Festival
Ganesh Chaturthi
Also known as Vinayaka Chaturthi · Ganeshotsav
When it falls
Eleven days · Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturthi → Anant Chaturdashi
2026
- ★ Ganesh ChaturthiMon, 14 Sept 2026
- Anant ChaturdashiFri, 25 Sept 2026
Also: 2027 · 4 Sept
Significance
Ganesh Chaturthi celebrates the birth of Ganesha — the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, the Vighnaharta, remover of obstacles, invoked at the start of any undertaking.
For up to ten days, clay images of Ganesha are brought into homes and grand public pandals (pavilions) and treated as an honoured guest — fed, sung to, garlanded. The festival ends with visarjan: the image is carried to water and immersed, the guest sent home with the prayer Ganpati Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshi lavkar ya — "come again soon next year." It is a festival about welcome and letting-go in the same breath.
The eleven days
Ganesh Chaturthi
Shukla Chaturthi
The arrival. The image is installed (pranapratishtha) and the ten days of welcome begin. Modak — Ganesha’s favourite sweet dumpling — is offered.
Anant Chaturdashi
Shukla Chaturdashi · also Visarjan
The farewell — the canonical day of visarjan, when the image is carried in procession to the water and immersed, and the guest is sent home for another year.
The timing, explained
It opens on Shukla Chaturthi — the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada — and the canonical immersion is Anant Chaturdashi, the fourteenth, eleven days later. Households immerse on their own day, though: a day and a half, three, five, or seven days in, which is why the festival’s "length" varies house to house.
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