Diwali 2026: The Festival of Lights

What is Diwali?

Diwali — from the Sanskrit deepavali, "row of lamps" — is a five-day festival observed across India and by Indian-origin communities around the world. The main day falls on the new moon of the Hindu month of Kartika, which usually places it in October or November. At its heart is a single image: a small lamp lit at the doorway of a home that has been cleaned, decorated and made ready. Around that image have gathered, over centuries, a layered set of stories, foods, prayers and crafts — some shared everywhere, others specific to a region, a tradition or a community.

For some readers Diwali is the festival of Rama's return to Ayodhya. For others it commemorates Krishna's victory over Narakasura, or the day Mahavira attained moksha, or the release of Guru Hargobind, or Kali's night. The festival accommodates all of these without flattening any of them, which is part of why it has spread so widely. To go deeper into the meaning, our traditions and significance page covers the major stories and the regional variations.

How People Celebrate

The shape of Diwali at home is unusually consistent for a festival with so many variations. Most households — whether in Mumbai, Manchester or Melbourne — end up doing some version of the following, in roughly this order:

• Clean and prepare the home in the days before the festival. The cleaning is practical and symbolic at once: Lakshmi is said to enter homes that have been made ready.
• Decorate the doorway, usually with a rangoli, a marigold-and-mango-leaf toran, and rows of clay diyas on either side of the threshold.
• Buy something small in metal on Dhanteras — gold, silver or a brass utensil — as a traditional gesture of inviting prosperity.
• Cook or buy festive food, with sweet and savoury items in roughly equal measure. The sweets and foods page covers what's typical.
• Perform Lakshmi Puja on the third evening, the main day of Diwali. A short home puja sequence is described step-by-step in our Lakshmi Puja guide.
• Share the offering — sweets, fruit, savouries — with family, neighbours and anyone who passes by.
• Light more diyas after the puja, set off (or skip) firecrackers, send Diwali wishes to friends, and end the night with the household's main lamp still burning.

Different households do all this at different scales. Some keep it to the puja and a single row of diyas; others run a five-day event with full meals, gift exchanges and an open door for relatives. Both are recognisably Diwali.