01What is a shubh muhurat?
A shubh muhurat is an elected time. Muhurta is the branch of Jyotish concerned with beginnings, and it works on a simple premise: a thing that is begun once (a marriage, a house entered for the first time, a business opened) is begun under a particular sky, and the tradition holds that sky worth choosing. The unit itself is old and literal: a muhurta is one-thirtieth of a day, about forty-eight minutes. In ordinary use the word now covers any elected window, from a forty-eight minute muhurta to a whole date.
02How is a shubh muhurat actually chosen?
By testing the day against the work, on the five limbs of the panchang and then on the sky itself. The nakshatra has to suit the activity: the fixed nakshatras for a griha pravesh, the movable ones for travel. The tithi must not be a rikta tithi or one the texts reject for that work. The vara, the weekday, should agree, and the yoga and karana must not spoil it. Combinations such as Amrit Siddhi and Sarvartha Siddhi strengthen a day; Panchaka and Dagdha rule it out. Only then is the day narrowed to its clear hours. A date that passes every one of those tests at once is uncommon, which is why muhurat lists are short.
The nakshatra has to suit the work
Muhurta classes the 27 nakshatras by temperament, and the class has to match what is being begun. The fixed nakshatras, Rohini and the three Uttaras, are the conventional choice for anything meant to stay put, a griha pravesh or a foundation. The movable ones suit travel and vehicles. This is the first filter applied, because it removes more candidate days than any other single test.
The tithi must not be one the texts reject
The rikta tithis (the 4th, 9th and 14th of each paksha) are set aside for auspicious beginnings, and Amavasya is avoided for most work. Beyond that, individual activities have their own rejected tithis, so a tithi that clears one occasion can fail another on the same day. Because a tithi begins and ends at a clock time, the test is on the part of the day you actually intend to use.
The vara: the weekday and its graha
Each weekday belongs to a graha, and the graha has to agree with the work: Thursday for study and ritual, Friday for domestic and auspicious occasions, Monday for anything begun gently. The traditional vara starts at sunrise rather than at midnight, which matters for anything elected in the small hours, and the weekday also reorders the entire Choghadiya sequence underneath it.
The yoga and the karana must not spoil it
These two are usually disqualifiers rather than reasons to choose a day. Of the 27 yogas, Vyatipata and Vaidhriti are the ones the texts reject outright, and a few others are avoided for particular work. Of the eleven karanas, Vishti, better known as Bhadra, is the one that rules out the half tithi it occupies, which is exactly why festival timings so often say "outside Bhadra".
The combinations that make or break a day
Some pairings of weekday and nakshatra are read together rather than separately. Amrit Siddhi and Sarvartha Siddhi are the two best known strengthening combinations, and either can lift a day that is otherwise ordinary. Panchaka and Dagdha run the other way and rule a day out. These are checked last, because they can overturn a day that passed all five limbs.
03What is the shubh muhurat today?
It depends on where you are, and that is not a technicality. Every daily window is derived from your city's own sunrise and sunset, so the shubh muhurat today in Mumbai is not the shubh muhurat today in Guwahati: the two can differ by well over half an hour on the same date. The reliably good windows in an ordinary day are Abhijit Muhurat around local noon and the Amrit, Shubh and Labh Choghadiya; the windows to avoid are Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal. Our daily muhurat page computes all of them for your place.
Abhijit Muhurat: the window around local noon
Abhijit is the eighth of the fifteen equal parts of the daylight span, the one straddling local midday, and it runs roughly forty-eight minutes. It is the most generally useful window on any day because it needs no chart and no election; it is simply there, and it moves with your sunrise. The usual exception given is Wednesday, which several traditions omit from it.
Amrit, Shubh and Labh Choghadiya
The daylight span is divided into eight Choghadiya of about ninety minutes each, and the night into eight more, with the sequence reordered by the weekday. Amrit, Shubh and Labh are the auspicious three; Char is neutral and useful for travel. Because the divisions are proportionate, the windows are longer in summer daylight and shorter in winter.
Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal
The three inauspicious windows are also eighths of the daylight span, placed by weekday. Rahu Kaal is the one most people watch, and the convention is to avoid starting new work in it rather than to stop what is already running. All three shift with your city's sunrise, which is why a national table can be half an hour out for where you actually are.
