When the gudi goes up on Gudi Padwa, and why that time is what it is

The gudi is raised in the morning, on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada, and it is taken down before sunset the same day. In most Maharashtrian households it goes up within the first two to three hours after sunrise, once the family has bathed and the doorway has been cleaned and decorated. There is no single all-India clock time, and two things move it. Sunrise in Nagpur and sunrise in Mumbai are about twenty five minutes apart. And in some years the Pratipada tithi itself begins after sunrise, in which case the window starts when the tithi turns, not when the sun comes up.

That is the practical answer. Below is where the date comes from, what the window actually depends on, and what the day involves.

Where the date comes from

Gudi Padwa is the first day of the bright half of Chaitra, the first tithi after the new moon that falls before the Sun enters Aries in mid-April. It is the Marathi new year. The same day is Ugadi in Karnataka and the Telugu states, Navreh in Kashmir, and the first day of Chaitra Navratri across much of north India.

The rule that fixes the day is the tithi at sunrise: Gudi Padwa is kept on the day on which Pratipada is running when the sun comes up.

2027 is the straightforward case. The new moon ends at about 05:21 on the morning of Wednesday 7 April, sunrise in Mumbai is about 06:28, so Pratipada is already running at sunrise and the day settles itself.

2026 was the awkward case, and it is worth showing, because it is the kind of year in which two panchangs on the same shelf can disagree. The new moon ended at about 06:53 on the morning of Thursday 19 March. Sunrise that day was about 06:19 in Nagpur, 06:34 in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, 06:40 in Pune and 06:43 in Mumbai, every one of them before Pratipada had begun. But Pratipada was a short tithi that year and ended at about 04:53 the following morning, before sunrise on 20 March as well. So it touched sunrise on neither day. When a tithi falls that way, tradition keeps the observance on the day the tithi begins and runs through, which is why Gudi Padwa 2026 was Thursday 19 March and not Friday 20 March. It also has a consequence for the hoisting time, which is in the next section.

The date normally moves about eleven days earlier each year, because twelve lunar months fall short of a solar year. Every second or third year the calendar corrects that by inserting an extra lunar month, an adhik maas, and in such a year the festival jumps forward instead of drifting back. An adhik maas fell in May and June 2026. That, and not the ordinary drift, is why the date moved forward from 19 March 2026 to 7 April 2027.

Why there is no one exact time

A muhurat for hoisting the gudi is not a fixed clock reading. It is a window, and the window opens at sunrise where you live, or at the moment Pratipada begins, whichever of the two is later.

For a sense of the spread, sunrise on 7 April 2027 falls at roughly 06:28 in Mumbai, 06:25 in Pune and 06:03 in Nagpur. A family in Nagpur following the same tradition as a family in Mumbai will therefore raise the gudi about twenty five minutes earlier by the clock, and both are correct.

Within the morning, the common guidance is to raise it in the early part of the day rather than close to noon, after the household is bathed and the doorway prepared.

There is one qualification to that, and 2026 was an example of it. In a year when Pratipada begins after sunrise, the first part of the morning still belongs to amavasya, and the gudi should go up after the tithi has actually turned rather than simply after the sun is up. This matters most in the early-sunrise cities of Vidarbha, where sunrise can run half an hour ahead of Mumbai and the gap is correspondingly wider. So check the tithi start time in your own city's panchang before fixing the hour. If it falls after sunrise, that time, not sunrise, is the start of your window.

Panchangs published for a particular city will name a specific window, and the windows differ slightly between panchangs because they differ in how they divide the day. Follow the one your family has always followed rather than combining two.

One thing is consistent everywhere. The gudi is lowered the same evening, before sunset, after offering naivedya and taking it down with the same care it was raised with. It is not left standing overnight.

What is actually raised

A bamboo pole, washed and clean. A bright cloth tied at the top, usually silk, commonly green or yellow with a zari border. Over that, an inverted pot of copper or silver. Around it a garland: mango leaves, neem leaves, red flowers, and the string of sugar crystals that children wait for all morning.

It is raised at the entrance, or from a window or terrace, on the right side of the doorway, high enough to be seen from the street. That last part is not decoration. A gudi is a public statement that this household has begun its year.

The rest of the day

Most families keep an order to it. The oil bath before or around sunrise. The doorway swept and a rangoli drawn. A toran of mango and neem leaves over the door. The gudi raised, with haldi, kumkum, flowers and a lamp, and the household standing together for it.

Then the neem. A small preparation of tender neem leaves with jaggery, tamarind, a little ajwain and salt, taken by everyone before anything else is eaten. It is bitter and sweet and sour at once, and the meaning is not hidden: the year will contain all of it, so begin by accepting all of it.

Later in the day, panchang shravan, the reading of the new year's panchang. In many homes this is now a short thing, a few minutes with the almanac. It used to be the main event, and there is something to be said for keeping it.

Gudi Padwa is also one of the sade teen muhurat, the three and a half days of the Maharashtrian year on which any beginning is considered auspicious without needing a separate muhurat to be calculated. That is why so many purchases, registrations and new ventures in Maharashtra are dated to this day. A wedding is the one thing that is not settled this way, because a marriage date has its own tests and its own list of periods to keep clear. Those are set out in choosing a wedding date.

A note on what a good day does and does not do

Beginning something on Gudi Padwa is a real tradition and a good one. A family choosing a day, cleaning the house, standing together at the door and eating something bitter before something sweet is doing something worth doing, whatever anyone believes about planets.

What the day does not do is guarantee the venture. I have seen businesses started on this date that failed, and businesses started on ordinary Tuesdays that outlasted them. If you are choosing a date for something that genuinely matters, the day is a good frame, and the decision underneath it still has to be a good decision.

For anything that needs a window chosen against your own chart rather than the shared calendar, that is what a reading is for.

Questions people ask

What is the exact muhurat for hoisting the gudi. There is no single national time. The gudi is raised in the morning of Chaitra Shukla Pratipada, and the window opens at sunrise or at the moment Pratipada begins, whichever is later. Both differ by city and by year, so take the window from a panchang published for your city, and keep to one panchang rather than mixing sources.

Can the gudi be raised in the afternoon if we are late. Tradition places it in the morning. If the morning has genuinely been missed, families generally raise it as soon as they can and still lower it before sunset that day, rather than moving it to the next day. The next day is a different tithi and no longer Padwa.

When is Gudi Padwa next. It fell on Thursday 19 March in 2026, and falls on Wednesday 7 April in 2027. The date shifts each year with the lunar calendar, so it is worth checking rather than assuming a fixed week.