Vivah Muhurat December 2026: 7 Shubh Dates Before Kharmas

December 2026 is a short, crowded month for weddings. The vivah muhurat december 2026 list runs out on the 12th, because the Sun enters Dhanu on 16 December and Kharmas shuts the calendar until the middle of January. That leaves a working window of eleven days at the start of the month, seven of which carry a published muhurat. This page prints every candidate date with its tithi, nakshatra and Delhi window, labels each one by how many sources back it, and explains the two disagreements you will run into if you search yourself.

Why the whole month fits into twelve days

Two hard boundaries squeeze December. At the front, the season has only just restarted: Chaturmas ended with Dev Uthani Ekadashi on 20-21 November 2026, so the calendar reopened barely a week before December began. At the back sits Kharmas.

Kharmas, also called Malmas or Dhanurmas, begins the moment the Sun leaves Vrishchika and enters sidereal Dhanu (Sagittarius). DrikPanchang’s New Delhi panchang puts Dhanu Sankranti at 10:29 AM IST on Wednesday, 16 December 2026, with the Punya Kala running to 4:00 PM. From that transit onwards, no vivah muhurat is published anywhere.

So the usable stretch is 1 to 15 December, and even inside it several days are blocked for a corrupted yoga or karana. The result: seven published dates on the mainstream panchang engines, plus one that only the classical-rule list allows. Eight candidates, none after the 12th.

Vivah muhurat december 2026: the consensus-tiered table

All timings below are IST for Delhi, taken from DrikPanchang’s Vivah Muhurat page with the location set to New Delhi. Each row is cross-checked against VedicFeed, VedicMatch and the classical-rule list published by Dr R.P. Sharma. The Consensus column tells you how many of those four back the date — nothing here is invented, and where a source is silent we say so.

Date	Day	Tithi	Nakshatra	Muhurat window (IST, Delhi)	Consensus
2 Dec 2026	Wednesday	Navami, Dashami	Uttara Phalguni	10:32 AM – 06:58 AM (3 Dec)	Some sources (3 of 4)
3 Dec 2026	Thursday	Dashami; Ekadashi	Uttara Phalguni, Hasta	06:58 – 10:53 AM, and 11:03 PM – 06:59 AM (4 Dec)	All sources
4 Dec 2026	Friday	Ekadashi	Hasta	06:59 – 10:22 AM	All sources
5 Dec 2026	Saturday	Dwadashi, Trayodashi	Swati	11:48 AM – 07:00 AM (6 Dec)	Some sources (3 of 4)
6 Dec 2026	Sunday	Trayodashi	Swati	07:00 – 07:42 AM	All sources
10 Dec 2026	Thursday	Shukla Pratipada	Mula	No window published	Some sources (1 of 4)
11 Dec 2026	Friday	Shukla Tritiya	Uttara Ashadha	03:04 – 07:04 AM (12 Dec)	Some sources (3 of 4)
12 Dec 2026	Saturday	Tritiya, Chaturthi	Uttara Ashadha	07:04 AM – 03:27 AM (13 Dec)	All sources

Nothing before 2 December: the 1st has a prohibited yoga running through most of the day. Nothing on 7, 8, 9 or 13-15 December either, for a corrupted karana or a missing marriage nakshatra. If you want the wider picture across both years, our auspicious marriage dates 2026-2027 guide runs through to next summer.

The four dates every source agrees on

3, 4, 6 and 12 December appear on all four lists. If your family is conservative, or two families are consulting two different pandits, these are the dates that will survive both conversations. They are also the ones to chase first with venues.

3 December is a Thursday — Guru’s own day, traditionally the strongest weekday for marriage — and it is the only date in the month with two separate windows. DrikPanchang publishes a morning slot of 06:58 to 10:53 AM under Uttara Phalguni moving into Hasta, and a night slot from 11:03 PM to 06:59 AM the next morning under Hasta on Ekadashi.

4 December, Friday, continues the same Hasta nakshatra on Ekadashi but gives you only three and a half hours, 06:59 to 10:22 AM. That is a morning-pheras date, nothing else. Families who want a night ceremony should take the 3 December night window instead — it is the same nakshatra, twelve hours earlier.

