Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2026: Date, Vrat Vidhi and Parana Time

Last updated 14 October 2026 · By Rohan Verma

Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2026 is on Friday, 20 November. This is the day Vishnu is said to wake from four months of cosmic sleep, and the day the Hindu wedding season reopens after a long pause.

If you have been waiting since July to fix a wedding date, a griha pravesh or a shop opening, this is the morning the calendar hands those months back to you.

There is one wrinkle. Some panchangs print 20 November and some print 21 November, and both are correct for different families. That split is not a printing error, and this guide explains exactly which one is yours.

Below you will find the tithi and parana timings for ten Indian cities, the vrat vidhi step by step, the samagri list most pages leave out, what you may and may not eat, the katha behind the day, and the shubh muhurat dates that open up right after it.

Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2026 date, tithi and parana timings

Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2026 is Friday, 20 November. It is the Ekadashi of the bright fortnight of Kartik, which is why panchangs also list it as Kartik Shukla Ekadashi.

A tithi is a lunar day, and it does not begin at midnight the way a calendar date does. The Ekadashi tithi this year opens mid-morning on the 20th and closes just before sunrise on the 21st.

What	When (2026)
Dev Uthani Ekadashi	Friday 20 November
Ekadashi tithi begins	7:15 AM, Friday 20 November
Ekadashi tithi ends	6:31 AM, Saturday 21 November
Parana (breaking the fast)	1:11 PM to 3:18 PM, Saturday 21 November
Hari Vasara ends	12:07 PM, Saturday 21 November
Gauna (Vaishnava) Ekadashi	Saturday 21 November
Tulsi Vivah	Saturday 21 November

Those timings are calculated for New Delhi. The tithi itself is the same everywhere in India, but the parana time shifts with your local sunrise, and that window is short.

Here is the parana window for ten cities, all on Saturday 21 November 2026:

City	Parana window, 21 November 2026
New Delhi	1:11 PM to 3:18 PM
Mumbai	1:31 PM to 3:45 PM
Kolkata	12:28 PM to 2:40 PM
Chennai	1:04 PM to 3:21 PM
Bengaluru	1:14 PM to 3:32 PM
Hyderabad	1:09 PM to 3:25 PM
Pune	1:28 PM to 3:42 PM
Ahmedabad	1:31 PM to 3:42 PM
Jaipur	1:17 PM to 3:26 PM
Lucknow	12:56 PM to 3:05 PM

If your city is not listed, check a panchang set to your own location rather than borrowing Delhi's clock. A two-hour error on parana is the single most common slip of the whole vrat.

The day also sits inside a dense fortnight, and it helps to see the run in order:

• Diwali: Sunday 8 November 2026
• Dev Uthani Ekadashi: Friday 20 November
• Tulsi Vivah: Saturday 21 November
• Kartik Purnima: Tuesday 24 November, which closes the month

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Why some calendars say 21 November instead

Both dates are right, for different traditions. Smarta households fast on Friday 20 November. Vaishnava households, including ISKCON families, fast on Saturday 21 November.

The reason is the tithi straddle. Ekadashi begins at 7:15 AM on the 20th, which is after sunrise, and ends at 6:31 AM on the 21st, which is also around sunrise.

So neither morning has a clean Ekadashi sunrise. Smarta practice takes the day the tithi is current for most of the daylight hours. Vaishnava practice has stricter rules about avoiding any touch of Dashami, so it shifts a day later.

Panchangs label the second one Gauna Devutthana Ekadashi. "Gauna" simply means the secondary or following observance; it is not a lesser one.

	Smarta (most households)	Gauna (Vaishnava)
Fast on	Friday 20 November	Saturday 21 November
Parana, Delhi	1:11 PM to 3:18 PM, 21 November	6:49 AM to 8:56 AM, 22 November
Hari Vasara ends	12:07 PM, 21 November	Dwadashi ends before sunrise
Kept by	Most families, and almost every printed Indian calendar	Initiated Vaishnavas and ISKCON households

How do you know which one is yours? Three quick tests:

• Follow your family. If your parents and grandparents kept it on the calendar date, keep the Smarta date, 20 November.
• Follow your temple. If you take prasad or diksha from an ISKCON or Gaudiya Vaishnava temple, follow their calendar, 21 November.
• Follow your kul purohit. Where a family priest sets the dates, his word settles it over any printed calendar.

