Anant Chaturdashi 2026: Date, Muhurat, Vrat Katha & Vidhi

When Is Anant Chaturdashi 2026?

Anant Chaturdashi 2026 falls on Friday, 25 September. It is kept on the Chaturdashi of Bhadrapada Shukla Paksha as the day of the Anant Vrat, the vrat of Lord Vishnu in his endless aspect, and the Panchang describes the day as Vishnu resting in the Ksheer Sagar, the ocean of milk.

Anant Chaturdashi 2026 Date, Tithi and Muhurat

One point in that table is worth reading carefully. The tithi ends at a single astronomical moment, so 11:06 PM is the same across the whole country when read in IST. The start of the window is a different kind of figure. It is sunrise, and sunrise is local. The 06:11 AM figure reprinted on page after page is the New Delhi reckoning. In Surat the window opens at 06:28 AM, seventeen minutes later.

In practice the puja may be offered from your own sunrise onward, and it must be completed before 11:06 PM. If you are outside Surat and its surrounding towns, use a Panchang set to your own location rather than the Delhi figure, or ask your pandit to confirm the morning start before the day.

In practice most households keep the puja in the morning, after the bath and before the day fills. The long window is a convenience, not an instruction to wait.

Our Choghadiya timings cover the auspicious windows across the day, and the guide on choosing a shubh muhurat explains how these windows are worked out.

Why Anant Chaturdashi Falls on 25 September, Not the 24th

The Chaturdashi tithi begins late on Thursday night, at 11:18 PM on 24 September. Anyone checking a Panchang before bed on Thursday will see Chaturdashi already running and may conclude the vrat belongs to that date. It does not.

The observance follows the udaya tithi rule, which assigns the day to the date whose sunrise the tithi covers. Chaturdashi begins at 11:18 PM on the 24th and is still running at sunrise on the 25th, so Friday carries it. And because it ends at 11:06 PM the same night, before the next sunrise, there is no spill into the 26th. Only one date can hold this vrat in 2026, and it is Friday, 25 September.

Two Observances on the Same Day

Anant Chaturdashi and Ganesh visarjan share a date without being the same thing. Ganeshotsav is counted from Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturthi to Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturdashi, so the tenth day of the utsav simply lands on this tithi. The Anant Vrat is a separate observance, long predating the public Ganeshotsav, addressed to Lord Vishnu, with its own puja, its own thread and its own katha.

A household can keep both, and many in Gujarat do. A household can also keep the Anant Vrat with no Ganpati murti in the house at all. If you are here for the visarjan timings and the uttar puja, those are covered in the guide to Ganesh Chaturthi 2026. The rest of this page is about the vrat.

Who Anant Is

Anant means endless, without limit or end. It is a name of Lord Vishnu in the aspect in which he is beyond measure: the one who has no beginning to count from and no boundary to reach. It is also the name of Shesha, the serpent on whose coils Vishnu rests in the Ksheer Sagar, often called Ananta or Adishesha, whose thousand hoods are said to hold the worlds.

That is the image the day carries. Not Vishnu acting in the world, but Vishnu at rest in it, continuous, holding everything up while appearing to do nothing at all.

The vrat takes its shape from that idea. Most vrats are kept for a stated result, a specific difficulty, a specific prayer. The Anant Vrat is kept for continuity: that what a household has been given should hold, that prosperity should not break, that a line should not be cut. The fourteen year sankalp follows from the same logic. A vrat about endurance is not proved in one year.

The Anant Sutra and Its Fourteen Knots

The anant sutra is the centre of this observance, and the puja is arranged around it rather than the other way round.

It is a thread of cotton or silk, usually dyed with turmeric so it takes the yellow that belongs to Vishnu, and tied with fourteen knots. In many households it is prepared fresh on the morning of the vrat, with the knots made while the family recites the names of Lord Vishnu. It is then placed before the deity and worshipped through the whole puja, receiving the same chandan, kumkum, akshat and flowers as the murti, and only after that is it tied on the arm.

The fourteen knots are most commonly explained as the fourteen lokas, the seven upper worlds and the seven lower ones, over all of which Anant presides. The same number runs through the rest of the day: fourteen kinds of flowers where a family keeps the fuller vidhi, fourteen items in the naivedya, and the fourteen years of the vrat itself.

Men usually tie the sutra on the right arm and women on the left. Some families and sampradayas keep it on the right for everyone. Where your household has a settled custom, follow it.

The thread is worn afterwards rather than removed when the day ends, and how long it stays on varies by family. Many keep it for fourteen days and then remove it. Others wear it until it wears away on its own, or until the following year’s vrat, when a new one replaces it. Both are kept, so follow your household’s practice.

