Jain Festivals 2026: The Complete Calendar

This is the Jain festival calendar for 2026, month by month, for both traditions, with the lunar date given alongside every civil date. Where we could not verify a civil date to our own standard, we say so and give the tithi instead of guessing.

There is no shortage of published Jain calendars. There is a shortage of ones that show their working, distinguish Shvetambara from Digambara observance instead of averaging them, and admit when a date is uncertain. This page tries to be the second kind.

How to read this page

The traditions keep different festivals, not the same festivals differently. Shvetambara Paryushan and Digambara Das Lakshana are two observances of different lengths on different tithis. Samvatsari and Kshamavani are twelve days apart in 2026. Presenting one and labelling it “Jain” is how the entire Digambara calendar gets erased.

A civil date is a computation, not a fact. Every date below rests on a tithi, and a tithi names a civil day by the rule that the tithi running at local sunrise governs. Change the city and the day can move; lose or double a tithi and sanghs resolve it by different rules. Treat the lunar date as the primary value and confirm the civil day against your own sangh’s panchang before fixing a vow or booking leave.

The year, month by month

Dates before August 2026 are recorded for reference; the year is already past its midpoint.

February and March

Mahavir Jayanti is the birth kalyanak of the twenty-fourth Tirthankara. Note a textual point the tradition itself carries: the Kalpasutra gives the birth on Chaitra Krishna 14, while Hemachandra gives Chaitra Shukla 13, and it is Hemachandra’s date the whole community observes. See Mahavira’s page.

Navpad Oli is nine days of ayambil, a single bland meal without salt, oil, sugar, milk or vegetables, one day for each of the nine posts of the Siddhachakra. It is kept twice a year, in Chaitra and in Ashvina.

April

Akshaya Tritiya carries a specifically Jain meaning that has nothing to do with buying gold. It is the day Rishabhanatha, the first Tirthankara, broke a fast of over a year with sugarcane juice offered by Shreyansa Kumar, who alone understood how alms should be given to an ascetic. It is therefore the day on which those keeping varshitap, the year-long alternate-day fast begun the previous Phalguna, break it. See Rishabhanatha.

July and August

Chaumasa, chaturmas, is the monsoon retreat. Ascetics remain in one place for four months rather than wandering, because the rains bring an enormous increase in small life on the ground and travel would mean unavoidable injury to it. It is why Paryushana falls where it does: the ascetics are already settled, so the laity can gather around them. The retreat ends on Kartik Purnima, 24 November 2026.

September: the centre of the year

Three things about this block are the errors that circulate most.

Paryushan and Das Lakshana are not one festival. Eight days against ten, different opening tithis, different organising texts. In 2026 they happen to run back to back, so the whole season of restraint spans 8 to 25 September, but that is this year’s arrangement rather than a fixed relationship.

Ananta Chaturdashi and Kshamavani are two days apart. Das Lakshana ends on Friday 25 September; the Bhadrapada full moon is Saturday 26 September; Kshamavani is Sunday 27 September. Calendars merge them constantly and they are distinct days.

Samvatsari has two legitimate dates, Shukla 4 and Shukla 5, and within the Tapa Gaccha the Ek Tithi and Be Tithi positions can separate two sanghs in the same city. The forgiveness said on all these days is Michhami Dukkadam, and in Digambara usage Uttam Kshama.

October

The second Oli of the year, ending on the Ashvina full moon. Published calendars give the span as 17 to 26 October 2026; a nine-tithi observance occupying ten civil days indicates a repeated tithi, so this is a span to check locally rather than to assume.

November

Diwali is a Jain date in its own right and not a borrowed one. Bhagwan Mahavira attained nirvana at Pavapuri on Kartika Amavasya in 527 BCE, and his chief disciple Gautam Swami attained kevala jnana the following dawn. The lamps commemorate the light withdrawn from the world and the light that arose in its place. The Vira Nirvana Samvat era counts from that night and is the oldest continuously used era in India, which is why the Jain year turns at Diwali rather than in Chaitra.

Gyan Panchami is the day of knowledge, on which manuscripts and scriptures are cleaned, arranged and honoured. Most published panchangs place it on Saturday 14 November 2026, since Kartika Shukla 5 is running at sunrise that morning; a minority list Friday 13 November, when the tithi begins. Take the day from your own sangh.

Jain merchant households also perform Chopda Pujan, the blessing of new account books, at Diwali. That is muhurta practice rather than doctrine, and it is covered on the Jain muhurta page.