One practical note for the Vaishnava date. The parana on 22 November is early, between 6:49 AM and 8:56 AM in Delhi, because the Dwadashi tithi is over before sunrise. Set an alarm; you cannot drift into the afternoon on that one.

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What is Dev Uthani Ekadashi, and what exactly wakes?

Dev Uthani Ekadashi marks the end of Chaturmas, the four-month period when Vishnu is held to be in yogic sleep. The name is literal: dev uthani means "the gods rise".

You will see the same day printed under several names, and they all refer to this one tithi:

• Prabodhini Ekadashi - from prabodh, to awaken
• Devutthana or Devotthan Ekadashi - the same meaning in a more Sanskritic form
• Haribodhini Ekadashi - the awakening of Hari, another name for Vishnu
• Kartiki Ekadashi - the Maharashtrian name, tied to the Pandharpur pilgrimage

Chaturmas begins on Shayani Ekadashi in Ashadha, around late June or July, when Vishnu is said to lie down on Sheshnag in the ocean of milk. It runs four lunar months and ends here.

During those months, tradition pauses auspicious beginnings. No weddings, no griha pravesh, no mundan, no new shop openings. Sanyasis traditionally stop travelling and stay in one place to study and teach.

There is a practical layer under the theology. Chaturmas covers the monsoon. Travel was dangerous, roads washed out, illness spread, and crops needed every hand. Pausing large social events during those months was simply sensible, and the calendar encoded it.

When the rains end and the harvest is in, the pause lifts. That is what people are really celebrating when they bang a thali in the courtyard and call out to Vishnu to get up.

The traditional chant used in North Indian homes is worth knowing, because families still say it aloud:

Utho deva, baitho deva, anguriya chatkao deva,
nai sut nai kapas, dev uthao kartik maas.

Loosely: rise, sit up, crack your fingers, the new thread and new cotton are here, wake up in the month of Kartik. It is addressed to Vishnu the way you would wake a sleeping elder in the house, with affection rather than ceremony.

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The katha: why Vishnu sleeps for four months at all

The best known katha says the sleep was Lakshmi's idea. It is a short story and it explains the whole festival better than any list of rules.

In the telling, Lakshmi comes to Narayan with a complaint. He works without rest, she says, and when he does sleep he sleeps for ages at a stretch, and in those long sleeps whole worlds dissolve.

Her request is domestic and very human. Take a short, regular rest every year, she asks, so that I and the other devas get some rest too.

Narayan agrees, and smiles while doing it. From then on he sleeps for four months of the rainy season every year, and those four months become Chaturmas. The day he lies down is Shayani Ekadashi, and the day he rises is this one.

A second katha explains why the day is also about Tulsi. It concerns Vrinda, a devoted woman whose chastity protected her husband in battle, and whose story ends with her becoming the tulsi plant. Her marriage to Vishnu is re-enacted every year as Tulsi Vivah.

That story belongs to the next day's ritual, and we have told it in full in the Tulsi Vivah 2026 puja vidhi guide, so we will not repeat it here.

Both kathas do the same work. They take an abstract idea, the cosmic year turning, and put it in a household frame: rest, waking, marriage, the resumption of ordinary happy life.

If you want the fuller picture of who is waking, the ten avatars of Vishnu are a good companion read, because the Kartik month touches several of them.

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Dev Uthani Ekadashi vrat vidhi, step by step

The vrat has three parts: a morning sankalp, an evening waking ritual, and the parana the next day. Most families do the evening part together and keep the fasting private.

Here is the sequence as it is kept in most North Indian homes.

