Dhanteras 2026: Date, Puja Time and How to Share the Photos

Dhanteras 2026 falls on Friday, 6 November, and the main puja is done in the evening during Pradosh Kaal, which starts around sunset. If you want to remember the day properly, create one shared album before the puja and ask your family to add their photos to it, instead of collecting them from many phones afterwards. Dhanteras, also called Dhantrayodashi, is the first day of the five day Diwali festival in much of India, falling on the thirteenth lunar day of the dark fortnight of Kartik. In Maharashtra, Diwali begins a day earlier with Vasu Baras, which is on 5 November this year. After Dhanteras, Lakshmi Puja is on Sunday, 8 November, according to the Free Press Journal’s festival calendar. Dhanteras is when families clean and decorate the house, buy something new, and worship Lakshmi and Kuber in the evening, along with Dhanvantari in many homes.

When to do the puja Timings are the part people most often get wrong, because they depend on your city. Dekho Panchang gives a Delhi puja window of about 5:48 to 7:14 pm, and its city table lists around 6:19 to 7:45 pm for Mumbai, 6:08 to 7:34 pm for Bengaluru, 5:57 to 7:23 pm for Chennai and 5:12 to 6:38 pm for Kolkata. Other websites publish slightly different windows, for example Shubh Panchang gives 6:37 to 8:37 pm, so treat any single number with caution. The safe approach is to check your local panchang or ask your family priest, and plan for the evening after sunset.

Many families also do a short puja in the morning and a longer one in the evening. A lamp is often lit facing south, which is sometimes called the Yama Deepam, and this is considered an important part of the observance in many North Indian homes.

What families actually do Shopping is the best known tradition. People buy gold, silver, new utensils or a broom, and some families time a purchase before or during the puja window. Business Today’s guide to the festival includes a jewellery buying check, mentioning the BIS hallmark and HUID, which is worth taking seriously if you are buying gold. Ask the jeweller for a hallmarked piece and keep the bill safe.

Traders and shopkeepers often do a puja at the shop or office, with staff and sometimes customers present. Housing societies hold group pujas and rangoli contests, and families in different cities join in on video calls. All of these produce a lot of pictures at once, such as the lamps lined up at the door, the new utensils on the thali, a child holding a diya, and the family seated in front of the puja.

Why the photos get scattered On Dhanteras, people are busy. The day is full of shopping trips, cleaning, cooking and puja preparation, and everyone takes pictures at odd moments. Some photos go into the family WhatsApp group, where they are compressed and quickly buried under festive greetings and forwards.

WhatsApp is still the right tool for a quick wish or a single picture. For a whole day with many people, it is less helpful, because the best group shot might sit on one phone and nobody remembers who has it. A few days later, finding a particular picture means scrolling through hundreds of messages.

Choosing a way to collect them Google Photos shared albums work well if the whole family already uses Google Photos. People can add pictures easily and the quality is good, though they usually need to be signed in, which can be hard for some relatives. Google Drive is good when one person collects files in a tidy folder, such as a photographer’s final pictures, but it is clumsy when many people upload phone photos.

Rollout is a free app on Android and iPhone built for exactly this. The organiser creates an event and shares one QR code or link, and guests scan it, install the app and join. Every photo from every guest’s phone lands in one shared album, live and in full quality, with no WhatsApp compression. If a photographer covers a bigger puja at a shop or society, the organiser can upload their photos from a computer into the same album.

Face search is useful once the album fills up. Each person takes a selfie and sees just the photos they are in, so you do not need to scroll through hundreds of pictures to find your own. Free events last 30 days, which is enough to cover all five days of Diwali, and bigger paid events exist for larger occasions such as a society or business programme.

A simple plan for Dhanteras Choose one organiser, usually the person who runs the family group, and create the album today or tomorrow morning. Put the QR code on a phone at the entrance, or print a small card and keep it near the puja area. Share the link in the family group so relatives in other cities can join and contribute.

Ask people to join before the puja begins, since installing an app in the middle of the aarti is nobody’s idea of a good time. A short message such as add your photos here after the puja is enough. You can then keep using the same album through Lakshmi Puja on 8 November and Bhai Dooj, so the whole Diwali sits in one place.

A few sensible precautions Be careful with what you share publicly. Photos of gold, cash or the inside of your home are best kept within the family, and it is wise not to post them on open social media, especially with your location. Keep the album limited to people you invited, and ask before sharing pictures of children or elders.

If you are photographing inside a jewellery shop or a market, ask permission first, and avoid pictures of invoices, payment screens or other customers. Many shops have their own rules, and staff will usually tell you what is fine. Take your photos of the puja and the family, and keep the rest private.

Dhanteras is a busy, bright and slightly chaotic day, and that is exactly why the pictures are worth keeping. Set up the album early, share the link, and let everyone add what they take, so the lamps, the thali and the faces are easy to find when the festival is over.