Anant Chaturdashi 2026: Date, Vrat, Anant Sutra & Visarjan

Anant Chaturdashi 2026 falls on Friday, 25 September 2026. The Chaturdashi tithi runs from 11:19 pm on 24 September to 11:07 pm on 25 September, so the whole of Friday's daylight sits inside it and the puja can be done at any point during the day.

Timings are from the panchang this site calculates. Tithi start and end hold across India; sunrise and sunset shift with your city.

Two things meet on this day. It is the day of Vishnu as Ananta, when families keep the vrat and tie the Anant Sutra. And it is the day the ten-day Ganesh festival ends, when Ganpati is carried out for visarjan. One is quiet and done at home; the other fills entire streets. Both belong to the 25th.

What Anant Chaturdashi is

It falls on the fourteenth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada. "Anant" means endless, without limit, and the day is kept for Vishnu in that form, the one who reclines on Shesha, the serpent without end.

Families pray for the household to hold together and keep going. The custom everyone knows it by is the Anant Sutra, a thread tied with fourteen knots.

There is a well-known link to the Mahabharata. When the Pandavas had lost everything at dice and were living out their exile in the forest, Krishna is said to have told Yudhishthira to keep this vrat. Yudhishthira kept it with his brothers and Draupadi, and their troubles lifted. That story is why the day is associated with getting back what has been lost.

Why the day matters

For Vishnu. The vrat is kept for Ananta, and what people ask for is not usually sudden fortune but steadiness: that the family holds, that things continue, that what has been built is not taken away.

For Ganesha. For anyone who brought Ganpati home on Chaturthi and kept the full ten days, this is the day he leaves. After ten days of puja, aarti and bhajans, the idol is carried out in procession and immersed.

Which is why the day feels like two things at once. There is a festival in the street and a goodbye inside it.

The puja timing

Ask most people for the Anant Chaturdashi muhurat and you will get a vague answer, because there is no narrow window to hit. The Chaturdashi tithi begins late on 24 September, at 11:19 pm, and does not end until 11:07 pm on 25 September. Every daylight hour of Friday falls inside it.

So do the puja in the morning after bathing, which is the usual practice, or whenever the household can sit together. You are not going to miss it.

The vrat

Many keep a fast on Anant Chaturdashi, dedicated to Vishnu as Ananta. What the fast looks like varies. Some keep it strictly through the day; others take fruit, milk or a light sattvic meal.

There is no competition here. Keep what your family keeps. Anyone elderly, pregnant, unwell, on regular medicine or managing a condition should get proper advice before attempting a strict fast. A vrat is meant to be discipline and remembrance, not an endurance test.

Puja vidhi at home

The traditional instruction is to do the sankalp and puja on the bank of a river or a lake. Where that is not possible, a clean spot in the house is entirely acceptable, and that is how most families do it.

1. Clean the puja space

Clean the room and the place you will sit. A clean yellow or red cloth on the platform.

2. Bathe and wear clean clothes

Start the day with a bath. Traditional clothes if you have them.

3. Keep the samagri ready

• A picture or idol of Vishnu
• A clean cloth
• Kalash
• Diya and incense
• Flowers
• Akshat, roli or kumkum, turmeric, sandalwood
• Fruit and sweets
• Coconut
• Panchamrit, if your family uses it
• Water for the puja
• The Anant Sutra

The list changes from house to house. Follow yours.

4. Set up the kalash

Establish the kalash, and on it place the image of Vishnu reclining on Shesha. Keep the Anant Sutra, with its fourteen knots, in front of him.

5. Take the sankalp

Before the main puja, take a simple sankalp: that you are keeping this vrat and worshipping Ananta today, sincerely.

6. Do the puja

Offer flowers, akshat, sandalwood, fruit and the rest, worshipping both Vishnu and the thread itself. The mantra used is:

"Om Anantaya Namah"

7. Offer the bhog

Fruit and sattvic food, as your family makes it.

8. Tie the Anant Sutra

Tie the thread after the puja. The custom most widely followed is men on the right arm, women on the left.