1. Bathe before sunrise on 20 November and wear clean, unstitched or simple clothes. Add a spoon of Ganga jal to the bucket if you have it.
2. Take the sankalp. Hold water in your right palm, say your name, your gotra if you know it, and what form of fast you intend to keep. Let the water fall into a plate. This is the step that makes it a vrat rather than skipping meals.
3. Clean the mandir and the courtyard. Wipe the idols, change the cloth on the chowki, refill the kalash with fresh water.
4. Draw the charan. Using geru, a red-ochre paste, draw Vishnu's footprints on the floor or the wall near the tulsi. Some families draw them at the threshold so he walks in.
5. Set up the ganna mandap. Tie four or five sugarcane stalks into a canopy over the tulsi pot. This is the signature image of the day in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan.
6. Keep the okhli ready. An okhli, the stone mortar used for pounding, is washed and decorated, and the offerings are heaped around it and covered with a basket until the evening.
7. Light the lamps at dusk. The first diya goes to the tulsi, then the mandir, then the threshold and the courtyard.
8. Do the waking. After sunset, perform the puja, then blow the shankh, ring the ghanti and strike a thali while reciting the "utho deva" chant. The whole household joins in.
9. Offer and distribute. Uncover the offerings, offer them formally, do the aarti, and give the prasad out to everyone present.
10. Break the fast next day inside the parana window listed above.

The evening puja itself is short. A ghee diya, dhoop, flowers, a tulsi leaf on the offering and the Vishnu mool mantra twelve or twenty-one times is enough for a home observance.

If your mandir is still being set up, our guide to setting up a pooja room at home covers the placement questions this day tends to raise.

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The samagri list: ganna, ber, singhada and geru

The offering plate for Dev Uthani Ekadashi is seasonal, not standard. It uses whatever has just come in from the fields, which is why it looks different from a Diwali thali.

Keep this list handy when you shop, ideally two days before:

• Ganna (sugarcane): four to five full stalks for the mandap, plus a few cut pieces to offer
• Singhada (water chestnut): raw, washed, offered whole
• Ber: Indian jujube, the small tart ones
• Seasonal fruit: amla, guava, custard apple, sweet lime
• Geru: red ochre powder for the footprints and the okhli design
• Tulsi: a healthy plant, plus a red chunri and a small set of bangles for it if you are doing Tulsi Vivah the next day
• Diyas: earthen ones for the courtyard, and a metal lamp for the mandir
• Standard puja items: roli, akshat, kalava, dhoop, camphor, a shankh and a ghanti
• Bhog: kheer or halwa, plus batasha and dry fruit

Two of those deserve a word. Singhada and ber are not decorative. They are the first produce of the season in large parts of North India, and offering first produce before eating it is the oldest layer of the ritual.

The sugarcane canopy has the same logic. Cane is cut in late autumn, and tying the first stalks into a shelter over the tulsi is a harvest gesture dressed as a mandap.

For the metal items, families usually keep a dedicated set that lives in the mandir rather than borrowing from the kitchen. A diya, a shankh, a kalash and a bell cover almost every puja in the year, and you can see the full working set in our pooja essentials range.

The earthen diyas go outside and get immersed afterwards. A reusable pair like these silver-plated lotus diyas stays in the mandir through the year and takes the ghee wick for the aarti.

Brass and clay lamps do the same job. The point is simply to have one lamp that is yours and lives there.

If you want the reasoning behind each item on a puja thali, the Diwali pooja samagri list and what each item means explains the standard set in detail.

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What to eat and what not to eat on Ekadashi

Grains are the one hard rule. No rice, wheat, pulses, beans or lentils for the whole tithi. Everything else is a matter of how strict a fast you have chosen.

Classical texts describe four grades of Ekadashi fast, and picking one at sankalp time is more honest than vaguely "trying":

Type	What it allows	Who it suits
Jalahar	Water only	The strictest form, usually kept only by the very practised
Ksheerbhoji	Milk and milk products	Common for elders and for those who cannot do a dry fast
Phalahari	Fruit only, no leafy vegetables	The most popular middle path
Naktabhoji	One grain-free meal, just before sunset	Working people and first-timers

Foods that are allowed in a phalahari or naktabhoji fast include sabudana, singhada atta, kuttu atta, samak rice, potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, milk, curd, paneer, makhana, dry fruit and sendha namak.

