Diwali 2026 is still ahead. It falls on Sunday, 8 November 2026, 72 days after 28 August 2026. This page is kept whichever side of today the date falls on: the date and the rule behind it are worth looking up either way. For the year after this one see Diwali 2027, and for every year we have a page for see all holiday countdowns.
Diwali 2026 is Sunday, 8 November 2026
There are 72 days between 28 August 2026 and Diwali, which falls on Sunday, 8 November 2026. That is 10 weeks and 2 days, or 48 working days once Saturdays, Sundays and the US federal holidays in between are taken out — the figure that matters if you are counting delivery lead time or a work schedule rather than sleeps. The date is 2026-11-08 in ISO form and 11/8/2026 in the US format, it falls in ISO week 45 of 2026, and it is day 312 of 365.
How the date of Diwali is decided
Falls on the new moon of the Hindu month of Kartika, in October or November. Regional traditions mark different days of the five-day festival as the main one.
That makes it a computed date: there is no fixed day and no simple weekday rule, so it has to be worked out from a formula or a calendar of its own each year. In 2026 it works out as Sunday 8 November.
This date is an estimate, not a fixed point. Diwali depends on observation rather than arithmetic, so the date announced locally can differ by a day from any date calculated in advance, and it can differ between countries in the same year. We show the arithmetic approximation and label it, rather than presenting it as settled. If the date matters — for travel, a booking or time off — confirm it with the community or authority you are following. How we produce these dates, and which of them are approximate, is set out on the holiday sources page.
Diwali is an observance rather than a federal holiday. Offices, banks and schools stay open unless an individual employer chooses otherwise, and it counts as an ordinary business day in every calculator here. Only the eleven federal holidays are treated as non-working days — the list and the reasoning are on the holiday sources page.
Diwali in the years after 2026
| Year | Date | Day | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 29 October 2027 | Friday | Diwali 2027 |
| 2028 | 17 October 2028 | Tuesday | Diwali 2028 |
| 2029 | 5 November 2029 | Monday | Diwali 2029 |
Both the date and the weekday move, because the rule is not tied to either.
Every convention used above — whether the start date counts, how month ends are clamped, which holidays close an office — is written out on the methodology page, including how we count the 48 working days above.