9. Read or hear the vrat katha

For most families this is the part that makes it the festival it is. The story is below.

10. Aarti

Close with the aarti, then take prasad together.

What the Anant Sutra is

The Anant Sutra, also called the Anant dhaga, is the thing people picture when they hear the name of this festival. It is a cotton thread tied with fourteen knots, usually coloured yellow with turmeric.

The fourteen knots stand for the fourteen lokas, the fourteen worlds of Hindu cosmology. That is what lifts it above being a piece of string: a thread with the whole of creation knotted into it, worn on the arm.

It is not an ornament and not a charm. For the person wearing it, it is a commitment made to Ananta and kept for the day.

Making it at home

If your family prepares its own:

1. 1.Take a clean cotton thread.
2. 2.Tie fourteen knots in it.
3. 3.Colour it yellow with turmeric.
4. 4.Keep it before the deity through the puja.
5. 5.Worship the thread along with Vishnu.
6. 6.Tie it on as your family does.

Regional practice differs. Do what has been done in your house.

The vrat katha

The story is told like this.

In the Satya Yuga there was a sage named Sumantu. His daughter was called Shila, and she was as gentle as the name suggests. Sumantu married her to the sage Kaundinya.

As the couple were travelling home, Shila saw women worshipping by a riverbank. She asked what they were doing, learned about the Anant vrat, worshipped along with them and tied the Anant Sutra on her arm. Within a short time the household filled with plenty.

Then one day Kaundinya's eye fell on the thread on his wife's arm. Wealth had made him proud, and he asked her what it was, suspecting she had tied it to bring him under her control. Shila told him gently that it was the sacred thread of Ananta. He did not believe her. He tore the thread off and threw it into the fire.

What followed came quickly. Everything they had was lost, and they were left destitute. Realising what he had done, Kaundinya went into the forest to ask Ananta's forgiveness, stopping everyone he met to ask the way to him. He searched a long time and found nothing, and at last, in despair, prepared to end his life. An old brahmin stopped him, took him into a cave, and showed him the four-armed Ananta there.

Ananta told him plainly that all of it had followed from his contempt for the thread, and that the way back was to keep the vrat.

The lesson is not that God withholds things from people who forget him. It is closer to this: what you have been given is easy to hold cheaply, and pride is what makes a person tear up the thread. Humility and remembering are the actual practice.

Versions of this story differ, and you may hear slightly different names and details depending on where your family is from.

Ananta and Vishnu

The image behind the day is Vishnu asleep on Shesha, the serpent coiled on the cosmic ocean, whose name means "what remains" and whose other name is Ananta, the endless one.

It is a good image to sit with. Circumstances change. Money comes and goes. People arrive and leave. The thing the day points at is whatever is underneath all that, not going anywhere.

For most families, then, this is a prayer for continuity: that things hold, that the house is protected, that there is peace in it.

Ganesh Visarjan on this day

For anyone keeping the full ten days of Ganeshotsav, this is the day Ganpati goes.

Not every family does the visarjan today. Depending on tradition, the idol leaves after a day and a half, three days, five, seven or ten. Those who keep ten days do it on Anant Chaturdashi, which is why the streets of Mumbai and Pune fill up on this date.

The day usually runs: the last puja, aarti, bhajans, the procession, and the immersion. And through all of it, "Ganpati Bappa Morya!"

Doing the visarjan well

1. 1.Do the final puja properly, without rushing it.
2. 2.Offer flowers and bhog.
3. 3.Do the aarti.
4. 4.Thank him for the days he was in the house.
5. 5.Carry the idol respectfully.
6. 6.Follow the route and the rules your city has set.
7. 7.Use an authorised immersion point.

Use a natural clay idol and leave plastic decorations out of it. If your city has artificial immersion tanks, use them; that is what they are for.

Why the idol is immersed at all

The idol is made of earth. It is worshipped, for days, as the presence of God. And then it is given back to the water and comes apart.

That is the whole point, and it is not a sad one. Everything made of material comes apart. You welcome him in, you look after him, you receive what he gives, and then you let him go without gripping. The festival teaches the welcoming and the letting go in the same ten days.