Foods to avoid for the whole day:

• All grains and pulses, including rice, wheat, chana, rajma and dal
• Onion and garlic
• Non-vegetarian food, eggs, alcohol and tobacco
• Ordinary table salt, where the family keeps the sendha namak rule
• Honey, on Ekadashi specifically, in many traditions

Tradition also asks you not to pluck tulsi leaves on Ekadashi itself. Pick what you need the evening before and keep them in water.

Who should not fast: children, the elderly, anyone pregnant or nursing, anyone on diabetes or blood-pressure medication, and anyone recovering from illness. Shastra is explicit that the vrat is not meant to harm the body.

In those cases the usual substitution is a grain-free meal plus the full puja. The puja is the vrat; the fasting is the support act.

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How to break the fast: parana rules and the Hari Vasara

Parana is breaking the fast on the Dwadashi, the day after, inside a set window. Breaking it too early or missing the window entirely is treated as an incomplete vrat.

Three rules govern it, and they are easier than they sound:

1. Parana must be after sunrise on Dwadashi, not on Ekadashi night.
2. It must be after the Hari Vasara ends. Hari Vasara is the first quarter of the Dwadashi tithi, and in 2026 it ends at 12:07 PM on 21 November. That is why the Delhi window starts at 1:11 PM and not at breakfast.
3. It must be before the Dwadashi tithi ends. If you cannot eat in the window, eat as soon after it as you can rather than skipping another day.

What to eat first is a matter of custom rather than rule. Most families begin with a tulsi leaf and a sip of charanamrit, then a simple grain meal: khichdi, plain rice with dal, or roti and sabzi.

Keep the first meal light. A day without grains followed by a heavy lunch is how people end up with acidity, which is a poor way to end a vrat.

If you are keeping the Vaishnava date, your parana is on Sunday 22 November, between 6:49 AM and 8:56 AM in Delhi. It is an early window because the Dwadashi tithi ends before sunrise that day, so the fast is broken soon after first light.

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Dev Uthani Ekadashi and Tulsi Vivah: how they fit together

They are two rituals on one seasonal hinge. Dev Uthani Ekadashi wakes Vishnu. Tulsi Vivah, which falls on Saturday 21 November 2026, marries Tulsi to him in the form of the Shaligram.

Many families do both on the same evening, which is why the two get merged in conversation. Others keep the waking on Ekadashi and the wedding on Dwadashi, as the panchang lays it out.

The order makes sense once you see it as a sequence. The household wakes him first, and the first ceremony he attends is a wedding. That wedding is the template for every wedding that will be held in the months that follow.

Practically, here is the split:

• On Ekadashi (20 November): the fast, the sankalp, the ganna mandap, the lamps and the waking chant
• On Dwadashi (21 November): the parana, and the full Tulsi Vivah with the chunri, the bangles, the mangal pheras and the kanyadaan

If your household does the wedding ritual properly, with the pheras and the vidaai, read the full Tulsi Vivah vidhi before the day. It has the mantras, the samagri and the common ordering mistakes.

One tradition worth knowing: families who have no daughter often perform Tulsi Vivah once in their lives to earn the merit of a kanyadaan. It is among the gentlest customs in the Hindu calendar.

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The wedding season reopens: shubh dates after 20 November

Dev Uthani Ekadashi lifts the Chaturmas ban on auspicious events, and the first wedding muhurat of the season is Saturday 21 November 2026. If you have a wedding to fix, this is the practical heart of the day.

For Delhi, the auspicious marriage dates for the rest of 2026 are these:

Date	Day	Nakshatra
21 November 2026	Saturday	Revati
24 November 2026	Tuesday	Rohini
25 November 2026	Wednesday	Rohini, Mrigashira
26 November 2026	Thursday	Mrigashira
2 December 2026	Wednesday	Uttara Phalguni
3 December 2026	Thursday	Uttara Phalguni, Hasta
4 December 2026	Friday	Hasta
5 December 2026	Saturday	Swati
6 December 2026	Sunday	Swati
11 December 2026	Friday	Uttara Ashadha
12 December 2026	Saturday	Uttara Ashadha

That is four dates in November and seven in December, and the exact muhurat hours within each date vary by city. Confirm the lagna window with a panchang or a purohit before you print cards.