6 December, a Sunday under Swati on Trayodashi, is the tightest slot of the month: 07:00 to 07:42 AM, forty-two minutes. It clears every filter, but the lagna has to sit inside a window shorter than most baraat delays. Treat it as a small-ceremony date, not a full-scale wedding.

12 December, Saturday, is the most workable date of the month by a distance: 07:04 AM through to 03:27 AM on the 13th, roughly twenty and a half hours under Uttara Ashadha. It is also the last date before Kharmas, so the whole country is competing for it.

Before committing to any of these, get the match settled. The 36 Guna calculation takes seconds in Sahita on Google Play, so you can walk into the pandit’s room with the koota-by-koota breakdown in hand.

The four dates where the sources part ways

2, 5 and 11 December appear on DrikPanchang, VedicFeed and VedicMatch, but not on the classical-rule list; 10 December appears only on the classical list. In each case the reason is a specific filter, and it is worth knowing which one before you argue with an elder about it.

2 December runs from 10:32 AM to 06:58 AM the next morning under Uttara Phalguni — a generous twenty-hour window on a Wednesday. The catch is the tithi: the day begins on Navami, which is a rikta tithi. Strict lists drop rikta days (Chaturthi, Navami, Chaturdashi) outright, even when the muhurat itself begins after the tithi has changed to Dashami.

5 December, Saturday, gives 11:48 AM to 07:00 AM under Swati on Dwadashi rolling into Trayodashi — nineteen usable hours, and no obvious classical objection. The classical list simply prefers 6 December for the same Swati nakshatra. This is an editorial choice, not an astronomical dispute, and the day is widely used.

11 December is the one to read carefully. The window is 03:04 AM to 07:04 AM — and both clock times fall on the morning of 12 December, because a panchang day runs sunrise to sunrise. In practice it is the pre-dawn portion of the 11th-12th night. The classical list folds the same four hours into its 12 December entry, which is why it counts one date where the engines count two.

10 December runs the other way. The classical list includes it — Mula nakshatra on Shukla Pratipada, both permissible — while DrikPanchang marks the day as blocked by a prohibited yoga and publishes no window at all. VedicFeed and VedicMatch omit it entirely.

We print 10 December because it exists on a serious list, not because we can back it. Without a published window there is no lagna to work with. If your pandit proposes that date, ask him for the specific hour and the yoga he is using; do not take it from a web table, including ours.

Kharmas closes the month on 16 December

Kharmas is not a superstition about bad luck; it is a solar-month rule. When the Sun occupies Jupiter’s signs — Dhanu in winter, Meena in spring — the classical texts hold that Guru’s capacity to bless a marriage is compromised, so samskaras are postponed rather than risked.

DrikPanchang makes the mechanism visible: 16 December is flagged as partially overlapping the prohibited solar month, and every day from 17 to 31 December is labelled “Prohibited Solar month” with no muhurat at all. The block lifts only at Makar Sankranti, observed on Friday 15 January 2027 for New Delhi.

That gives a dead stretch of about a month. It is not wasted time — it is exactly when families do the paperwork, the matching and the lagna consultation, so that the first available date in mid-January can be claimed the moment it opens. Bengali families following the Poush restriction will recognise the pattern; our Bengali Poush and Sankranti wedding rules guide covers how that tradition overlaps with Kharmas.

NRI families: Christmas and New Year week have no muhurat

This is the most expensive mistake in the December calendar. Families flying in from the Gulf, the UK, the US or Australia plan around the Christmas-to-New-Year break, because that is when everybody has leave. In 2026 that entire fortnight sits inside Kharmas.

There is no muhurat on 24, 25 or 31 December 2026, nor on 1 January 2027. No panchang publishes one, and no pandit will fix a lagna there. If tickets are already booked, the realistic options are to move the ceremony forward to 11-12 December or back to 15 January and beyond.

Overseas families hit a second problem: birth times recorded abroad, in a different time zone, sometimes with daylight saving applied. Our NRI wedding kundali matching guide covers how to convert those correctly, and NRI kundali matching explains what to send the family pandit in India. Sahita’s free kundali matching app calculates the match on the phone in eleven languages, so both households can read the same result screen whatever the hour.

