Diwali 2027 falls on Friday, October 29, the same calendar date across all four continental US time zones, part of a 5-day festival running from Dhanteras on October 27 through Bhai Dooj on October 31.

Why you cannot just convert the IST muhurat time

The traditional Lakshmi Puja muhurat is computed for Pradosh Kaal, the period around sunset, for a specific city. Converting an India-based clock time to Eastern or Pacific time does not give you your local Pradosh Kaal, since sunset happens at a completely different local clock hour in each US time zone and city.

Computing your own local muhurat

Find your own city’s sunset time on October 29, and treat the roughly two-hour window from sunset onward as your local Pradosh Kaal, avoiding Rahu Kaal within that window.

Why time zone alone isn’t precise enough

Two cities in the same US time zone can have meaningfully different sunset times in late October, because time zones are drawn around longitude while sunset also depends on latitude. Minneapolis and Houston are both Central Time, but in late October Minneapolis loses daylight noticeably faster heading into winter, and its sunset can land 15 to 20 minutes earlier than Houston’s on the same date. The same pattern shows up between Seattle and San Diego on Pacific Time, or Boston and Miami if you stretch the comparison across Eastern Time’s whole range. So “Eastern Time sunset” isn’t one number, it’s a range depending on exactly where in that zone your city sits. This is the reason a muhurat time quoted for “the US” in a general article is only a rough guide, and why the per-city lookup matters more here than it would for a country the size of India.

When the family is split across time zones

A lot of households doing Diwali in the US aren’t in just one city, there’s a branch in New Jersey, another in Texas, maybe parents still in India. The common workaround isn’t to pick one “official” time and force everyone onto it. Each household performs its own Lakshmi Puja within its own local Pradosh Kaal, on the correct calendar date for its own location, and families sync up separately, often over a video call for the aarti itself, timed to whichever household’s puja window is most convenient for the group to join together. The ritual accuracy stays intact for each home since each is using its own city’s sunset, and the family connection happens on top of that rather than by forcing a shared clock time.

A daylight saving trap worth double-checking

Diwali 2027 falls on October 29, a little over a week before US clocks fall back for daylight saving time, which typically happens the first Sunday of November. That means the puja date itself is unaffected, but it’s close enough to the transition that some listings, calendar apps, or older printed panchangs can mix up which side of the DST change a quoted time falls on, especially if a source was written a year or two in advance and used a generic “sunset around 6 PM” estimate. Before finalizing your evening’s plan, it’s worth confirming the muhurat time you’re working from was actually computed for October 29 itself and not adjusted for a post-DST clock. Business owners doing Chopda Pujan on the same evening run into this too, since a wrong hour thrown off by an assumed clock change can shift the entire ledger-opening ceremony earlier or later than intended.

Checking your city’s timing

Use the muhurat page with your US city selected to see that day’s sunset, Rahu Kaal and Abhijit Muhurat.