Tihar 2026: Dates, All Five Days, and Laxmi Puja Night

Quick Answer

Tihar — Deepawali, Yamapanchak, Nepal's festival of lights — runs from Saturday, November 7 to Wednesday, November 11, 2026. It is five days long, and unlike Dashain each day has its own name and its own subject: crows, dogs, cows and Laxmi, oxen and the self, and finally brothers and sisters.

The one night most visitors plan around is Laxmi Puja on Sunday, November 8, when every doorway, window, and rooftop in the country is lit with oil lamps. In 2026 that falls on the second day rather than the usual third — see the table below, because most published Tihar schedules get this year wrong. The emotional centre of the festival for Nepalis is the last day, Bhai Tika.

Tihar is markedly easier to travel in than Dashain, which closes on October 25, thirteen days before Tihar opens — many businesses stay open. Use the November 2026 calendar for date browsing, and the canonical Tihar page for the full festival entity and photographs.

2026 Dates

Festival	Start	End	Nepali calendar
Tihar 2026 (Deepawali)	Saturday, November 7, 2026	Wednesday, November 11, 2026	Kartik 21 - Kartik 25, 2083 BS

Nepal festival dates follow the lunar Bikram Sambat calendar, so the Gregorian dates move every year — and by more than a few days. Tihar fell in October in both 2024 and 2025; in 2026 it falls in November. Do not reuse these dates for a later trip — check the current Nepal festival calendar.

The 2027 dates are not yet fixed. Lunar dates become final only when the official 2084 BS patro is published, so there is no reliable Tihar 2027 date to plan against at the time of writing.

The Five Days

Tihar is five days, but the days are tithis rather than calendar dates, and in 2026 they do not fall in the textbook arrangement. The dates below are read off the official 2083 BS patro.

Day	Name	2026 date	Nepali date	What happens
—	Dhanteras / Yamadeepdan	Friday, November 6	Kartik 20	Not one of the five, but the evening the first lamps are lit for Yama and traders buy metal for luck. Tihar shopping starts here.
1	Kaag Tihar	Saturday, November 7	Kartik 21	Crows — Yama's messengers — are fed on rooftops and doorsteps before the household eats. The gentlest day of the five.
2	Kukur Tihar and Laxmi Puja	Sunday, November 8	Kartik 22	Every dog in Nepal, strays included, receives a marigold garland, a red tika, and a plate of meat and sweets — and the same evening, unusually, is Laxmi Puja. The oil lamps go up at dusk. The visual climax of the festival.
3	Gai Tihar	Monday, November 9	Kartik 23	Cows are worshipped. In most years this day carries Laxmi Puja too; in 2026 it stands alone, and it is a public holiday.
4	Govardan Puja and Mha Puja	Tuesday, November 10	Kartik 24	Oxen are honoured as the power of the plough. Newar households perform Mha Puja, worship of one's own body and life force — and Nepal Sambat 1147, the Newar year, turns.
5	Bhai Tika / Kija Puja	Wednesday, November 11	Kartik 25	Sisters place a seven-strand tika of five colours on their brothers as protection against Yama. Nepal's second-busiest shopping day after Dashami.

The 2026 arrangement is not the usual one. In a textbook year Kukur Tihar is the second day and Gai Tihar and Laxmi Puja share the third. This year the 2083 patro puts Narak Chaturdashi and the Laxmi Puja evening together on Kartik 22, so Kukur Tihar and the night of lamps fall on the same date and Gai Puja moves to a day of its own. If you are cross-checking against a schedule that counts forward day by day, it will place the lamps on November 9. The patro places them on November 8.

Running from Laxmi Puja night onward is Deusi Bhailo — call-and-response singing groups moving door to door, collecting donations that go back into neighbourhood funds. Bhailo is sung on the Laxmi Puja evening and Deusi from Govardan Puja night. It is the one part of Tihar that comes to you rather than requiring you to go anywhere.

