Lakshmi Puja Muhurat 2027: Why the Window Closes at 7:06 PM IST

Lakshmi Puja Muhurat 2027: Why the Window Closes at 7:06 PM IST

The Lakshmi Puja muhurat 2027 falls on the evening of Friday 29 October, and in every Indian city it ends no later than 7:06 PM IST, when Amavasya runs out at the new moon. Between your own sunset and that cut-off you get 87 minutes in Delhi and only 59 in Mumbai, before your panchang narrows the window further to Vrishabha lagna.

If you also plan to send a Diwali greeting, our data says it will probably get made on the day. In SubhSandesh's Raksha Bandhan 2026 data, the nearest festival analogue we have (Rakhi, not Diwali, and a small sample of n = 89), 49.4% of pages were built on the festival day itself, and across the platform 48.3% of shared pages are opened on a phone. This page shows how the window is computed, gives sourced sunset times for five cities, and explains why families in New York should look at 28 October instead.

What a Lakshmi Puja muhurat actually is

A Lakshmi Puja muhurat is the part of Diwali evening when three conditions hold at once: the Amavasya tithi is still running, the evening is in pradosh (the span just after sunset), and, for families who follow it, a sthir (fixed) lagna such as Vrishabha (Taurus) is rising. Drop any one of the three and a panchang no longer prints it as the muhurat.

The first two conditions were written down by a government committee. The Calendar Reform Committee report of 1955, prepared for the Government of India under the CSIR, lists Mahalakshmi puja and Dipavali on the Amavasya that closes Ashvin in the amanta reckoning (north India calls the same night Kartik Amavasya) under the pradosh rule. It defines pradosh as two muhurtas after sunset, about 1 hour 36 minutes, and notes that some authorities allow three.

The same report defines a tithi as the time the Moon takes to gain 12° on the Sun, which is why Amavasya ends at one instant for the whole planet. The third condition, the fixed lagna, is a muhurta-shastra preference rather than a calendar rule: a fixed sign is read as Lakshmi staying put in the home. A lagna changes roughly every two hours and depends on your latitude and longitude, so it is the one number you must read off your own city's panchang.

Why the 2027 window closes at 7:06 PM IST in every city

The US Naval Observatory lists the October 2027 new moon at 13:36 UT on 29 October, which is 7:06 PM IST. A new moon is the moment the Moon's lead over the Sun returns to zero, so it is also the end of Amavasya. The panchang pages ranking for this search on 22 October 2026 printed that end between 7:05 and 7:07 PM, a two-minute spread that comes down to rounding and lunar models.

Because the cut-off is the same instant everywhere in India, the city whose sun sets first gets the longest evening. The table compares five cities using the observatory's one-day sun data for 29 October 2027 (see the Delhi and Mumbai queries); the last column applies the 1955 report's two-muhurta pradosh.

In 2027 the tithi, not pradosh, is the binding limit everywhere except Kolkata, where the two-muhurta pradosh ends 29 minutes before Amavasya does. A Delhi window that runs on to 8 PM is following a longer pradosh definition and has stopped tracking Amavasya at 7:06.

Why the time moves between Kolkata and Mumbai

IST is one clock for a country so wide that Kolkata (88.36°E) and Mumbai (72.88°E) alone sit 15.5° of longitude apart. The sun keeps local time, not IST: the observatory puts solar noon on 29 October 2027 at 11:20 AM in Kolkata and 12:22 PM in Mumbai, a 62-minute gap that carries straight into sunset and into the rising of every lagna.

That is why a single national muhurat cannot exist. Vrishabha rises later by the IST clock as you move west while the 7:06 PM cut-off stays fixed, so a western city is squeezed from both ends. If your panchang shows Vrishabha beginning after 7:06 PM, the three conditions never overlap that evening, and families and their pandits choose which condition to keep.

The pradosh definition moves the end time too, and that explains most of the disagreement between apps. On the 1955 report's two muhurtas, Delhi's pradosh on 29 October 2027 runs 5:39 to 7:15 PM; on the three muhurtas it says some authorities allow, it runs to about 8:03 PM. Some panchangs stretch it later still, which is how one evening can carry three different pradosh end times for the same city.