Where the sources disagree, and how we resolved it

Three genuine disagreements turned up while building the table. We treated DrikPanchang as the tiebreaker throughout, because it is the panchang most Indian pandits cross-check against.

First, the date count. Three engines publish seven dates; the classical list publishes five, dropping 2, 5 and 11 December and adding 10 December. That is a difference of rikta-tithi strictness and of how a pre-dawn window is dated — not of astronomy.

Second, the number of windows on 3 December. DrikPanchang lists two. VedicFeed shows only the morning slot; VedicMatch shows only the night slot. Neither is wrong — each site publishes one window per day by design — but if you read only one of them you will miss half the day.

Third, the clocks. Compare any vivah muhurat december 2026 table across sites and you will see 06:58 AM on one and 07:07 AM on another for the 3 December opening. The closing moments — 10:53 AM, 07:42 AM, 03:27 AM — are astronomical events and match everywhere. The opening moments are usually just local sunrise, which shifts with longitude.

Delhi sunrise on 3 December 2026 is 06:58 AM; by the 12th it has moved to 07:04 AM. Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai all differ. If a table starts a window at sunrise and does not name a city, treat the start time as approximate and get your own city’s figure before printing cards.

Finish guna milan before the pandit fixes the lagna

A date from the table is a panchang-level clearance. It says the day is fit for weddings in general; it says nothing about your particular pair. The lagna — the ascendant rising at the moment of the pheras — is chosen afterwards, for your venue’s coordinates and against both charts.

No pandit will do that work until the match is settled, and December does not give you time to queue. So the order is: match first, date second, lagna third. Run the free kundali matching tool for the 36 Guna Ashta Koota score and the Manglik check on both charts, then take the printout to him.

Families deciding between dates usually want three things on paper: the total out of 36, which kootas scored zero, and whether either dosha has a documented cancellation that applies. All three appear on the result screen in the free Sahita app, with no login and nothing uploaded. Our wedding muhurta 2026 guide for matched couples explains how to sequence the two steps so neither waits on the other.

The personal checks your pandit adds

The table above clears days, not couples. Before a pandit recommends one of the December dates to you, he tests it against both charts. Practice varies by region, but these four checks come up almost everywhere. Our vivaha muhurta and Chandra Bala guide goes deeper on the first.

Check	What it looks at	Why it needs your birth charts
Chandra bala	Where the day’s Moon sits, counted from each person’s birth Moon sign	It is personal: a good day for one couple can be weak for another
Tara bala	The day’s nakshatra, counted from each person’s birth nakshatra	Needs both janma nakshatras
Guru and Surya bala	In many north Indian traditions, Jupiter’s transit for the bride and the Sun’s for the groom	Needs both Moon signs
Lagna shuddhi	The rising sign at the moment of the pheras, at your venue	Fixes the exact minutes inside a long window

In December the last row matters most. The twenty-hour window on 12 December will shrink to a slot for your venue. 6 December runs forty-two minutes in all, 07:00 to 07:42 AM, so the whole window sits inside one or two rising signs. If neither suits your charts, the date is out.

Tara bala works like the Tara koota in your guna score, but counts from your birth star to the wedding day’s star. That is why the Hasta days on 3 and 4 December can suit one couple and not the next.

A sensible order of steps before Kharmas

1. Exchange birth date, time and place for both people.
2. Run the 36 Guna match and the Manglik check. The gun milan score checker explains what the total means.
3. Shortlist two dates, starting with the four every source backs: 3, 4, 6 and 12 December.
4. Take the shortlist and both charts to the pandit for the personal checks and the lagna.
5. Keep a fallback. If no December date works, the next ones come after Kharmas, in mid-January 2027.

With only the two birth stars to hand, use the Nakshatra Matching mode in the Sahita app for step two. It matches; it does not pick dates.

Check the clock too. The second slot on 3 December starts at 11:03 PM, and the 11 December window runs from 03:04 to 07:04 AM. Make sure the venue, the band and the guests can work with those hours.

If the match shows a dosha, does it change the muhurat?

No. A dosha does not rule out a date such as 3 December, and a good muhurat does not cancel a dosha.