Weddings are not the only thing that reopens. The same lifting applies to:

• Griha pravesh and bhoomi pujan
• Mundan, annaprashan and other samskaras
• Shop and business openings, and new ventures
• Vehicle and property purchases

There is a reason the day is treated as an abujh muhurat in parts of North India, a date so auspicious that it needs no further checking. Many families fix small ceremonies on it without consulting anyone.

If you are planning the full arc of the year, our Hindu festival and vrat calendar 2026 lists every vrat and festival date in one place.

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How different parts of India keep the day

The tithi is national, the ritual is intensely local. Four households in four states will spend the same evening doing visibly different things.

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. This is ganna mandap territory. The courtyard is washed, Vishnu's footprints are drawn in geru, the okhli is decorated, and the family gathers at night to shout the waking chant while banging thalis and conch shells.

Maharashtra. The day is Kartiki Ekadashi and belongs to Pandharpur. Warkaris walk to the Vitthal temple on the Chandrabhaga, and the wari that began weeks earlier arrives for this darshan. Households keep the fast and sing abhangs.

Gujarat. It marks the start of the new Vikram Samvat accounting year in some communities, and Tulsi Vivah is kept with particular elaboration, often as a full baraat with sweets distributed to the street.

Odisha and Bengal. The day falls inside the Kartik month observances, and households keeping the Kartik brata complete a month of discipline around it.

South India. The same Ekadashi is kept, though the attention in Kartik tends to sit on Karthigai Deepam later in the month. Temple traditions mark the awakening with a special abhishekam.

What runs through all of them is the same two gestures: a lamp lit at the tulsi, and noise made at the mandir. Everything else is regional dress on those two.

The month's other big observances follow quickly. Govardhan Puja and the Annakut sits just after Diwali, and Kartik Purnima closes the month on 24 November.

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Getting the mandir ready for the morning he wakes

Most households give the mandir a proper clean before this day rather than after it. The logic is simple and a little charming: you tidy the house before someone wakes up in it.

A sensible order of work, done a day or two ahead:

• Empty the mandir completely and wipe the shelf down, back corners included
• Clean the idols with a dry, soft cloth. Dust first, then polish gently
• Change the cloth on the chowki and the asan
• Refill the kalash with fresh water and set a fresh coconut if you keep one
• Replace spent wicks, stale flowers and burnt-out camphor
• Repot or trim the tulsi so it looks its best for the next day's wedding

On cleaning silver-plated pieces, one caution. Use a dry microfibre cloth, never a commercial silver dip or an abrasive paste. Plating is a thin surface layer, and harsh polishes take off the hand-finished detailing along with the tarnish.

That is worth knowing whatever your mandir holds. The craftsmanship on a good idol sits in the fine lines, the crown, the folds of cloth, the serpent hoods, and those are the first things a wire brush destroys.

Households that keep a Vishnu form in the mandir usually bring it forward for these few days, since the whole festival is addressed to him. The reclining form on Sheshnag is the one that matches the story most directly, because it shows the sleep that is ending.

A handcrafted piece like this Vishnu Lakshmi on Sheshnag idol shows exactly that scene, with the pure silver plating catching the lamplight the way the evening puja is meant to look. Wooden and brass Vishnu murtis are equally traditional if that is what your family keeps.

Whatever the material, the rule is the same: the idol faces into the room, not into a wall, and the lamp sits to its right.

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Seven mistakes people make on Dev Uthani Ekadashi

Most slips on this day are about timing rather than devotion. These are the ones that come up every year.

1. Breaking the fast at breakfast. Parana is after the Hari Vasara ends, which in 2026 means after 12:07 PM on 21 November for the Smarta date. Morning chai with sugar is still breaking it.
2. Using Delhi timings in Mumbai or Kolkata. The parana window shifts by up to forty-five minutes across the country.
3. Plucking tulsi leaves on the day. Pick them the evening before. The plant is treated as a bride from this point in the month.
4. Doing the waking at dawn. The waking ritual is a night observance, done after sunset on the Ekadashi.
5. Fasting when you should not be. Diabetes, pregnancy, medication and recovery are all valid reasons to keep the puja and skip the fast.
6. Treating Tulsi Vivah as the same ritual. They are a day apart in 2026, and the wedding has its own vidhi.
7. Fixing a wedding date without checking the lagna. The date being shubh does not mean every hour of it is. The muhurat window inside the day still matters.