How to work out your own 2027 window in four steps

Each step below gives what to look up, where to find it, and the Delhi value as a worked example. Do the four in order, because each one trims the window left by the one before.

1. Find your sunset for 29 October 2027

Look up sunset for your own coordinates in an astronomical almanac, not a city 500 km away. The observatory's one-day service takes latitude, longitude and a time-zone offset, and returned 5:39 PM IST for Delhi. Take every number from the same source so the rounding stays consistent.

2. Mark the Amavasya end at 7:06 PM IST

This is the only number that is identical across India, because it is the 13:36 UT new moon converted to IST. In Delhi it leaves 87 minutes after sunset. Outside India, convert 13:36 UT to your local clock first, and check which evening it actually cuts.

3. Read the Vrishabha lagna start from your city's panchang

Lagna tables are computed per city, so set your panchang to your own city rather than the Delhi default most apps open on. For Delhi, check that the printed Vrishabha start falls before 7:06 PM. If it falls after, step 4 returns no overlap, and that is a real answer, not an error.

4. Take the latest start and the earliest end

The muhurat opens at whichever comes later, sunset or the lagna start, and closes at whichever comes first: Amavasya's end, pradosh's end or the lagna's end. For Delhi in 2027 that close is 7:06 PM at the latest. Write the final window down before the evening, since nobody re-reads an app with a thali in their hands.

Outside India: why New York looks at 28 October 2027

In New York the same new moon falls at 9:36 AM EDT on Friday 29 October, so by sunset that day Amavasya has already ended. On Thursday 28 October the observatory puts New York's sunset at 5:58 PM EDT, 15 hours 38 minutes before the new moon. The 1955 report puts the shortest possible tithi at 19 hours 59 minutes, so Amavasya must already be running at that sunset, which places New York's Lakshmi Puja evening on 28 October, a day before India's.

Any city west of India should run the same two checks with its own sunset: is Amavasya still running at sunset on 29 October, and if not, was it already running at sunset on the 28th. If the second check comes down to minutes, use a panchang set to that city rather than an Indian one.

Sending a Diwali wish without clashing with the puja

SubhSandesh does not compute muhurats, and nothing on the site replaces a panchang. What it makes is a greeting for one person, and the puja hour is exactly when nobody wants to be typing one. Of the 79 Raksha Bandhan 2026 pages finished in time, 86.1% were built within 24 hours of the festival, again Rakhi data and only n = 89, so the practical advice is to make the greeting before sunset and send it after the aarti.

If that person is family or a friend, the interactive Diwali card on SubhSandesh lets them light a diya waiting at their door with your tag on it, light a row of wish diyas, colour a rangoli until your initials glow, and open a letter from a red-and-gold shagun liffafa. It takes about five minutes to set up, holds up to six photos in sky lanterns, and opens as a private link in any browser with no app. The crackers are drawn by the page, so there is no noise or smoke, and you can switch it between love, family and friend modes.

For a partner abroad who is lighting diyas on 28 October while you light yours on the 29th, a miss-you page built for a partner far away fits the distance better. It is not Diwali-themed, which is its limit; it is about the two of you, not the festival.

When this page is the wrong tool

We do not print Vrishabha lagna minutes for any city, because we could not source them from a non-competitor almanac, so this page cannot replace your panchang's lagna table. Your family's pandit and tradition outrank every number here, including the 1955 report, which recorded rules in force across many regional calendars rather than one correct answer.

Bengal is a second limit. The 1955 report files Kali Puja on the same Amavasya under the nishitha (midnight) rule, and on 29 October 2027 Amavasya ends at 7:06 PM, hours before midnight, so Kali Puja need not fall on the same night as Lakshmi Puja; check a Bengali panjika for it. And for a grandparent who does not use a smartphone, a link is the wrong gift: 48.3% of our shared pages open on a phone, which also means the rest open somewhere else, and a phone call during the evening still beats both.

Sources

• US Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications, moon phases for October 2027 (computed data, no publication date): new moon 29 October 2027, 13:36 UT.
• US Naval Observatory, one-day sun and moon data for Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru (29 October 2027) and New York (28 October 2027), queried 22 October 2026.
• Calendar Reform Committee, Report of the Calendar Reform Committee, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India, New Delhi, 1955: festival rules, pradosh definition, tithi definition and duration.