Coming up · Thu 29 Oct 2026
Dev Deepawali in Varanasi: the night the ghats light up
On Kartik Purnima, Tuesday 24 November 2026, Varanasi sets lamps along all 84 of its ghats for Dev Deepawali. What the night is, where to be for it, and how to see it from the river.
Fifteen days after Diwali, Varanasi holds a second festival of lights, and this one belongs to the gods. Dev Deepawali falls on Kartik Purnima, the full moon of the Hindu month of Kartik, and the belief is that the gods come down to bathe in the Ganga that day. The city answers by lighting the riverfront: lamps along the steps of every ghat, from Ravidas Ghat at the southern end to Rajghat in the north, and the evening aarti at Dashashwamedh Ghat at the centre of it. In 2026 the date is Tuesday 24 November.
The date, and how sure it is
Our listing carries Dev Deepawali 2026 as an expected date, and the label deserves a sentence. The festival is fixed by the lunar calendar rather than announced by an organiser, so there is no official page to publish it in the usual way; what there is, is the calendar itself, and the almanacs agree on Tuesday 24 November 2026 for Kartik Purnima, with the Incredible India portal listing the same date. The day is also the gazetted Guru Nanak Jayanti holiday, which is worth knowing for travel plans. How our two labels work is set out in how we check our dates: an expected date is a planning tool, and this one is as firm as expected dates get, but it is still the lunar calendar you are trusting, not a promoter.
What the night looks like
The scale is set by the state as much as by the city: for the 2025 edition the Uttar Pradesh government lit around 25 lakh lamps, 2.5 million, across the 84 ghats, and the lighting is a collective act, temples, households and visitors all placing lamps on the steps. The lamps go on at dusk: almanacs put the pradosh window, the auspicious early evening stretch, at roughly 5:10 to 7:50 pm in Varanasi. The day itself starts long before dark, with the Kartik Purnima bathing at dawn, so the ghats are busy from morning. The main celebrations gather at Dashashwamedh Ghat, where the Ganga aarti that evening is the night's centre of gravity.
From the bank, or from the water
There are two ways to watch. From the bank, you are inside it: walking the ghats puts the lamps at your feet and the aarti in front of you, at the price of the crowd. From the river, you get the whole arc at once, the lit steps reflected in the water, which is why boats fill the Ganga that night. Boats for the evening are arranged at the ghats themselves. If you want the river with a guide and the city's other half attached, the bookable route is the full-day private tour on our Varanasi attractions page: it pairs the sunrise boat ride past the ghats with the temples and Sarnath, and its card says plainly that is what it is. Take the tour for the day, and be on the water or the steps by dusk either way.
Planning the trip
Dev Deepawali closes the Kartik month, and late November is Varanasi's high season: arrive at least the day before, and give the city a day after if you can, because the old city around the ghats does not move quickly on festival night. The Varanasi guide gathers what else is on, and the hotels page searches the city's bases: riverside stays go first for this week. Dates, venue and the basis for the date are on the Dev Deepawali 2026 event page.
More reading on the articles page, or go straight to the events calendar.