Akshaya Navami 2026 Date

About Akshaya Navami

Kartik Shukla Navami, two days before Dev Uthani Ekadashi, is kept as Satya Yugadi — the day Satya Yuga is said to have begun. Families worship the amla (Indian gooseberry) tree and traditionally cook and eat a meal beneath it. In Braj, pilgrims walk the Mathura–Vrindavan Parikrama.

The amla tree sits at the centre of the day. On this one date Vishnu and Lakshmi are said to reside in it, so women circle the trunk with a cotton thread, offer water and lamps, and the family then eats lunch under its branches — a rare picnic-as-puja. The Braj parikrama is the other signature ritual: thousands walk the loop linking Mathura and Vrindavan, since merit earned on Satya Yugadi is held to be 'akshaya' (imperishable) and to carry into future births. A vrat-katha is read of Kanaka, a Kshatriya whose daughter Kishori was foretold to lose her husband to lightning; keeping this fast is said to have undone that fate. In West Bengal and Madhubani, the same tithi is kept instead as Jagaddhatri Puja, honouring a martial form of Durga.