04What is tomorrow's shubh muhurat (kal ka shubh muhurat)?
The same calculation, run for the next date. Because Choghadiya, Abhijit and Rahu Kaal are all divisions of the daylight and night spans, tomorrow's windows shift with tomorrow's sunrise: a few minutes in most of the year, more around the solstices. The weekday changes too, and the weekday reorders the entire Choghadiya sequence, so tomorrow's good hours are not simply today's shifted along. Set the date on the daily page and it recomputes rather than assuming.
05What is the shubh muhurat for marriage in 2026?
Vivah muhurat follows the Sun and Jupiter before it follows the calendar. Marriages are traditionally avoided during Chaturmas, when Vishnu is held to sleep, and during the weeks when Venus or Jupiter is combust (too close to the Sun to be seen) or has set. What remains clusters roughly between late January and early July, and again from November, and the exact dates move every year because those combustions do. Our vivah muhurat list is computed for the year you ask for rather than copied forward from the last one.
06What is the shubh muhurat time for pooja today?
For a domestic pooja the proportionate tool is the Choghadiya or the Hora, not a full election. Amrit and Shubh Choghadiya are the conventional choices, Abhijit Muhurat serves when nothing else is clear, and the Hora of a graha suited to the purpose narrows it further: Jupiter's hora for a ritual, Venus's for an auspicious domestic occasion. A full muhurat, with nakshatra and tithi tested against the work, is for the things you do once. Using one for a weekly pooja is not more careful, only more elaborate.
07When is the muhurat for Diwali, Dhanteras or Raksha Bandhan?
Festival muhurats are not elected at all. They are read off the panchang, because the festival is defined by a tithi. Dhanteras is Trayodashi of Kartik Krishna Paksha, Lakshmi Puja on Diwali falls in the Amavasya that follows, and Raksha Bandhan is Shravana Purnima with the thread tied outside Bhadra. So the question is when that tithi actually runs in your city and which part of it is clear, and the panchang for that date answers it. We do not publish a separate dated page per festival; the tithi timings and the day's windows are what those pages would be reading from anyway.
Dhanteras: Trayodashi of Kartik Krishna Paksha
The purchase muhurat people ask for is not elected: it is whatever part of Trayodashi runs after sunset in your city, because the tithi is the definition and the evening is the custom. Trayodashi can begin in the afternoon of one English date and end in the afternoon of the next, so which evening carries it is a question about your own local tithi timings, not about the calendar.
Lakshmi Puja on Diwali: the Amavasya that follows
Diwali's main puja is held in the Amavasya after Trayodashi and Chaturdashi, and the conventional window is Pradosh Kaal, the couple of hours after sunset, with Amavasya running. When Amavasya ends before sunset the date shifts to the day before, which is the whole reason Diwali dates are argued about some years. Read the tithi's end time for your city and the argument resolves itself.
Raksha Bandhan: Shravana Purnima, outside Bhadra
The thread is tied on the Purnima of Shravana, and the one additional rule is that it is not tied during Bhadra, the Vishti karana, which often occupies the first half of that Purnima. So the usable window is the part of the tithi after Bhadra has passed, which in some years does not open until the afternoon or later.
08Does a muhurat differ from one city to another?
The date usually does not; the hours always do. Nakshatra, tithi and yoga are positions in the sky and change at the same instant everywhere, though that instant lands on a different local clock and can therefore fall on a different calendar date. Everything derived from sunrise (Choghadiya, Hora, Abhijit, Rahu Kaal, the muhurta divisions) is local by construction. This is why a muhurat quoted without a place is only half an answer, and why every timing here is computed for the city you enter.
09What does electing a muhurat not do?
It does not decide how the thing you began turns out, and we will not tell you that it does. Muhurta is a tradition of choosing a beginning carefully; classical texts present it that way, as one input among preparation, judgement and everything else you control. Nothing in the panchang has been shown to determine an outcome. What this page can honestly give you is the astronomy done exactly: the tithi and nakshatra to the minute for your place, and every rule that admitted or rejected a date shown next to it, so you can see what you are choosing on.
