Krishna Janmashtami 2028: Date, Puja Muhurat & Significance

Krishna Janmashtami Muhurat: 12:02 AM to 12:50 AM (New Delhi).

These times are worked out from local sunrise and sunset, so they shift by city. Choose your city for your own times.

Krishna Ashtami runs 13 Aug, 04:43 → 14 Aug, 05:37.

1. Fast through the day. Devotees keep a fast, nirjala or with fruit and milk, until the midnight birth.
2. Prepare the cradle. Decorate a small cradle (jhula) for Bal Gopal with flowers and cloth, and set the altar with Krishna's image.
3. Midnight abhishek. At Nishita (around midnight), bathe Bal Gopal with panchamrit and then clean water, marking Krishna's birth.
4. Dress and offer. Dress him in new clothes and ornaments, offer tulsi, makhan-mishri, panjiri and fruit, and rock the cradle.
5. Aarti and kirtan. Perform the aarti and sing bhajans; many read the birth episode from the Bhagavata Purana.
6. Break the fast. Break the fast after the midnight puja or the next morning, as per family custom, with the prasad.

• Image or murti of Bal Gopal
• A small cradle and decorations
• Panchamrit (milk, curd, ghee, honey, sugar)
• New clothes and ornaments for the deity
• Tulsi leaves and flowers
• Makhan-mishri and panjiri
• Fruits
• Ghee lamp, incense and camphor

Krishna is at once the child of Gokul who stole butter and lifted Govardhan, the friend and charioteer of Arjuna who spoke the Bhagavad Gita, and, for Vaishnavas, the svayam bhagavan: God in person. His birth-day is the central festival of the Vaishnava year.

The core observance is a day-long fast, often nirjala or phalahar, kept until the Nishita puja. At midnight the murti of the infant Krishna is bathed in panchamrit, rocked in a decorated cradle (jhula), and greeted with conch, bell and the aarti; the fast is then broken with charanamrit and prasad.

The next day is Nandotsav, the joy in Nanda's house at the birth, kept in Maharashtra as Dahi Handi, where teams build human pyramids to break a high pot of curd and butter, re-enacting the boy Krishna's makhan-chori.

The date can fall on two different days. The Smarta rule keeps the day whose Nishita carries the Ashtami tithi; the Vaishnava rule additionally requires the Rohini nakshatra, so many temples and the Gaudiya / ISKCON tradition can observe it a day later: this site computes and links both.

Kamsa, the tyrant of Mathura, was warned by a voice from the sky that the eighth child of his cousin Devaki and her husband Vasudeva would kill him. He imprisoned the couple and killed their children one by one. The seventh conception, Balarama, was drawn out and transferred to Vasudeva's other wife Rohini at Gokul.

The eighth child, Krishna, was born at midnight in the prison. The guards fell asleep, the shackles opened, and the doors gave way; Vasudeva carried the newborn out through a storm, the Yamuna in flood parting or subsiding for him and the serpent Shesha shielding the child with his hoods.

In Gokul, Nanda's wife Yashoda had just given birth to a girl: Yogamaya. Vasudeva laid Krishna beside her and carried the girl back to the prison. When Kamsa seized her to dash her down, she rose into the air as the goddess and told him that his slayer was already born and safe. Krishna grew up in Gokul and Vrindavan, and in time returned to end Kamsa.

Source: Bhagavata Purana, Dashama Skandha (Book 10), chs. 1–4; Harivamsha; Vishnu Purana, Book 5

Krishna as a distinct deity is attested well before the common era: Panini's grammar and the Chandogya Upanishad mention him, and Greek and epigraphic sources of the last centuries BCE record Vasudeva-Krishna worship. The birth-narrative is fixed in the Harivamsha and the Bhagavata Purana in the first millennium CE.

The Janmabhoomi at Mathura has been a pilgrimage centre for two millennia; the Vrindavan temples of the Gaudiya, Vallabha and Nimbarka sampradayas from the 16th century made Janmashtami a major public festival across North India.