December

Mauna Ekadashi is kept in silence, and the reason it carries weight is recorded rather than sentimental. Five kalyanakas fall on this single tithi: Aranatha’s diksha, Mallinatha’s janma, diksha and kevala jnana, and Naminatha’s kevala jnana. You can check all five in the kalyanaka calendar, which lists all 120 sacred days with the tithi and nakshatra for each.

The recurring observances

Beyond the dated festivals, the Jain year has a repeating structure that governs far more days than the festivals do.

Parva tithis. Bij, Pancham, Aatham, Agiyaras and Chaudas in each fortnight, plus Punam and Amas: the days of upvas, ayambil, restraint on green vegetables, and pakkhi pratikraman on Chaudas. The Jain Panchang flags them for any city and computes the pachkhan times from your own local sunrise.

Chaumasi Chaudas, three times a year, on the Shukla 14 of Phalguna, Ashadha and Kartika: 2 March, 28 July and 23 November 2026.

Rohini Vrat, kept chiefly by Digambara women on the day the moon occupies Rohini nakshatra, recurring roughly every twenty-seven days. Being nakshatra-based rather than tithi-based, it does not sit neatly in a tithi calendar; take the dates from a panchang for your own city.

The three Ashtahnika Parvas, eight days at the close of Phalguna, Ashadha and Kartika, observed chiefly in the Digambara tradition and associated with the celestial worship at Nandishvara Dvipa.

Dates we have not fixed

Posh Dashami, the janma kalyanak of Parshvanatha, falls on Pausha Krishna 10. Whether that lands in late December 2026 or early January 2027 depends on whether the month is named by the purnimanta or amanta reckoning, and published sources disagree. We have not fixed a civil date to our own standard, so we are not printing one.

Ashvina Navpad Oli is given above as 17 to 26 October because that is what published calendars carry, but nine tithis occupying ten civil days means a tithi is repeated, and repeated tithis are exactly where sanghs diverge. Treat the Ashvina full moon as the fixed point.

Inventing a plausible date is worse than admitting a gap.

Why the dates move

Jain festivals are fixed to tithis within named lunar months. A lunar month averages about 29.53 days, so twelve of them fall roughly eleven days short of a solar year, and the festivals drift earlier against the Gregorian calendar until an extra month, adhika masa, is inserted to pull them back. The Paryushana page works through the month-naming rule that trips up most published tables.

Two further mechanisms move a civil date by one:

• Kshaya, a lost tithi, which begins and ends between two sunrises so no civil day carries it.
• Vriddhi, a doubled tithi, which spans two sunrises.

Shvetambara and Digambara calendars resolve those cases by different rules, and gacchas within each tradition resolve them differently again. Outside India, local sunrise can move a date by a full day on its own. Where the traditions differ, none of them is wrong.

None of these festivals is astrologically elected. They are calendrical, fixed by rule rather than chosen for a favourable configuration, which is consistent with what Jain astrology actually holds: the grahas indicate karma already bound, they compel nothing, and a day is auspicious because of what is done on it.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Paryushana 2026: both traditions, dated day by day
• Samvatsari 2026: the annual day of forgiveness
• Das Lakshana Parva 2026: the ten dharmas, day by day
• Kshamavani Parva 2026: the Digambara day of forgiveness
• Pratikraman: turning back, and what happens in one
• Michhami Dukkadam: what the words actually mean
• The Kalyanaka Calendar: all 120 sacred days

Sources. Paryushan, Samvatsari, Das Lakshana, Ananta Chaturdashi and Kshamavani are computed on this site from the tithi running at local sunrise, sunrise taken at Ahmedabad; the working is on the Paryushana page. Mahavir Jayanti (31 March), Akshaya Tritiya (19 April), the Navpad Oli and Ashtahnika spans, Ashadha Purnima (29 July), Kartik Purnima (24 November), Gyan Panchami (14 November) and Mauna Ekadashi (20 December) were each checked against at least two independent published panchangs and are reported only where those agreed; where a source dissented, as with Gyan Panchami, the dissent is noted in the text rather than suppressed. The Chaumasi Chaudas dates of 28 July and 23 November are derived from the Ashadha and Kartika full moons rather than taken directly. Posh Dashami is deliberately given as a lunar date only, because published sources disagree on the reckoning and we would rather show a gap than print a guess. The five kalyanakas on Margashirsha Shukla 11 are from this site's own kalyanaka dataset. Corrections are seva: tell us.