Purnima — Next Full Moon Dates, Exact Tithi Start and End Times

When is the next Purnima? Computed full-moon tithi dates with exact start and end instants, the measured half-cycle to the following new moon, and the lost (kshaya) dates where calendars genuinely disagree.

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Purnima is the lunar day on which the Moon stands opposite the Sun and is fully lit. Like every tithi it is a window rather than a date: it opens when the Moon reaches 168° of separation, closes at 180°, and lasts a little over or under a day — so the moon is not "full" for a whole day, and rarely for exactly one.

The next Purnima falls on Fri 28 Aug 2026, opening at 08:59 on 27 Aug and ending at 09:37 on 28 Aug (New Delhi sunrise, IST (UTC+5:30)).

Two things about Purnima are almost always stated wrongly. The first is that it sits at the midpoint of the lunar month; the second is that there are twelve of them a year. Neither survives measurement, and this page measures both rather than repeating them.

The table and the figures under it are computed each time this page is built or opened, so nothing here is a stored list that quietly goes out of date.

The next fourteen Purnimas

Start and end are the exact instants the full-moon tithi opens and closes, in New Delhi wall-clock time. Any row marked as a lost (kshaya) tithi had no reference sunrise fall inside it — those are the dates calendars disagree on.

Date	Tithi starts	Tithi ends	Length
Fri 28 Aug 2026	08:59 on 27 Aug	09:37 on 28 Aug	24.6 h
Sat 26 Sep 2026	23:09 on 25 Sep	22:22 on 26 Sep	23.2 h
Mon 26 Oct 2026	12:10 on 25 Oct	09:58 on 26 Oct	21.8 h
Tue 24 Nov 2026	23:57 on 23 Nov	20:45 on 24 Nov	20.8 h
Thu 24 Dec 2026 No reference sunrise falls inside this window — calendars may differ by a day	10:51 on 23 Dec	07:10 on 24 Dec	20.3 h
Fri 22 Jan 2027	21:17 on 21 Jan	17:41 on 22 Jan	20.4 h
Sun 21 Feb 2027 No reference sunrise falls inside this window — calendars may differ by a day	07:37 on 20 Feb	04:34 on 21 Feb	21.0 h
Mon 22 Mar 2027	18:04 on 21 Mar	15:59 on 22 Mar	21.9 h
Tue 20 Apr 2027	04:53 on 20 Apr	04:00 on 21 Apr	23.1 h
Thu 20 May 2027	16:21 on 19 May	16:47 on 20 May	24.4 h
Fri 18 Jun 2027	04:55 on 18 Jun	06:32 on 19 Jun	25.6 h
Sun 18 Jul 2027	18:55 on 17 Jul	21:18 on 18 Jul	26.4 h
Tue 17 Aug 2027	10:20 on 16 Aug	12:46 on 17 Aug	26.4 h
Wed 15 Sep 2027	02:34 on 15 Sep	04:16 on 16 Sep	25.7 h

Computed 2026-08-08 · dates resolved for New Delhi sunrise, IST (UTC+5:30).

What the numbers actually say

Measured over 119 consecutive intervals from 2026-08-08, one Purnima to the next falls between 29.285 and 29.830 days apart, averaging 29.527 days.

Across the same 120 windows the tithi itself runs from 20.15 to 26.64 hours, averaging 23.12 — and 73 of the 120 are shorter than a civil day, which is why a lunar day and a calendar day drift apart.

Occurrences per calendar year over the computed span — 2027: 12 · 2028: 13 · 2029: 12 · 2030: 12 · 2031: 13 · 2032: 12 · 2033: 12 · 2034: 13 · 2035: 12.

5 of the 120 windows in this sample carried no reference sunrise at all — those are the dates on which two panchangs can legitimately disagree.

The two halves of a lunar month are not equal

A lunar month runs new moon to new moon, and Purnima is conventionally described as its midpoint. If that were literally true, the gap from each Purnima to the Amavasya that follows would be a constant — half of the synodic month, a shade under 14.8 days.

It is not constant. Measured across the occurrences this page computes, the Purnima-to-Amavasya gap moves across a range of more than a day and a half, while the full month varies far less. The reason is the Moon’s elliptical orbit: whichever half of the month contains perigee is travelled faster, and that half is shorter. So the “midpoint” drifts, month after month, and the waxing and waning halves take turns being the long one.

