Shani Amavasya is the new moon that happens to fall on a Saturday. Amavasya is the dark, moonless close of the lunar fortnight — a solemn, inward tithi traditionally given to the ancestors — and Saturday is Shani Dev's own weekday. The somber quality of the new moon sits close to Shani's temperament, so when the two coincide the day is held to belong to him twice over, and it becomes the year's most sought-after occasion to seek his grace.
That is why so many turn to it. Those living through Sade Sati or the Dhaiya, the long Saturn periods that test patience and resolve, keep this day to ask Shani for ease. And because it is also an Amavasya, it is a fitting day for tarpan, the offering of water to one's forebears. The day belongs to no fixed month; it arrives whenever an Amavasya lands on a Saturday, which happens only a handful of times in a year.
Date & tithi timing
The next Saturday Amavasya and its tithi window for your city
Shani Amavasya 2026 falls on Saturday, 10 October 2026. The Amavasya tithi runs from 09 October 2026, 9:36 PM to 10 October 2026, 9:20 PM.
Tithi begins
09 October 2026, 9:36 PM
Tithi ends
10 October 2026, 9:20 PM
| Upcoming dates | Day |
|---|---|
| 10 October 2026 | Saturday |
| 6 February 2027 | Saturday |
| 22 July 2028 | Saturday |
Times shown for New Delhi; pick your city on the Amavasya calendar for local timings.
Shani Amavasya at a glance
Date in 2026
Saturday, 10 October 2026
Tithi & Paksha
Amavasya · Krishna Paksha
Presiding deity
Shani Dev (Saturn)
Falls on
Any Amavasya on a Saturday
Also called
Shanishchari Amavasya
Why it belongs to Shani
Where the new moon meets Saturn's day
In Jyotish, Shani — Saturn — is the stern teacher among the planets. He is called Shanaishchara, the slow-moving one, and he governs discipline, labour, patience and the long working-out of one's karma. His lessons are rarely gentle, but they are held to be just: he returns to a person, in time, what has actually been earned. Saturday is the weekday under his rule, the day set aside to face him honestly.
Amavasya has its own character — quiet, turned inward, a natural time for reflection and for remembering those who came before. When it falls on a Saturday, the tradition reads the two as reinforcing each other, and the worship of Shani on that day is believed to carry unusual weight. That is the sense behind the day's other name, Shanishchari Amavasya.
The puja and its traditional remedies
Oil, iron, black sesame and the mustard-oil lamp
The day's worship centres on Shani Dev himself. Many begin with darshan at a Shani temple, where the image is bathed (abhishek) in mustard or sesame oil, the oils long associated with him. At home, or beneath a Peepal tree, a lamp of mustard oil is lit at dusk. The Peepal is held dear to Shani, and a Saturday-evening lamp beneath it is among the oldest customs tied to this day.
The offerings share a colour and a weight: black sesame (kala til), black urad, a piece of iron, black cloth and mustard oil. The same items, along with food and oil, are given in charity to labourers, the elderly and the needy, for Shani is the planet of the overlooked, and service to them is counted as his truest worship. Devotees also recite the Shani mantra or the Dasharatha-krita Shani Stotra, or turn to Hanuman, whom tradition holds can soften Saturn's hardest gaze.
Offered in the spirit of faith
Relief during Sade Sati and Dhaiya
Facing Saturn's long transits with patience
Sade Sati is the roughly seven-and-a-half-year passage of Saturn across the twelfth, first and second signs from a person's birth Moon; the Dhaiya is his shorter, two-and-a-half-year transit through the fourth or eighth. Both are remembered as testing stretches — of work, health, relationships and resolve — and Shani Amavasya is the day many set aside to ask for their weight to ease.
It helps to hold these periods in proportion. Sade Sati is not a sentence or a curse; the tradition treats it as a hard but honest teacher that clears old debts and steadies a person for what follows. Many look back on it as the season that made them careful, patient and self-reliant. The observances of this day are meant to steady the mind and renew resolve, not to promise that difficulty will simply disappear.
If you are truly struggling
A day for the ancestors
Tarpan and remembrance on the new moon
Every Amavasya is, by old custom, a day for the pitru, one's departed forebears. With no moon in the sky, the tradition holds the day open to remembrance, and the simplest rite is tarpan: an offering of water, often with black sesame, made in the ancestors' name after the morning bath, at a river or at home. On a Shani Amavasya this ancestral character sits naturally beside the worship of Shani, himself a keeper of accounts across the reach of time.
Where a family observes it, the day may also carry a shraddha meal, or a gift of food and cloth given to the needy or to a priest in the forebears' memory. None of this needs to be elaborate. A quiet act of remembrance, kept sincerely, is what the day asks for.
See today's live panchang for your city
Tithi, nakshatra, sunrise and the day's muhurat, computed for wherever you are.
Shani Amavasya — questions answered
The Saturday new moon, Sade Sati relief and tarpan