Dahi Handi grew in the Maratha country and became a large, competitive spectacle in 20th-century Mumbai; injuries at great pyramid heights have since led courts and the state to cap the height and the age of participants.

• Bhagavata Purana, Book 10: the birth and childhood of Krishna
• Patanjali, Mahabhashya (on Panini): early reference to Krishna
• Heliodorus pillar inscription, Besnagar, c. 110 BCE: Vasudeva worship

1. A fast is taken from sunrise, nirjala or phalahar by resolve, with the day spent in bhajan, the reading of the Bhagavata's tenth book, and the decoration of a cradle and a small image or footprints of the infant Krishna.
2. At Nishita (around solar midnight) the birth is celebrated: the murti is bathed in panchamrit and Ganga jal, dressed and adorned, placed in the jhula and rocked, and greeted with the shankh, ghanti and the Janmashtami aarti; a chhappan bhog or a simple naivedya is offered.
3. The fast is broken after the midnight puja with charanamrit and prasad; where the Ashtami and Rohini both extend past midnight, some keep the fast until they end the next morning.
4. The following day is Nandotsav / Dahi Handi: sweets and gulal, and in Maharashtra and Gujarat the breaking of a high pot of curd by a human pyramid.

• Braj (Mathura, Vrindavan, Gokul). The Janmabhoomi and the great Vrindavan temples; jhula darshan, raslila, and Nandotsav at Gokul the next day.
• Maharashtra. Gokulashtami with Dahi Handi: govinda troupes build pyramids to break a curd pot strung high across the street; gopalkala (dahi-poha) is the prasad.
• Gujarat, Dwarka. Makhan Handi and night-long bhajan at Dwarkadhish and the haveli temples; the fair at Dakor.
• Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra. Sri Jayanti / Gokulashtami: the infant's footprints are drawn in rice-flour kolam from the doorway to the puja room; seedai, murukku, cheedai and butter are offered.
• Bengal, Odisha, Manipur. Janmashtami with the Bhagavata paath and Nanda Utsav; ISKCON's Mayapur is a major centre; in Manipur it is among the largest festivals of the year.

• Makhan–mishri, charanamrit — Butter and rock-sugar, and the panchamrit from the abhishek, given as the first prasad at midnight.
• Dhaniya panjiri — A roasted prasad of coriander-seed flour, ghee, sugar and nuts, specific to the Janmashtami vrat in the North.
• Chhappan bhog, gopalkala, seedai, murukku — The 56-item offering where kept; dahi-poha in Maharashtra; deep-fried rice snacks in the Tamil country.

Krishna Janmashtami is kept on the day when Ashtami of Bhadrapada Krishna paksha prevails at Nishita (the midpoint of the night). That day is Sunday, 13 August 2028, and the Krishna Janmashtami muhurat is from 12:02 AM to 12:50 AM (night of 13-14 August). Ashtami holds at Nishita only on this day.

at Nishita (the midpoint of the night)

Janmashtami is the Krishna Ashtami of Bhadrapada (Shravana in the amanta reckoning): the eighth tithi of the waning fortnight, with the Moon 84°–96° behind the Sun, and traditionally with the Moon in the Rohini nakshatra (Moon 40°–53°20' sidereal, in Vrishabha). The birth is placed at Nishita, the eighth of the fifteen day-muhurtas, near solar midnight, so the Smarta reckoning keeps the day whose Nishita the Ashtami covers. The Vaishnava reckoning additionally requires the Rohini nakshatra to be current, which can move the date one day later. The Sun stands in sidereal Simha or Kanya. The Gregorian date drifts about 11 days earlier each year and jumps back ~19 days in an adhika-month year.

A lunar date: Ashtami of the dark half of Bhadrapada drifts about 11 days earlier each solar year, then jumps back ~19 days when a leap (Adhika) month is inserted.