Diwali 2027 Date: Friday 29 October, and the Tamil Nadu Exception

Diwali 2027 Date: Friday 29 October, and the Tamil Nadu Exception

The Diwali 2027 date is Friday 29 October 2027, the evening of Lakshmi Puja, and the Government of India's 2027 holiday list fixes it as the gazetted holiday. The five days run from Dhanteras on Wednesday 27 October to Bhai Dooj on Sunday 31 October, while Tamil Nadu's Deepavali falls a day earlier, on Thursday 28 October. Plan your greetings before that week: on Raksha Bandhan 2026, the nearest festival SubhSandesh holds data for (89 pages, so treat it as a rough guide), 49.4% of pages were built on the festival day itself and 27.0% the day before.

Below: the five days with tithi times we calculated, why the date jumps 10 days from 2026, why the South and the diaspora differ, and how to spot wrong dates. Every date is checked against the government's order, not copied from another page.

How the Diwali date is decided, and the 2027 result

Diwali's main day is the evening when Amavasya, the new-moon tithi, is running during pradosh, roughly 2 hours 24 minutes after sunset. A tithi is a lunar day, the time the Moon takes to gain 12 degrees on the Sun, so it can begin and end at any hour rather than at midnight.

For 2027 we calculated the tithi boundaries ourselves with the open-source Astronomy Engine library. Amavasya begins at 20:49 IST on Thursday 28 October and ends at 19:07 IST on Friday 29 October. That end point is the astronomical new moon, which NASA's moon-phase table for 2001 to 2100 puts at 13:36 UT on 29 October 2027, or 19:06 IST.

Thursday's sunset in Delhi is at 17:39, and the pradosh window closes more than 40 minutes before Amavasya begins. On Friday, sunset at 17:38 falls well inside Amavasya, so Lakshmi Puja is Friday across India. The Department of Posts circular of 8 September 2026, relaying the DoPT order of 16 July 2026, lists Diwali (Deepavali) on Friday 29 October, Kartika 7 in the national Saka calendar.

The five days of Diwali 2027, with times and holiday status

The table lines up each day with its tithi, its status on the central government's 2027 list for Delhi, and our only festival planning data: Raksha Bandhan 2026 pages built at the same distance from the main day.

Read the last column with care: Raksha Bandhan is a different, one-day festival, and 89 pages is a small sample. Still, three in four senders acted inside the final 48 hours, and none built more than 7 days ahead.

Why Diwali 2027 comes 10 days earlier than Diwali 2026

Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November and Diwali 2027 on Friday 29 October. Twelve lunar months last about 354.37 days, which Sewell and Dikshit's The Indian Calendar (1896) describes as falling "short of the solar year by about eleven days", so any festival tied to a tithi slides earlier each year.

NASA's table shows exactly 12 new moons between 9 November 2026 and 29 October 2027, a span of 354.3 days. The slide stops because the calendar adds a month: Sewell and Dikshit define the adhika, or added, month as a lunar month in which the Sun enters no new zodiac sign. Between Diwali 2025 and Diwali 2026 there were 13 lunations, 383.8 days, and that extra month is why Diwali 2026 landed so late.

The method is very old. S.K. Chatterjee's survey of Indian calendars for IAU Colloquium 91 (1987) describes the Vedanga Jyotisha's five-year cycle of 1,830 days, 60 solar months and 62 lunar months, which works out to two added months every five years. Here is the pattern around 2027, from our own new-moon calculation:

• 2025: Monday 20 October
• 2026: Sunday 8 November, after an added month
• 2027: Friday 29 October
• 2028: Tuesday 17 October (calculated; the 2028 holiday list is not out yet)
• 2029: Monday 5 November (calculated)

Amanta or purnimanta: one night, two month names

Indian lunar calendars end the month in one of two places. In Sewell and Dikshit's words, under the amanta system "a month ends with the moment of amavasya or new moon", the purnimanta month ends at the full moon, and "the purnimanta scheme is now in use in Northern India, and the amanta scheme in Southern India".

So the same night carries two labels. In a purnimanta calendar, as in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the dark fortnight opens the new month, so Diwali is Kartika Amavasya. In an amanta calendar, as in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, the same Amavasya closes Ashvin, so it is Ashvin Amavasya.