One more worth adding, because it is not really a mistake so much as a missed chance. The day asks for daan, and the traditional gifts are food, a blanket, a lamp or fruit given to someone who needs them. It takes ten minutes and it is half of what the day is for.

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Frequently asked questions

देवउठनी एकादशी 2026 में कब है?
देवउठनी एकादशी 2026 में शुक्रवार, 20 नवंबर को है। एकादशी तिथि 20 नवंबर को सुबह 7:15 बजे शुरू होकर 21 नवंबर को सुबह 6:31 बजे समाप्त होती है। वैष्णव परंपरा में यह व्रत शनिवार, 21 नवंबर को रखा जाता है, और तुलसी विवाह भी 21 नवंबर को है।

Why do we celebrate Dev Uthani Ekadashi?
It marks the end of Chaturmas, the four months when Vishnu is believed to be in yogic sleep on Sheshnag. Waking him ends the pause on auspicious events, so weddings, griha pravesh, mundan and new business openings can resume. The katha behind it says Lakshmi asked Narayan to take a regular annual rest, and he agreed, which is why the sleep is yearly rather than endless.

What should not be eaten on Dev Uthani Ekadashi?
All grains and pulses are avoided for the full tithi, including rice, wheat, dal, chana and rajma. Onion, garlic, non-vegetarian food, eggs and alcohol are also set aside. Many families use sendha namak in place of table salt and avoid honey on Ekadashi. Fruit, milk, curd, potato, sabudana, samak rice and singhada atta are the usual permitted foods.

What is the difference between Dev Uthani Ekadashi and Tulsi Vivah?
Dev Uthani Ekadashi is the awakening of Vishnu and is kept as a fast, on 20 November 2026. Tulsi Vivah is the ceremonial marriage of the tulsi plant to Vishnu in his Shaligram form, and in 2026 it falls the next day, on 21 November. Many households perform both on the same evening, but they are distinct rituals with separate vidhis.

Can marriages be held on Dev Uthani Ekadashi itself?
The ban on weddings lifts with this Ekadashi, but the first available marriage muhurat in 2026 is the following day, Saturday 21 November. The Ekadashi itself is kept as a fast day, so ceremonies are generally fixed from the Dwadashi onward. The day is still treated as highly auspicious for engagements, bhoomi pujan and starting new work.

How do I break the Dev Uthani Ekadashi fast?
Break it on Dwadashi, 21 November 2026, inside your city's parana window, which in Delhi is 1:11 PM to 3:18 PM. Start with a tulsi leaf and charanamrit, then eat a light grain meal such as khichdi or rice with dal. Do not break the fast before the Hari Vasara ends at 12:07 PM, and do not let the window pass entirely.

What is Gauna Devutthana Ekadashi?
Gauna means the secondary or following observance. When the Ekadashi tithi straddles two sunrises, as it does in 2026, Vaishnava tradition keeps the fast on the second day to avoid any overlap with Dashami. That gives Saturday 21 November as the Vaishnava date, with parana on Sunday 22 November between 6:49 AM and 8:56 AM in Delhi.

Do I need a courtyard to do this properly?
No. A flat works as well as a village courtyard. Keep the tulsi pot on the balcony and tie two or three sugarcane sticks around it instead of a full mandap. Draw the footprints on a steel plate rather than the floor, and do the chant at the mandir. The intention and the timing carry the ritual, not the floor space.

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About the author: Rohan writes Dev Aastha's festival guides, the dates, the rituals, and the preparations that make each celebration special. He grew up in a household where every festival was an event, and it shows in his writing.

Sources for the timings in this guide: Drik Panchang for the 2026 Ekadashi tithi, the Smarta and Gauna parana windows and the city-wise parana table, and Drik Panchang's shubh vivah muhurat listing for the November and December 2026 marriage dates, all calculated for the cities named. Festival date cross-checked against Prokerala and AstroSage panchang for New Delhi.

Regional customs and the vrat katha are drawn from widely kept household practice and standard Puranic summaries; they vary between families, communities and regions.