Gangaur 2027

About Gangaur

Gangaur is the Rajasthani festival of the goddess Gauri and her husband Isar, a form of Shiva, and in 2027 its main day, Chaitra Shukla Tritiya, falls on Friday, 9 April 2027. Women and girls worship clay images of the pair for about 18 days from the morning after Holika Dahan, and on the last day the goddess is carried through Jaipur, Udaipur and towns across Rajasthan and Malwa before she leaves for her husband's home.

The name joins the two people the festival is about. Gan is Shiva, called Isar ji in Rajasthani homes, and Gaur is Gauri, the goddess Parvati, called Gaura or Gawarja. As women in Rajasthan tell it, Gawarja comes home to her parents the day after Holi, stays for a little over two weeks, and on Gangaur day Isar ji arrives to take her back. The whole festival is shaped like a daughter's visit: she is fed, dressed, sung to, and then given a tearful send-off.

That is also how the ritual spaces are read. The place where the images are worshipped is her pehar, her parents' house. The water where she is taken at the end is her sasural, her husband's.

How the date is set

The puja begins on Chaitra Krishna Pratipada, the morning after the Holika Dahan bonfire, and ends on Chaitra Shukla Tritiya, the third lunar day after the new moon. That span is usually counted as 18 days in Rajasthan, though many sources and families call it a 16-day puja. A woman in her first year of marriage is expected to keep all 18.

Because Chaitra Navratri starts two days before the end, the main Gangaur day usually falls on the third day of Chaitra Navratri. Panchangs list it on the day Tritiya is current at sunrise, so check a local calendar if Tritiya starts late in the day.

The eighteen days

1. Day 1 · Morning after Holika Dahan
   The puja begins

   Clay images of Isar and Gauri are made, or the family's wooden pair is brought out, freshly repainted by painters called matheran.

2. Every morning
   Water and songs

   Women and girls offer water to the images, sprinkling it with a few blades of grass, and sing Gangaur songs.

3. From the seventh evening after Holi
   Ghudlia

   Unmarried girls carry pots pierced with holes and lit from inside, going door to door singing and collecting small gifts of sweets, jaggery, ghee and cash.

4. After about ten days of ghudlia
   Breaking the pots

   The girls break the pots, throw the pieces into a well or tank, and hold a feast with what they collected.

5. Last three days
   Dressing Gauri

   The images are dressed in new clothes and jewellery.

6. Gangaur day · Chaitra Shukla Tritiya
   Fast, puja and katha

   Women in the sixteen adornments keep a fast, offer gune made of flour and turmeric, and hear the Gangaur katha in the evening.

7. Gangaur day afternoon
   The farewell

   The images are carried on women's heads to a garden, stepwell or lake, with songs about Gauri leaving for her husband's home, and are immersed or set at the water.

A few details explain a lot. Unmarried girls worship for a good husband and married women for their husband's health and long life. The Vratotsav Sangraha, a traditional manual, describes the fast as milk once a day. The gune, small ornaments of turmeric and flour, go to the mother-in-law and sisters-in-law after the puja. And in many families the fast is kept from the husband and he does not receive the prasad, which is worth knowing before you send a message.

Processions and regional forms

Jaipur. The city's procession leaves the Zenani Deodhi of the City Palace with the image of Gangaur in a palanquin, followed by elephants, camels, horses and folk performers. It passes through Tripolia Bazaar, Chhoti Chaupar and Gangauri Bazaar, past the Chaugan stadium, to the Talkatora area. In 2026 the procession stopped for an aarti at Tripolia Gate. Jaipur's festival sweet is ghevar, the honeycombed disc soaked in syrup, which families buy to eat and to share with relatives.

Udaipur. Gangaur here coincides with the Mewar Festival. Women carry their images in procession to Gangaur Ghat on Lake Pichola, a boat procession crosses to the same ghat, and a rural Gangaur fair is held at Gogunda, about 40 km away.

Jaisalmer. The town worships Gauri alone. Local folklore says people from Bikaner carried off Jaisalmer's Isar image about 400 years ago, and Jaisalmer still waits for him to come back.

Beyond Rajasthan. Gangaur is also kept in Haryana, in Malwa and Nimar in Madhya Pradesh, where every village holds a community meal on the last day, in Braj, in parts of Gujarat, and by Rajasthani families settled elsewhere, including in West Bengal.

Gauri returns twice more in the year for many of the same women, in Shravan for Hariyali Teej and in Bhadrapada for Hartalika Teej.

What to write

Isar, Isar ji

Rajasthani name for Shiva as Gauri's husband

Gauri, Gawarja

Parvati as worshipped at Gangaur

Pehar

A married woman's parents' home; the puja place stands for Gauri's pehar

Ghudlia

Pierced clay pot with a lamp inside, carried by girls in the evenings after Holi

Gune

Small ornaments of flour and turmeric offered to Gauri

Matheran

Painters who repaint the wooden Isar and Gauri images before the festival

Ghevar

Syrup-soaked honeycomb sweet, Jaipur's Gangaur speciality

How to wish someone on Gangaur

Gangaur wishes go mostly to women: a wife or mother finishing a fast, a daughter or sister doing her first puja, a bride keeping her first Gangaur. Name Gauri and Isar, the ghevar or the procession, and wish a happy, long marriage or a good match without pressing either. Husbands should know that the fast is traditionally kept quietly, so a warm line about the day says more than questions about the vrat.

Write a few lines in your own words, pick a design and share it as one link on WhatsApp, Instagram or anywhere else. They open an animated card made just for them, with no app and no sign-up.

Language tip: English, Hindi + Rajasthani.

When is Gangaur in each year?

Gangaur is set by the Hindu lunisolar calendar, so it falls on a different date each year. In 2027 it falls 19 days later than in 2026.

Frequently asked questions