Pitru Paksha 2026: two start dates, sixteen tithis, fifteen days

Search for the start of Pitru Paksha this year and you will find 26 September on one page and 27 September on the next. Both are correct, and the reason is a small piece of calendar arithmetic that also explains the odd double date in the middle of the fortnight. It is worth understanding before you plan a meal or call a relative, because the wrong day is an easy mistake this year.

Pitru Paksha is the fifteen-day fortnight, from Bhadrapada Purnima to Ashwin Amavasya, in which Hindu families offer food and water in remembrance of their ancestors, each on the lunar day when the relative died. It has been observed for a very long time, and it works as a memorial season more than a set of rules.

What is Pitru Paksha for?

Pitru Paksha is the fortnight for remembering ancestors through shraddha, which means offerings of food and water made in their name. Each family observes it on the lunar day of the person's death. It asks for attention far more than it asks for money.

In most homes it looks quiet. A meal gets cooked the way that person liked it, some of it is set outside for the crows, and water goes out with black sesame seeds, a step called tarpan. Many families also feed a Brahmin or someone in need. The scale depends on the household, and a very small version is still the real thing.

Why do sources say 26 September and 27 September?

Both dates are real. The 26th is Bhadrapada Purnima, when Purnima Shraddha is offered for people who died on a full moon day. The 27th is Pratipada, the first day of the Krishna Paksha, the waning fortnight. A site calls one of them the start depending on whether it counts the Purnima ritual.

Some calendars also name the whole period Bhadrapada and others name it Ashwin. That depends on whether a calendar ends its month at the new moon or the full moon, and it changes the label without moving a single date. Our piece on why a tithi rarely matches a calendar day covers the same kind of split.

The 2026 tithi-by-date list

Counting forward from 27 September gives one tithi per date until 30 September, when two share the day. The list below is counted from the published start and end of the fortnight, so check your own city's panchang before you plan, since tithi timings move by a few hours between cities.

Why does 30 September hold two tithis?

A shraddha is timed to the aparahna, the afternoon window, and a tithi counts for the day it is present in that window. On 30 September Chaturthi holds the window until roughly 2:55 PM by one published panchang, and Panchami holds the rest, so both are observed that day.

That is how sixteen observances, Purnima plus the fifteen tithis of the dark fortnight, land on fifteen calendar dates. The reverse happens in other years, when a tithi never touches the afternoon window and gets skipped. Neither one means anything has gone wrong. A tithi is a slice of the Moon's angle from the Sun, and it has no obligation to fit inside a 24-hour day.

Which day is yours?

Use the tithi on which the person died by the lunar calendar, not the date on the certificate. A panchang for that year converts one into the other. If nobody remembers the tithi, Sarva Pitru Amavasya on 10 October is the catch-all day.

Practice differs by region and by family, so an elder's answer beats any website, this one included. Some families observe full moon deaths on 26 September and others fold them into 10 October. Navami, on 4 October, is often kept for mothers, and Chaturdashi, on 9 October, is commonly set aside for sudden or untimely deaths, with the ordinary Chaturdashi deaths moved to Amavasya. If your family does it differently, your family is the authority.

What does it ask of you, and what does it not?

It asks you to remember someone, in whatever form your family uses. Nothing in the practice requires fear, and a birth chart cannot tell you that a missed shraddha caused anything. Anyone charging for a costly remedy is selling something the observance itself never asked for.

The question of what a chart can say about ancestors is a separate one, and we went through the classical texts in what pitra dosha actually is. The ritual stands without it. People living far from home can keep a version that fits their week: cook one dish, offer water on the right tithi, and call the family member who knows the stories. If you also want the moon-day basics, Purnima vs Amavasya is a short read.

This fortnight lands on real grief for many people, and sometimes on a recent loss. Astrology is not a treatment for grief. If it is affecting your sleep, your work or your days, please talk to a doctor or a counsellor, and lean on the people who knew them too.