Pushya Nakshatra 2026 and 2027: Dates and Timings

How these timings are worked out

Two separate things are being measured here, and conflating them is why published Pushya timings so often disagree.

The nakshatra window is astronomy. Pushya occupies 3°20′ to 16°40′ of Cancer, and the window is simply the period during which the Moon sits in that arc. It is the same event everywhere on earth. Only the clock time used to describe it changes, and the table above uses IST.

The yoga window is the overlap between that nakshatra and a particular weekday, and this is where locality enters. A Hindu day runs from sunrise to the next sunrise, not midnight to midnight. So Guru Pushya begins at whichever is later, the start of Pushya or Thursday sunrise, and ends at whichever is earlier, the end of Pushya or Friday sunrise. The figures above use New Delhi sunrise. Chennai is roughly twenty minutes adrift, Mumbai about the other way.

This is why a window can be short. On 18 June 2026 Pushya begins the previous afternoon and ends at 11:32, so the yoga runs from Thursday sunrise only until late morning. On 23 April it is the reverse: Pushya starts at 20:57 on Thursday evening and the yoga runs through the night until Friday sunrise.

One further source of difference is ayanamsa, the correction between the tropical and sidereal zodiac. These figures use Lahiri, the Indian government standard. A site on a different value will place the boundary a few minutes either side.

Why Pushya carries this reputation

Pushya is the eighth nakshatra, ruled by Saturn and presided over by Brihaspati, preceptor of the gods. Its name comes from a root meaning to nourish, and its symbols are a cow's udder and a lotus. The classical texts treat it as the nakshatra of things that grow slowly and hold their value, which is how it came to be associated with acquiring assets rather than spending on them.

Guru Pushya doubles the signal: Thursday belongs to Jupiter, and Brihaspati is Jupiter. Tradition also uses these windows for griha pravesh, beginning a child's education, and starting long-term ventures.

Worth saying plainly: this is guidance about when to begin something already worth doing. The tradition does not claim that gold bought on Pushya appreciates faster, and neither do we.