What to offer Vishnu

Simple sattvic things, according to your family:

• Fruit
• Milk
• Panchamrit
• Sweets
• Coconut
• Tulsi, where your tradition uses it
• Seasonal fruit
• Homemade vegetarian food

No long menu is needed. What is offered with attention is enough.

Mantras

For the puja of Ananta and the thread:

Om Anantaya Namah

And the Vishnu mantra many families use through the day:

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Some recite the Vishnu Sahasranama as well. Said slowly and with attention, a little does more than a hurried count.

Keeping it at home

You do not have to go to a temple for this one. A household observance can be:

• Clean the puja room
• Prepare the Anant Sutra
• Do the Vishnu puja and take the sankalp
• Keep the vrat, as your family keeps it
• Hear the vrat katha together
• Make a simple bhog
• Do the aarti
• And if there is a Ganpati in the house, do the visarjan

With children, this is a good day to explain two things: why the thread has fourteen knots, and why the idol they have been feeding sweets to for ten days is going into the water.

Worth doing, and worth avoiding

Worth doing. Keeping the puja space clean. Keeping the vrat the way your family keeps it. Preparing the thread with care. Hearing the katha. Offering simple sattvic food. Following the local rules on visarjan day. Choosing clay over plaster.

Worth avoiding. Turning the vrat into a competition. Cooking far more than anyone will eat. Plastic decorations. Immersing an idol somewhere unauthorised. Ignoring crowd and environment rules on a day when lakhs of people are out. And assuming that one region's custom is the rule for every Hindu family, because it is not.

Underneath the name

Anant means endless, and a life is mostly beginnings and endings.

Ganesh Chaturthi begins with welcoming him in. Anant Chaturdashi ends with carrying him out. But the ending is not really an ending; what was felt during those days stays in the house, in what people remember and in how they behave afterwards. The thread on the arm says the same thing in its own way.

That is probably why this particular day lands the way it does. It asks you to celebrate completely, and at the same time to understand that everything you can hold in your hands is on its way out.

Questions people ask

When is Anant Chaturdashi 2026?

Friday, 25 September 2026, on Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturdashi.

What time is the puja?

Any time during the day. The Chaturdashi tithi runs from 11:19 pm on 24 September to 11:07 pm on 25 September, so all of Friday's daylight is inside it. Morning, after bathing, is the usual practice.

Who is worshipped?

Vishnu in his Ananta form, the one reclining on Shesha.

What is the Anant Sutra?

A sacred thread tied with fourteen knots, coloured yellow with turmeric, worshipped during the puja and then worn.

Why fourteen knots?

For the fourteen lokas, the fourteen worlds of Hindu cosmology.

Which arm is it tied on?

Most commonly men on the right arm, women on the left. Communities differ.

Is Anant Chaturdashi the same thing as Ganesh Visarjan?

No. Anant Chaturdashi is a Vishnu observance; Ganesh Visarjan is the immersion of the Ganesha idol. They land on the same date because the ten-day Ganeshotsav ends here, which is why people treat them as one day.

Is fasting compulsory?

No. Vrat customs differ between families and regions. Follow what yours keeps.

What can you eat during the vrat?

It depends on the tradition. Fruit, milk and permitted sattvic food are usual. Anyone with a medical condition should follow medical advice first.

When is Ganesh Visarjan in 2026?

The main visarjan is Friday, 25 September 2026, though families keeping shorter Ganeshotsav do it earlier.

Can the puja be done at home?

Yes. The scriptural instruction is a riverbank, but a clean place in the house is accepted, and that is how most families do it.

Last thing

Anant Chaturdashi is more than the last day of Ganeshotsav.

For those keeping the vrat it is Vishnu's day, and the thread on the arm is the whole observance in one object. For Ganesh devotees it is the goodbye at the end of ten days.

And maybe it is the combination that makes the day what it is. You welcome the divine in. You celebrate. You pray. And then you practise letting go.

The idol goes back to the water. What was given stays.

Ganpati Bappa Morya!