Anant Chaturdashi Puja Vidhi

Most families perform this puja themselves. A pandit is called where the fuller vidhi with sankalp is wanted, where a fourteen year vrat is being begun or concluded, or where a Satyanarayan katha or havan is being held alongside it.

Steps for the Anant Chaturdashi puja

1. Bathe in the morning, wear clean clothes, and take the sankalp for the vrat, stating your name and gotra and whether you are keeping it for the year or as part of a fourteen year undertaking.

2. Clean the puja space and lay a clean yellow cloth on the chowki. Yellow is the colour kept for Vishnu.

3. Place the murti or image of Lord Vishnu, and establish a kalasha with water, mango leaves and a coconut beside it where the fuller vidhi is being kept.

4. Prepare the anant sutra, making the fourteen knots, and place it before the deity on a clean plate.

5. Bathe the murti with panchamrit, made of milk, curd, ghee, honey and sugar, then with clean water, and dry it.

6. Offer chandan, kumkum, akshat, tulsi and fresh flowers to the deity and to the sutra together.

7. Offer the naivedya. Tulsi is placed in the bhog, without which the offering is not considered complete for Vishnu, and many households keep fourteen items or fourteen puris.

8. Light the deep and dhoop, and read or hear the Anant Chaturdashi vrat katha. The katha is part of the vidhi, not an optional addition.

9. Tie the sutra on the arm, men on the right and women on the left, reciting the prayer to Anant:

   अनन्त संसार महासमुद्रे मग्नान् समभ्युद्धर वासुदेव। अनन्तरूपे विनियोजितात्मा ह्यनन्तरूपाय नमो नमस्ते॥

   Ananta Samsara Mahasamudre Magnan Samabhyuddhara Vasudeva, Anantarupe Viniyojitatma Hyanantarupaya Namo Namaste.

10. Perform the aarti, distribute the prasad, and give dakshina and daan according to your means before taking the parana.

Anant Chaturdashi Puja Samagri

The window is a long one on this day, but the sutra and the naivedya both need preparation, so keep the samagri ready the evening before.

• Murti or image of Lord Vishnu, and a chowki with a clean yellow cloth
• Cotton or silk thread for the anant sutra, and haldi to dye it
• Kalasha with water, mango leaves and a coconut
• Panchamrit, made of milk, curd, ghee, honey and sugar
• Tulsi leaves, fresh flowers and a garland
• Chandan, kumkum, haldi, akshat and abir
• Puri, kheer, fruit and the sweets your household prepares for the naivedya
• Deep, ghee or oil, wicks, dhoop and camphor
• The Anant Chaturdashi vrat katha, printed or in your family’s book
• Supari, paan leaves, moli, dakshina and items for the daan

Your pandit may add items specific to your family tradition, so confirm the list a few days before.

Anant Chaturdashi Vrat Katha

The katha is read on the day itself, and it is the reason the vrat has the shape it does. It is told by Lord Krishna to Yudhishthira, when the Pandavas are in the forest and have lost everything at dice, in answer to the question of how what has been lost may be recovered.

The vrat kalpa is given in the Bhavishyottara Purana. The Mahabharata setting is the katha’s own frame rather than an episode of the epic itself, which is worth knowing if you go looking for it there.

There was a brahmin named Sumant, whose daughter Sushila was married to Rishi Kaundinya. As the couple travelled after the wedding, they stopped by a river where a group of women were performing a puja. Sushila asked what they were keeping, and was told it was the Anant Vrat, and that it holds a household’s prosperity. She learned the vidhi from them there, kept the vrat, and tied the fourteen knotted thread on her arm.

Prosperity came to Kaundinya’s house afterwards, and it came steadily. In time he grew certain that it was his own learning and his own merit that had produced it. One day he noticed the thread on his wife’s arm and asked what it was. When she told him, he took it to mean that she believed a piece of string had bound him and brought him what he had earned. He tore it off in anger and threw it into the fire.

Everything went. Wealth, standing, ease, all of it drained away, and no effort of his brought any of it back. Only then did he understand what he had thrown into the fire, and he left home to search for Anant, asking everyone and everything he passed on the road where Anant might be found, and receiving no answer from any of them.

He came at last to the end of what he could bear. At that point Lord Vishnu appeared before him, in the form of an old brahmin, and revealed himself as Anant. He told Kaundinya that the loss had not come from the thread but from the contempt with which he had treated the grace behind it, and that he should keep the Anant Vrat for fourteen years, or according to his capacity. Kaundinya kept it, and everything he had lost was restored to him.

The story is not really about the thread. It is about what happens when a household comes to believe that what it has been given, it made.

