why it moved from 14 January to 15: six hours a year

Makar Sankranti 2026 was Wednesday, 14 January in India. Many people remember the festival as fixed on 14 January. In 2027 it is the 15th. Nothing has gone wrong.

The Sun takes about 365 days and 6 hours to return to the same point among the stars. A calendar year is 365 days. So the ingress comes about six hours later each year, until a leap day pulls it back by a day. Our engine gives these minutes for India: 3:05 pm on 14 January 2026; 9:06 pm on 14 January 2027; 3:18 am on 15 January 2028; and, after the leap day of February 2028, 9:20 am on 14 January 2029.

Apply the rule to those four and you get 14, 15, 15 and 14 January. In this cycle, two years in four fall on the 15th in India: the year when the ingress falls after sunset, and the year when it falls before the next sunrise.

There is a slower drift under the four-year cycle. The year that the Gregorian calendar follows is the year of the seasons, and it is about 20 minutes shorter than the Sun’s year against the stars. So, under the four-year cycle, the ingress creeps a little later every year. Our engine puts it at 7:17 am IST on 13 January in 1900 and at 2:28 pm IST on 15 January in 2100. The fixed "14 January" that many people remember belongs to the twentieth century.

Why not 21 December? The solstice and the star-fixed zodiac

Makar Sankranti is often called the start of Uttarayana, the Sun’s northward course. A reader who knows some astronomy will object: the Sun turns north at the December solstice, around 21 or 22 December. For 2026 the solstice comes at 2:20 am IST on 22 December. Makar Sankranti comes about 24 days later.

Both statements are true, about different things. The solstice is the moment the Sun reaches 0 degrees Capricorn in the tropical zodiac, the zodiac that Western astrology uses and that follows the seasons. Makar Sankranti is the moment the Sun reaches 0 degrees Makara in the sidereal zodiac, the zodiac that Jyotish (Vedic astrology) uses and that is fixed against the stars. The two zodiacs drift apart slowly, and on 14 January 2027 they are 24 degrees 14 minutes apart (the Lahiri ayanamsa). The Sun moves about one degree a day, so it needs a little over three weeks to cover the gap.

So the festival keeps the name of the Sun’s turn, while its date follows the stars. Our guide to Moon sign, Lagna and Sun sign explains the two zodiacs at more length, and why your Western Sun sign is usually one sign ahead of your Vedic one for the same reason.

Lohri, Bhogi and Thai Pongal follow the same day

Three festivals around Makar Sankranti take their date from it, so when it moves, they move.

Lohri, Punjab’s bonfire night, is kept on the eve of Makar Sankranti. In 2027 that is Thursday, 14 January in India, and, by local daylight, Wednesday, 13 January in the United States, Canada and Britain.

Thai Pongal, the main day of Pongal in Tamil Nadu, is the first day of the Tamil solar month Thai, and that month opens with the same ingress, by the same rule for an ingress after sunset. So Thai Pongal 2027 is Friday, 15 January in India, and Bhogi, the day before, when old things are cleared out, is Thursday, 14 January. In North America and Britain, by local daylight, Thai Pongal is Thursday 14 January and Bhogi is Wednesday 13 January. Mattu Pongal, the day for the cattle, follows on the day after Thai Pongal.

Not every region uses this rule for a Sankranti at night. Bengal and Odisha count their solar months by their own rules, and their almanacs can print a different day when the ingress falls at night. Our engine serves one date by the Dharma Sindhu rule above. If your family follows a Bengali or Odia almanac, keep the day it prints, and treat this guide as the reason the other calendars differ.

What the day is for

The core of Makar Sankranti is a morning, not a moment. Households take a holy bath at dawn, in a river where they can and at home where they cannot, and offer water to the Sun. Sesame (til) and jaggery (gur) are eaten and exchanged across the north, khichdi (rice and lentils cooked together) is cooked and given away, and gifts to those in need, daan, are counted as especially meritorious on this day. Kites fill the sky over Gujarat, and in Tamil Nadu the new rice is boiled in milk until the pot overflows, the "pongal" that gives the festival its name there.

Three stories are told about the day. In a popular telling, the Sun sets aside his quarrel with his son Shani (Saturn) and visits him in Makara, the sign Shani rules. In the Mahabharata, Bhishma, lying on his bed of arrows, waits for the Sun to turn north before he gives up his body. And tradition holds that the Ganga, brought down to earth by Bhagiratha, reached the sea at Gangasagar on this day, which is why pilgrims bathe there at Makar Sankranti.

For the date this guide is about, the practical point is simple. The bath and the gifts belong to the morning of the Sankranti day: in India, the morning of Friday 15 January; in North America and Britain, the morning of Thursday 14 January. Almanacs also print a punya kala, the hours of greatest merit around the ingress. We do not compute that window yet, so take it from the almanac your family trusts or from your purohit, the family priest.

Keeping it abroad: which date is yours

A family in New Jersey may have a temple calendar from India that prints Friday 15 January, while this guide says Thursday 14 January. Both are honest positions.

The first reading follows the date where the family’s tradition is kept, often an Indian temple or a relative’s almanac. It keeps the family on the same day as its people in India, and many temples abroad do the same.

The second reading applies the rule where you stand. The Sankranti is a moment in the sky, the rule asks which daylight holds it, and the daylight that matters is the one over your own house. That is the reading our engine applies, and it is the same reading behind our Pitru Paksha dates abroad and our Karva Chauth 2026 guide, where New York kept the fast a day before Delhi.

If you are unsure, ask the priest of the temple you attend which reading it follows, and keep the same one each year. Our guide to using the panchang as a family abroad is written for exactly this question.

Check your own city in a minute

You can test any city yourself with three facts. First, the moment: 3:36 pm UTC on 14 January 2027, converted to your clock. Second, your sunrise and sunset on that date, from our Panchang or any local almanac. Third, the rule: the Sankranti day is the first daylight that holds the ingress or comes after it.

If the ingress falls between your sunrise and sunset, the day is that day. If it falls after your sunset, the day is the next day. If it falls in the hours before your sunrise, the day is the day that sunrise begins.

Or let us help: Pandit Ji gives the sunrise and sunset for any city you name, so you can apply the rule in a minute, and on the web the Makar Sankranti festival page shows the 2027 date for your saved city or your device’s time zone.