This is why a fortnight (paksha) in the Hindu calendar is a count of fifteen tithis rather than a count of fifteen days. The tithis are equal by construction — twelve degrees each. The days they occupy are not.

The dates where a calendar has to make a judgement call

When a tithi runs shorter than the interval between two sunrises, it can open after one sunrise and close before the next, so no sunrise falls inside it. The usual rule — “the tithi in progress at sunrise names the day” — has nothing to bite on, and the tithi is called *kshaya*, lost.

It is rare, and it is not quite evenly spread. Measured across two hundred consecutive windows each at the reference meridian, Purnima loses a sunrise slightly more often than Amavasya does — a handful of cases either way, with Purnima marginally ahead. An earlier draft of this page said Amavasya never loses one; on a forty-window sample that was what the data showed, and on a two-hundred-window sample it stopped being true. The honest version is that both happen and Purnima happens a little more.

Rows resolved by the fallback rule are marked in the table. They are the honest answer to “why does the date on your site differ from the one on mine” — on those days, different panchang traditions genuinely resolve it differently, and a page that prints a single confident date is hiding a real ambiguity.

What the day is used for

Purnima is the bright counterpart to Amavasya: outward rather than inward. It carries fasts and vrats, it is the traditional day for satyanarayana katha, and several of the year’s largest observances fall on one. Where Amavasya is associated with closing and remembrance, Purnima is associated with completion — a thing finished and visible rather than a thing begun.

As with every tithi, that is a description of practice and not a forecast. The full moon is the same full moon for everyone alive that day. It cannot single you out, and this page will not pretend otherwise; anything personal needs a birth chart, not a calendar.

Purnima — frequently asked

When is the next Purnima?

The first row of the table above, with the exact instants the tithi opens and closes in New Delhi time. It is recomputed rather than stored, so it stays current.

How long does Purnima last?

A little over or under a day, never exactly one. The page measures every window it lists and prints the shortest, longest and average it found — the spread is roughly six hours wide, because the Moon’s speed varies through its orbit.

Is Purnima exactly halfway through the lunar month?

No, and the page shows why. The gap from each Purnima to the following Amavasya varies by more than a day and a half across the occurrences measured here, while the full month varies much less. Whichever half of the month the Moon travels fastest through is the shorter half, and that alternates.

Why is the full moon date on one calendar a day off another?

Because the printed date depends on which sunrise falls inside the tithi window, and sunrise differs by place. Occasionally the window is short enough that no sunrise falls inside it at all — measured over two hundred windows this happens to Purnima slightly more often than to the new moon — and where the primary rule fails, traditions differ. Those rows are marked here.

How many Purnimas are there in a year?

Usually twelve, sometimes thirteen — the lunar cycle is just under 29.5 days, so a calendar year does not divide evenly into it. This page counts rather than assumes.

Is the Moon actually full on Purnima?

It is fully lit at the single instant the tithi ends, when the Moon reaches exactly 180° from the Sun. For the rest of the window it is very slightly short of full or just past it — visually indistinguishable, but the distinction is what makes the end instant, not the date, the precise answer.

What this page cannot tell you

• A tithi is identical for everybody on Earth that day, so nothing on this page is about you. It has no way to distinguish between two readers and does not try.
• Dates resolve for New Delhi sunrise. The tithi window itself is universal; the date is not. Away from that meridian, read the start and end instants rather than the date.
• Rows marked as lost (kshaya) tithis genuinely have no single correct date — different traditions resolve them differently. The page flags them instead of choosing for you.
• It does not name which lunar month each Purnima belongs to, so it will not tell you which one is Guru Purnima or Sharad Purnima. That mapping needs rules this page does not compute.
• Positions come from the shared analytical ephemeris — precise enough to place tithi boundaries to the minute, but not the arc-second engine used for a birth chart.

The other lunar days

• Amavasya dates (new moon) — When is the next Amavasya, and why does my calendar sometimes print a different date from someone else’s?
• Ekadashi dates (the eleventh lunar day) — When is the next Ekadashi, and why are there not simply twenty-four of them in a year?
• Today’s panchang — tithi, nakshatra and muhurat computed for your own city rather than the reference meridian.

Positions from the shared Lahiri-sidereal ephemeris; sunrise by the NOAA solar calculator. Prose last reviewed 2026-08-08; every figure above is computed, not stored. How AskSoma computes things.