The date, Friday 29 October, does not change; only the month name does. Remember that when a relative's panchang seems to disagree with yours.

Why Tamil Nadu celebrates Deepavali on Thursday 28 October 2027

Tamil Deepavali is Naraka Chaturdashi, the morning Krishna's victory over Narakasura is marked with an oil bath before dawn. The test is therefore which tithi is running before sunrise, not after sunset. In Chennai on 28 October, sunrise is at 06:01 and Chaturdashi runs until 20:49, so Deepavali is Thursday 28 October 2027, a day ahead of Lakshmi Puja.

The DoPT order anticipates this. It allows central government offices in a state to observe the Deepavali holiday on Naraka Chaturdasi, Thursday 28 October, if that state declares that day alone as its compulsory Diwali holiday.

One page in the current top 10 lists the South a day earlier every year for a century; our calculation disagrees. Running the same pre-dawn test for 2024 to 2029, Chennai's Chaturdashi morning and Delhi's Amavasya evening land on the same date in five of the six years; 2027 is the only split, and in 2025 both fell on Monday 20 October. Treat these Tamil dates as drik (astronomical) calculations; temple almanacs using older vakya tables can differ by hours, so confirm with your family priest.

Diwali 2027 for families abroad: the date may be Thursday

Amavasya ends at 13:36 UT on 29 October, before sunset anywhere west of the Gulf. Calculated for local sunset, the answers split three ways:

• London, Toronto, New York and San Francisco: Thursday 28 October, because Amavasya has ended before Friday's sunset.
• Singapore and Sydney: Friday 29 October, the same as India.
• Dubai and the Gulf: borderline, with Amavasya starting about 100 minutes after Thursday's sunset.

Many diaspora households keep India's date so the whole family lights diyas on the same night, which is reasonable. If your temple publishes a local panchang, its date wins.

Which Diwali 2027 dates online are wrong, and how to check

On 22 October 2026 we read the top 10 Google results in India for this query. Seven state Friday 29 October outright, one social-media answers page says Thursday 28 October, and a video title still asks "28 or 29 October". Thursday is Choti Diwali in the North and Deepavali in Tamil Nadu, but it is not Lakshmi Puja. Three checks settle any date you are sent:

• The weekday: 29 October 2027 is a Friday, so a page calling Diwali 2027 a Thursday has given you the Chaturdashi day.
• The government list: the DoPT 2027 list gives Friday 29 October as the gazetted holiday.
• The local sunset: for any evening timing, use your own city, since sunset on 29 October is 18:06 in Mumbai and 17:01 in Kolkata.

Sending a Diwali wish on 29 October: what the timing means

Once the date is settled, the question is when your greeting lands. Across the SubhSandesh platform, 48.3% of shared pages are opened on a phone and each page averages 11.1 views, so a page sent on Thursday night is usually reopened on Friday.

For the one person you most want to wish, the interactive Happy Diwali page on SubhSandesh lets them light a diya at their door with a tag from you, light a row of wish diyas, colour a rangoli until your initials glow and write with a sparkler. Sky lanterns hold up to six photos, a letter waits in a shagun liffafa, and you can add a YouTube song or a Diwali favourite.

It takes about five minutes, and the private link opens in any browser with no app or account. Send it on the evening of 29 October, or on the 28th if they live in London or Toronto.

If the person is far away and this Diwali is mostly about missing them, a miss-you page with open-when letters fits better. It is a long-distance template, not a Diwali one.

When a Diwali page is the wrong thing to send

This post answers one question, the date, and the Happy Diwali template does not help with puja timing, muhurat, rangoli patterns or sweets. For a grandparent who does not use a smartphone, a phone call on the morning of 29 October beats any link.

For someone in the same house, light the diyas together. For a housing-society group of 40 people, a short message beats forty personal pages.

Sources

• Department of Posts letter of 8 September 2026, circulating DoPT O.M. No. 12/2/2023-JCA (16 July 2026), holidays for 2027.
• NASA Goddard, Phases of the Moon: 2001 to 2100, Fred Espenak (undated).
• Sewell and Dikshit, The Indian Calendar (1896), Internet Archive.
• S.K. Chatterjee, "Indian Calendars", IAU Colloquium 91 (1987); extract read, the PDF is a scan.
• Astronomy Engine 2.1.19, Don Cross, used for our tithi and sunset times.