A tithi is an angle, not a block of time. It is 12° of distance between the Moon and the Sun, and there are thirty of them in a lunar month. The Moon pulls away from the Sun at a rate that changes with its own speed, so each one takes however long it takes. Across 2026 that was anywhere from 20 hours 4 minutes to 26 hours 43 minutes.
And a day is named for whichever tithi is running at sunrise. That is the rule, and every almanac follows it. The trouble is that one averages 23 hours 35 minutes, which is not a day, and that sunrise happens at a different moment in every town.
Why do two panchangs show different tithis?
Because a tithi is not a day long and sunrise is local. One longer than a day can hold two sunrises, so two days carry its name. One shorter than a day can hold none, so no day carries it. And when a tithi changes between sunrise in the east of a country and sunrise in the west, the two ends are on different tithis for the same date.
Tithi lengths in whole-hour bands, labelled by the lower edge: 20 to 21 hours, 10.5%; 21 to 22 hours, 18.9%; 22 to 23 hours, 13.8%; 23 to 24 hours, 13%; 24 to 25 hours, 11.4%; 25 to 26 hours, 15.4%; 26 to 27 hours, 17%.Two humps with a dip between them, and the dip is the 24-hour band at 11.4%. The Moon spends more of its month near the fast end and the slow end of its speed than in the middle, so the lengths pile up at the edges. A length of about a day is the least likely of all.
Can a tithi be missing from the calendar?
Yes, and in 2026 it happened 17 times at Delhi. One shorter than a day can begin after one sunrise and end before the next, so no sunrise falls inside it and no day is named for it. The almanac calls that a kshaya tithi — a lost one — and it simply is not in the list. The opposite also happens, and the two are not equally common.
17
tithis skipped at Delhi
Of the 370 the year contained. No day was named for any of them.
11
days repeating the day before
One long enough to hold two sunrises. The almanac calls it a vriddhi tithi — a swollen one.
23h 35m
is the average tithi
Shorter than a day, which is why skipping is commoner than repeating.
A year holds 370 tithis and only 365 days to name them with. Some get two names and some get none. That is not a fault in anybody's almanac — it is what happens when you label one cycle with another.
Do two cities in India ever show different tithis?
On 24 days of 2026, yes. Guwahati in the east and Jūnāgadh in the west sit 83 to 95 minutes apart in sunrise, and whenever a tithi changes inside that gap the two wake up on different ones. Across all 171 Indian cities this site publishes a panchang for, some pair differs on 25 days — 6.8% of the year.
| Date | Guwahati (east) | Jūnāgadh (west) |
|---|---|---|
| 7 January 2026 | Chaturthi | Panchami |
| 8 January 2026 | Panchami | Shashthi |
| 9 January 2026 | Shashthi | Saptami |
Once a boundary drifts into the sunrise gap it tends to stay there for a few days, which is why these run consecutively. Both columns are correct for their own city, and either can be checked against the city page for it.
Is the ayanamsa the reason?
No, and this is the explanation given most often. A tithi is the difference between the Moon's longitude and the Sun's. Whatever ayanamsa you subtract, you subtract it from both, so it cancels and the answer does not move. Nakshatra is read from one longitude on its own, so there the ayanamsa matters a great deal. For tithi it cannot be the culprit.
The panchang page computes all five limbs from the sunrise at the place you give it, and there are city pages for Guwahati and Jūnāgadh if you want to compare the two ends for yourself.
Questions people ask about tithi
Why do two panchangs show different tithis?
Usually because they are computed for different places. A day is named for the tithi running at sunrise, and sunrise moves across a country — 89 minutes across India on an average day. When a tithi changes inside that gap, both almanacs are right for their own city.
How long is a tithi?
It varies. Measured across all 370 tithis of 2026, the shortest ran 20 hours 4 minutes and the longest 26 hours 43 minutes, averaging 23 hours 35 minutes. A tithi is 12° of distance between the Moon and the Sun, so its length follows the Moon's changing speed.
What is a kshaya tithi?
A tithi short enough to begin after one sunrise and end before the next, so no day is named for it and it is missing from the calendar. At Delhi in 2026 that happened 17 times.
What is a vriddhi tithi?
A tithi long enough to hold two sunrises, so two days in a row carry the same name. At Delhi in 2026 it happened 11 times. It is the opposite of a kshaya tithi and the rarer of the two, because the average tithi is shorter than a day.
Does the ayanamsa change the tithi?
No. A tithi is the difference between two longitudes, so any ayanamsa subtracted from both cancels out exactly. It changes the nakshatra, which is read from a single longitude, but it cannot move a tithi.
Which panchang should I follow?
The one computed for your own place, because the rule is about your sunrise. A panchang printed for one city and reprinted elsewhere will be wrong for the other city on exactly the days above.
What this does not cover
- One year. 2026, chosen so a re-run reproduces every figure here. The counts of skipped and repeated tithis move a little from year to year; the mechanism behind them does not.
- One city for the skipped and repeated counts. They are Delhi's, because those counts depend on that city's sunrises. Another city gives a slightly different pair of numbers.
- Sunrise is the Sun's upper limb with refraction, at sea level, which is the usual convention and not the only one. An almanac that defines sunrise differently shifts every reading here by a minute or two, which on a day near a boundary is enough to change the answer.
- Indian page cities only for the disagreement count. All 171 share one clock, so "the same date" means the same thing at all of them. Comparing across timezones would be comparing different days.
- This does not cover the other almanac differences. Amanta and purnimanta month naming, the choice of era, and which festivals a panchang lists are separate decisions, and two almanacs can agree on every tithi here and still disagree about the date of a festival.
- Nothing here says what any tithi means. This page counts hours and days. What the tradition assigns to each tithi is a different question.