Kolkata · Durga Puja 2026
What a Pujo day costs
The pandals are free. Everything else is transport and food, and one of those two is where the money goes.
Written for Durga Puja 2026 · Last updated 14 August 2026
The free part
Every community puja in Kolkata is free to enter. There is no ticket, no queue-jump fee and no charge for anything you will see. That is a deliberate and rather remarkable feature of the festival: the whole thing is paid for by neighbourhood subscription and corporate sponsorship, and it is free at the point of use to several million people.
A very small number of pujas sell a paid priority pass in some years. It is not the norm, and nothing about the festival requires one.
Where the money actually goes
Transport, mostly. The Metro is the cheap option and stays cheap. App cabs surge hard on the peak nights and a cross-city trip on Ashtami can cost several times its normal fare — assuming a driver accepts it at all. Budget for the Metro and treat a cab as a luxury rather than the plan.
Then food, which is cheap per item and adds up because you will keep eating. A day of street food is genuinely inexpensive; one sit-down meal in a restaurant during Pujo costs more than the rest of the day combined.
If you are coming from outside the city, accommodation is the real cost and it rises steeply for these dates — see the guide on where to stay.
The subscription box
Every pandal has one. Nobody will ask you and nobody will look at what you put in. Putting something in is how the thing keeps existing, and if you have spent an evening walking through six neighbourhoods' worth of other people's work, it is the obvious thing to do.
The 12 pujas on this guide
Twelve pujas with confirmed coordinates in North & Central Kolkata, in alphabetical order — the cheapest zone to do properly, because it is the one you can walk.
Every one of these has a confirmed position, so the Route Planner can order them and draw the walk between them.
- AhiritolaB K Paul Avenue, Ahiritola
- Ahiritola Jubak BrindaAhiritola
- Azad Hind Bag (Hedua Park Durga Puja)Hatibagan–Hedua–Beadon
- Badamtala Ashar SanghaRashbehari Avenue, Kalighat
- Baghbazar 7 Pally Sarbojanin DurgotsavArea being confirmed
- Baghbazar Haldar Bari er PujoBaghbazar
- Baghbazar JagodhartiBaghbazar
- Baghbazar PallyBaghbazar
- Baghbazar Sarbojonin Durgotsab & ExhibitionBagbazar Street, Bagbazar
- Beadon Street SarbojaninHatibagan–Hedua–Beadon
- Behala Buroshibtala Janakalyan SanghaTala–Belgachia
- Belgachia Sadharan DurgatsabTala–Belgachia
Read next
Where to stay during Pujo
The right question is not which hotel — it is which side of the city you want to wake up in.
The Metro during Pujo
The one form of transport the festival cannot jam. Which lines get you where, and how to use it on a night when everybody else has had the same idea.
Eating your way through Pujo
Half the reason to be on the street at all. What to eat, where it turns up, and how not to spend Navami in bed.
Written by Pujo Kolkata. Pandal listings come from the PujoKolkata master dataset, with coordinates from the IndianOil–Kolkata Police Puja Guide and from community-curated puja maps of the city. Nothing here publishes a 2026 theme, a timing or a crowd level for any puja, because none has been announced. Browse every pandal.