Sivarathri (Kerala) 2028: Date, Puja Muhurat & Significance

Sivarathri (Kerala) Muhurat: 12:10 AM to 12:58 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 Chaturdashi runs 23 Feb, 10:45 → 24 Feb, 13:27.

Devotees fast and keep the night vigil at the riverside Shiva temple with bhajan and abhisheka in the four watches; at dawn, families sit on the sandbank and offer pinda and water to their dead, guided by priests. The Aluva Sivarathri fair around it runs for days. Other Kerala Shiva shrines — Vaikom, Ettumanoor, Thiruvananthapuram — hold their own vigils.

The Shivaratri vigil rests on the pan-Indian legends — the hunter who kept an unwitting fast and vigil, the poison Shiva drank at the churning, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati. The Aluva sandbank rite adds a strong ancestral dimension: the exposed bed of the Periyar in late winter becomes, for one morning, the largest riverside shraddha ground in Kerala.

Source: Regional / sectarian festival tradition and the sources named in the text

The Aluva Sivarathri and its bali tarpanam are a long-standing Kerala observance, described in Travancore-era accounts; the Manalpuram gathering is now a state-managed event drawing pilgrims from across Kerala and the Gulf diaspora.

• Wikipedia

1. In Kerala the great Shivaratri gathering is at Aluva, on the sandbank of the Periyar, where a temporary shrine is set up.
2. Devotees fast and keep the night-long vigil with prayers and devotional programmes.
3. At dawn they perform vavu bali, offerings to the ancestors, on the riverbank before breaking the fast.

• Aluva (Ernakulam). The Periyar sandbank vigil to Shiva and the mass dawn bali tarpanam for the ancestors; the multi-day Sivarathri fair.
• Vaikom, Ettumanoor, Thiruvananthapuram. All-night Shiva worship at the major Kerala shrines.

• After the bali — The fast is broken with a simple meal after the dawn offering.

Sivarathri (Kerala) is kept on the day when Chaturdashi of Phalguna Krishna paksha prevails at Nishita (the midpoint of the night). That day is Wednesday, 23 February 2028, and the Sivarathri (Kerala) muhurat is from 12:10 AM to 12:58 AM (night of 23-24 February). Chaturdashi holds at Nishita only on this day.

at Nishita (the midpoint of the night)

Kerala's Shivaratri is Maha Shivaratri, the Krishna Chaturdashi of Magha by the amanta reckoning, in the Malayalam month of Kumbham (February or March); the vigil runs through the night and the bali at dawn.

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