Fasting on Anant Chaturdashi

The vrat is kept by women and men, and often by a household together. It runs from the morning until the parana is taken after the puja and the katha.

Most families keep it as a phalahar fast on fruit, milk and curd. Some keep nirjala until the sutra is tied. Others take a single meal for the day and nothing else. All three are kept, and the choice usually follows family practice rather than any scale of strictness.

What holds the vrat together is the sankalp, the puja and the sutra, not the severity of the fast. That matters particularly here, because the fourteen year undertaking asks for consistency over a long stretch of life, during which health and circumstances change. If a full fast is unsuitable for you, keep the lighter form or offer the puja without fasting, and keep the vrat unbroken.

Anant Chaturdashi Udyapan and the Fourteen Year Vrat

The Anant Vrat is traditionally undertaken for fourteen years, one Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturdashi at a time, following the count Kaundinya was given. Families who have not taken that sankalp keep the vrat for a single year and renew it if they wish, which is entirely acceptable and is how most households begin.

Where the fourteen years have been taken as a sankalp, the count is closed with an udyapan. This is the formal conclusion of the whole undertaking rather than another year’s puja, and it is generally performed with a pandit because it carries elements the annual household vidhi does not.

An udyapan usually includes:

• The sankalp of completion, stating the years kept
• The Anant puja in its fuller form
• A havan, followed by daan
• Brahman bhojan for the family and those invited

Households often keep a Satyanarayan katha alongside it, since the two sit naturally together as Vishnu observances.

Two practical points. The udyapan does not replace the year’s vrat, it completes it, so the fourteenth year’s puja is performed and the conclusion follows. And it is a longer ceremony than an ordinary festival puja, so it needs to be arranged well ahead rather than settled in the week before the day. If you are approaching the fourteenth year, get in touch with the year your sankalp began.

What to Do With the Old Anant Sutra

This is one of the most common questions about the vrat and one of the least often answered.

Whenever the sutra comes off, whether after fourteen days or at the following year’s vrat, it is disposed of respectfully rather than put out with household waste. Where a family keeps it for the full year, it is removed as the new one is tied and not before, since until that moment it is still the worshipped thread of a vrat in progress.

The usual practices are to immerse it in flowing water or a clean water body, or to place it at the root of a tulsi or a peepal. In 2026 many Surat families will be going out for the visarjan on the same day in any case, and some send the old sutra with it.

If the thread wore off and was lost during the year, which happens often with cotton, there is no fault in it and nothing to be made good. Tie the new one and continue.

Anant Chaturdashi in Gujarat and Surat

In Surat this date is dominated by the visarjan. Processions build through the afternoon and evening, the routes to the immersion points fill, and much of the city is out on the road. A household keeping the Anant Vrat should plan around that rather than against it.

The practical arrangement most families settle on is to keep the Anant puja in the morning, well before the processions begin, and to leave the afternoon and evening for the Ganesh visarjan and the uttar puja. The vrat window runs until 11:06 PM, so there is room, but it is far easier to do the puja and read the katha in a quiet house than in one that is about to carry a murti out.

The date also closes an unusually crowded fortnight in Bhadrapada, and Pitru Paksha opens the day after it with Purnima Shraddha on 26 September. Rishi Panchami falls on 15 September and Radha Ashtami on the 19th, and households keeping several of these are better off preparing the samagri for the whole fortnight together.

One more note for Surat. In the Digambar Jain tradition the same day is kept as Ananta Chaturdashi, the concluding day of the Das Lakshana Parva, which is a separate observance from the Anant Vrat described here and follows its own vidhi.

Booking a Pandit for Anant Chaturdashi

The annual Anant Vrat is kept at home by most families without a pandit, and the vidhi above is well within reach of a household that has the samagri ready and the katha to hand.

A pandit is called for the other occasions: where a family is beginning a fourteen year sankalp and wants it taken properly, where the fourteen years are being concluded with an udyapan, where a Satyanarayan katha or a havan is being held alongside the vrat, and where an elderly member of the household has kept the vrat for years and the family wants the puja performed in its full form while they can still attend it.

Pandit Ramkishan Joshi performs Anant Chaturdashi puja and Anant Chaturdashi udyapan at homes across Surat and the surrounding areas, and can confirm the morning start of the window for your own location.

Festival dates are usually taken about a month in advance, and 25 September carries the visarjan as well, which makes it one of the fullest dates in the Bhadrapada calendar. Udyapan needs more notice still, since it runs longer than an ordinary festival puja. To arrange either, get in touch with your location and whether you are keeping the annual vrat or concluding a fourteen year sankalp, and the samagri list will be shared beforehand.