Why It Is Called Yamapanchak

Tihar's other name is Yamapanchak — five days of Yama, the god of death — and the framing holds the whole festival together. The crows on day one are Yama's messengers. The dogs on day two are the guardians of the path between the living and the dead. The tika on day five is explicitly a protection against Yama: in the Purana tradition, Yamuna worshipped her brother Yama with a five-colour tika that even he could not breach, and a sister's tika is understood to extend that protection to her brother for the year.

Read this way, Tihar is not simply a festival of lights. It is a five-day negotiation with mortality, conducted through the animals, the goddess of abundance, and the sibling bond — with the lamps as the brightest point rather than the whole content.

Laxmi Puja Night

The Laxmi Puja evening — Sunday, November 8 in 2026 — is what most photographs of Tihar show. Homes are cleaned for days beforehand, because Laxmi's criteria are specific: she enters a house that is swept, bright, and welcoming, and passes a dark or neglected one. On the day itself, rangoli mandalas are drawn at thresholds in coloured powder, flower petals, or rice flour, and at dusk clay and brass lamps are placed at every window, step, wall, and rooftop.

The effect is additive rather than uniform — each household arranges its own lamps — and from any height above the Kathmandu Valley the towns read as grids of golden light. Kathmandu Durbar Square, Patan Durbar Square, and Bhaktapur Durbar Square are the three most concentrated places to see it, and the old lanes around each are better than the squares themselves.

Traders treat the night as a business obligation as much as a religious one: new ledgers are opened, the first entries made, and shops decorated at real expense, on the understanding that the year's fortune follows the quality of the night's worship.

Mha Puja and the Newar New Year

Day four carries a second festival inside it. While Hindu households across Nepal perform Govardan Puja and honour their oxen, Newar families perform Mha Puja — a puja directed not at any deity but at the worshipper's own body. Each family member sits at the centre of a mandala drawn on the floor and receives the full puja sequence: lamp, flowers, fruit, tika, and aila. The logic is tantric rather than self-regarding: the life force in a person is a local expression of the same power worshipped in a temple.

The same day — Tuesday, November 10 in 2026 — is Nepal Sambat New Year, when the Newar calendar turns to 1147. It counts by tradition from 879 CE and is one of the oldest continuously used calendars in the world. Cultural organisations hold public events in the valley's squares, and the greeting is Nhu Daya Bhainti Lo. The festival food to look for is samay baji, the Newar ritual platter served on Mha Puja day.

How to Plan a Visit

• Tihar is the easier of the two autumn festivals to travel in. Many businesses stay open, and the transport crush of Dashain has passed. If you have to choose one to be in Nepal for, this is the practical answer.
• Be somewhere with a view on Laxmi Puja evening. A rooftop, a hillside above the valley, or the lanes of one of the three durbar squares. The effect starts at dusk and holds for hours.
• Day five is a family day. Bhai Tika happens inside homes. There is little public spectacle, and shops are at their busiest.
• Sel roti is everywhere. The ring-shaped rice bread (sel roti) is made in every household across the Dashain and Tihar season.
• Accept a Deusi Bhailo group. If singers stop at your guesthouse door, a donation and a listen is the whole transaction.

Visitor Etiquette

• Kukur Tihar is not a photo opportunity staged for visitors. Garland a dog if you are offered the chance; do not crowd animals for pictures.
• Ask before photographing a household's lamps or rangoli at the threshold — the doorway is the point at which the house is inviting a goddess in.
• Bhai Tika is a private family ceremony. Do not photograph it uninvited.
• Fireworks are common and unregulated around Laxmi Puja. Keep away from crowded lanes if you are travelling with children.
• Remove shoes at thresholds and step around rangoli rather than over it.

Related Pages

• Tihar festival page — the full entity, all five days, and photographs
• Dashain — the fifteen-day festival that closes on October 25, two weeks before Tihar opens
• Sel roti and samay baji — the two foods of the season
• November 2026 calendar — everything else falling in the month
• Nepal festival calendar — dates for the year ahead