What this tool is for
The any-city festival tool gives the dates for 2026, 2027 and the following year. This one has no such limit. Choose a city, type a year, and it works out the festivals for that year from the same calculation that writes the 49 city pages. People use it to find a festival date in a year of the past, for example for a birth or anniversary, and to plan far ahead for a temple, a family gathering or a school calendar.
How the dates are worked out
The calculation follows the Smarta rules with amanta months, the way the major printed panchangs do by default. The Moon and Sun positions come from Swiss Ephemeris tables with the sidereal Lahiri zodiac. For each day the tool finds the local sunrise, sunset and moonrise at your city, then applies the tithi rule of each festival: the tithi at sunrise for most, at the evening for Diwali and Pradosh, at moonrise for Karva Chauth and Sankashti, and at midday or midnight where the tradition says so. Where a tithi is lost or repeated, the rule of each festival decides the day. The date is the local civil date, so a festival can fall a day apart in two cities.
Every result has a key timing: the puja window, the parana window after an Ekadashi, the moonrise for Sankashti, or the time the tithi runs. Because the clock is local, the times for a city in a country with daylight saving use the offset that applied on that date.
The range, 1951 to 2074
The planetary tables behind the engine run from 1950 to 2075, and a festival needs the year before and after it, so the tool serves 1951 to 2074. A year outside this range is refused with a message. We prefer to say so than to give a date we cannot support.
How we checked it
For 2026 and 2027 the tool gives exactly the same records as the data files behind the city pages, for every festival and vrat in a sample of twelve cities. For other years, we compared 575 festival dates in the Drik Panchang full-year calendars we saved earlier, for New Delhi from 2020 to 2033, New York from 2024 to 2028, and London, Toronto and Sydney, and all of them match. Dates far from those years follow the same astronomy, but we have no independent printed source for them here, so a family or temple almanac comes first.
Things to keep in mind
Some festivals are kept on different days by different traditions, such as Janmashtami for Smarta and Vaishnava families, and regional festivals follow the solar or the lunar calendar of the region. Where a city is far north or south, the tool warns that the Sun or Moon may not rise or set for days. Dates in the earliest years use the time zone rules the database holds for that place, which may differ from what was in force. For the rules behind each festival see the festivals hub, and for Ekadashi names and fasting rules the Ekadashi guide.
Frequently asked questions
↳ Why does the tool stop at 2074 and start at 1951?
The planetary tables it uses cover 1950 to 2075, and every festival needs the lunar months on either side of the year. That leaves 1951 to 2074 for which the dates can be worked out reliably.
↳ Will the date match my local panchang?
It will for most festivals, since the rules are the ones printed panchangs use by default. Some temples and traditions choose a different day in the cases where a tithi spans two days, and your own almanac comes first.
↳ Can I look up a festival in the past, for example for a birth year?
Yes, any year from 1951. The date shown is the civil date at the city you choose, which is what a family would have kept at the time.
↳ Why is the date different in two cities?
Because the tithi is read at the local sunrise, sunset or moonrise, and the civil date changes at the local midnight. A tithi that ends close to sunrise can belong to a different day in a city far to the east or west.
↳ Does the tool include Vaishnava and regional dates?
It follows the Smarta rules. Vaishnava families and some temples keep a different day for Janmashtami and some Ekadashis in certain years, and regional festivals follow regional calendars, so please check with your own tradition.