Guru Nanak Jayanti 2026: The Six Parts of a Gurpurab

Guru Nanak Jayanti falls on Tuesday 24 November 2026. It marks the birth of Guru Nanak, the first of the ten Sikh Gurus, though Sikhs more often call the day Gurpurab, or Prakash Utsav. Almost everything that makes it what it is happens before the day itself arrives.

Key takeaways

• Guru Nanak Jayanti 2026 is Tuesday 24 November, the full moon of Kartik.
• It is spread over about two weeks, not one day: Prabhat Pheris, then an Akhand Path, then a Nagar Kirtan, then the Gurpurab.
• The central act is a continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib — forty-eight hours, handed between readers, timed to finish on the morning of the day.
• Anyone may walk in. Langar is free and open to everybody, and nobody will ask you what you believe.

When is Guru Nanak Jayanti in 2026?

Tuesday 24 November. The observance is set by the full moon of Kartik rather than by a fixed calendar date, so the English date changes year to year.

The tithi starts very late on the Monday night and runs out on the Tuesday evening, so the Tuesday is the day that dawns under it. That full moon is a busy one — it carries Kartik Purnima and Dev Deepawali as well, which is worth knowing if you are planning travel around it.

Why does the date move each year?

Most Sikh anniversaries are now worked out on a calendar that holds them to a fixed date in the Gregorian year. This one is among a small number of exceptions still set by the older Bikrami reckoning — and by its lunar side, the full moon of Kartik, rather than by a solar date. That is the whole reason it wanders through November instead of staying put.

There is also a genuine disagreement underneath it. Guru Nanak was born in 1469 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, the town now called Nankana Sahib in Pakistan. The Kartik full moon comes down through one tradition of the janamsakhi literature; other readings put the birth in spring instead. The November date is the one that has been kept for centuries and is a public holiday in India, and that is the honest summary of it: long-settled practice rather than settled evidence. You can read the outline of the dispute on Wikipedia's page for the Gurpurab.

What actually happens, and in what order?

1. Prabhat Pheri — a fortnight of early mornings

The run-up begins with Prabhat Pheris: small processions that set out from the gurdwara before dawn and walk the neighbourhood singing hymns. They are the least photographed part of the whole thing and, I think, the most telling. Nobody is watching at five in the morning in late November. A dozen people walk a route they walked yesterday, and will walk again tomorrow, and the festival is built out of that repetition rather than out of the one big day at the end.

2. Akhand Path — forty-eight hours without a pause

Two days before the Gurpurab, a continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib begins and does not stop until it is finished. All 1,430 pages, in the ragas the text specifies, read aloud by a team who relieve one another mid-passage so that the sound never breaks. It takes a little over forty-eight hours. In many places a ghee lamp is kept burning beside the reading for the whole of it, and food is available the entire time, because people are awake the entire time.

Think about what that requires: enough readers, enough stamina, and enough organisation to guarantee that at four in the morning on the second night, somebody is sitting there reading. This is the part of Gurpurab I would point anyone to first. A festival whose central act is reading a book aloud without stopping is a genuinely unusual thing to have invented.

3. Nagar Kirtan — the procession the day before

On the eve of the Gurpurab the procession goes through the streets. It is led by five people representing the Panj Pyare, carrying the Nishan Sahib — the triangular flag that flies outside a gurdwara, with the khanda emblem on it — ahead of the palanquin that carries the Guru Granth Sahib. Behind them come singers, brass bands, and Gatka teams demonstrating the old weapons forms. Streets on the route are hung with banners and flowers.

If you have only ever seen one part of a Gurpurab, this is almost certainly the part, because it is the only part that comes to you.

4. Amrit Vela — the day begins at four

The Gurpurab itself starts in the dark, at four or five in the morning, in the stretch of pre-dawn called Amrit Vela. The first thing sung is Asa ki Var, the morning hymns. After that the hall settles into katha, exposition of the scripture, and kirtan, the sung verses, in whatever combination that particular gurdwara keeps.

Nobody expects a visitor at four. Many gurdwaras also hold an evening sitting, beginning with Rehras at sunset and running on into the night — in some places past midnight, on a traditional reckoning of the hour of birth. If you want the atmosphere without the alarm clock, go in the evening.

5. Langar — the kitchen is the point

Langar is the free kitchen attached to every gurdwara, and on a Gurpurab it works hard. The food is vegetarian, it is cooked and served by volunteers as seva, and everybody sits on the floor in rows to eat it: the same food, at the same height, in the same line, regardless of religion, caste, gender or means. That is not a happy side effect of the arrangement. It is the argument the arrangement exists to make.

Sikh communities have carried it a long way. There are langars in Southall, in Brampton, in Surrey; the gurdwara at Hemkund Sahib, high in the Garhwal Himalaya, runs one through its short open season. The form does not change much, which is the interesting thing about it.

6. Karah prasad — equal parts, equal portions

On your way out of the darbar hall you will be given karah prasad: a warm, dense, very sweet wheat halwa, pressed into your cupped hands. It is made of wholemeal flour, ghee and sugar in equal measure, with about twice that quantity of water, and it is served out of the same bowl to everyone in identical portions.

Take it sitting, with both hands cupped together. Refusing it is read by some as a slight, so if you are not hungry, accept a little rather than wave it away. It is the same idea as the langar, compressed into something you can hold.

What should I do if I am visiting for the first time?

Cover your head — a scarf is fine, and most gurdwaras keep a basket of them at the door. Leave your shoes at the rack and wash your hands, and your feet if there is a water channel to walk through. Walk to the front, bow, sit down on the floor with everyone else. There is no fee and no collection plate pushed at you. If you want to do something useful, the kitchen will always take another pair of hands at the sink.

No one will quiz you. The whole structure of the day assumes that strangers will turn up.

The part I am not going to settle

Whether the birth belongs to Kartik or to the spring is an argument with serious people on both sides and no way for me to adjudicate it. What I would say is that the question matters less than it looks. A festival that spends two weeks preparing, reads for forty-eight hours straight, and then feeds whoever arrives is not really making a claim about a date. It is making one about attention, and about hospitality, and both of those are available on any morning you care to show up.

Questions people ask