The risk in December is time. A second opinion, a look at the cancellation rules or a puja can take a week or two, and a delay here often means missing 12 December and waiting out Kharmas. Our Manglik anshik vs purna guide and what to do when the kundali does not match are good places to start. The season’s opening dates are on our vivah muhurat November 2026 page.

Your vivah muhurat december 2026 checklist

1. Confirm the 36 Guna score and Manglik status for both charts — the free Sahita kundali matching app does this on your phone in seconds.
2. Pick a primary and a backup date from the table, not one date. December has no spare capacity.
3. Get your own city’s sunrise; the window start moves with it, the window close does not.
4. Check whether your family follows the rikta-tithi rule before considering 2 December.
5. Ask the pandit for the exact lagna window, not just the date.
6. If relatives are flying in, warn them now that Christmas week has no muhurat.
7. Hold the venue before cards are printed — 12 December goes first every year.

If your planning horizon is longer than this season, the picture opens up considerably. Our auspicious wedding dates 2026 page covers the year now closing, and vivaha muhurta 2026 across India sets the regional context for how different traditions filter the same panchang. Read more about Hindu astrology if the underlying system is new to you.

Frequently asked questions

How many vivah muhurat dates are there in December 2026?

Seven on the mainstream panchang engines: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 12 December. DrikPanchang, VedicFeed and VedicMatch all publish the same seven for Delhi. The classical-rule list gives five instead — 3, 4, 6, 10 and 12 — dropping three rikta or borderline days and adding 10 December, which the engines block for a prohibited yoga.

When does Kharmas start in December 2026?

At Dhanu Sankranti, 10:29 AM IST on Wednesday 16 December 2026, when the Sun enters sidereal Sagittarius. DrikPanchang shows the Punya Kala running from 10:29 AM to 4:00 PM that day. From 16 December onwards no vivah muhurat is published, and the block holds until Makar Sankranti, observed on 15 January 2027.

Which December 2026 date has the longest muhurat window?

12 December, at roughly twenty and a half hours — 07:04 AM on the 12th to 03:27 AM on the 13th, under Uttara Ashadha. 2 December is close behind at about twenty hours, and 5 December gives nineteen. The shortest by far is 6 December, which offers only forty-two minutes, from 07:00 to 07:42 AM.

Can we get married during Christmas or New Year week 2026?

Not by the panchang. Kharmas begins on 16 December 2026 and runs to 14 January 2027, so 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January all fall inside the prohibited solar month. No source publishes a muhurat for those days. NRI families planning around the holiday break need either 11-12 December or a date from 15 January onwards.

Are these vivah muhurat december 2026 timings valid for my city?

The dates are, and so are the closing times, because those are astronomical moments. The opening times are often local sunrise, which shifts with longitude — Delhi’s 06:58 AM on 3 December is not Mumbai’s or Chennai’s. Get your own city’s panchang for the exact start, and ask the pandit to fix the lagna for your venue’s coordinates.

What is the first wedding date after December 2026?

Friday 15 January 2027, the day Makar Sankranti is observed in Delhi. DrikPanchang publishes a window of 07:15 AM to 02:13 PM under Revati nakshatra on Shukla Saptami, and all four sources we checked agree on that date. January 2027 is a much easier month, with nine published dates in its second half.

What is the last wedding date of 2026?

Saturday 12 December. DrikPanchang’s Delhi window runs from 07:04 AM on the 12th to 03:27 AM on 13 December, under Uttara Ashadha. No muhurat is published after that, because Kharmas begins a few days later. Our Kharmas 2026 guide covers the break and what is still permitted inside it.

Do we need kundali matching before fixing a December date?

Yes, and sooner than in most months. The pandit works out the lagna and the personal checks from both charts, so he cannot confirm a date until the match is done. With Kharmas waiting after the 12th, there is little time to redo anything.

Why does my pandit’s date differ from online lists?

A web list checks the day; your pandit checks the day against two people. He looks at both Moon signs and birth stars, may follow a rule such as avoiding rikta tithis, and fixes the lagna for your venue. Rules like these are also why the classical list includes 10 December while the panchang engines leave it out. If his date is missing from the lists, ask which rule he applied.

Related reading: Auspicious marriage dates 2026-2027 · Wedding muhurta 2026 for matched couples · NRI kundali matching guide