Kolkata · Durga Puja 2026
What to wear
October in Kolkata is warm and humid, you will walk ten kilometres, and you will take your shoes off eleven times. Plan for that first.
Written for Durga Puja 2026 · Last updated 14 August 2026
The weather
Late September and October in Kolkata is warm and humid — daytime temperatures in the low thirties Celsius, nights not much cooler, and enough humidity that you will be damp by the third pandal. The monsoon is technically withdrawing and frequently has not.
Cotton, linen, loose. Synthetics are miserable in this. Carry a second shirt if you are out from morning to night.
Shoes
The most important decision on this page. You will walk considerably further than you expect, on uneven pavements, and you will remove your shoes at the entrance to many pandals and put them back on immediately afterwards.
So: comfortable, broken in, and easy to slip on and off. Sandals or slip-ons for most people; if you need real support, laces you can leave loose. Nothing you would mind losing — shoes do get moved around at a busy entrance.
Dressing for the days
There is no dress code and nobody will look twice at ordinary clothes. That said, Kolkata dresses up for Pujo and joining in is half the fun: new clothes are traditional, and a great many people wear something Indian at least once across the five days.
Ashtami morning is the day for it — the red-bordered white sari and the panjabi are an Ashtami thing more than any other day. Dashami is the day for red, for anyone playing sindoor khela.
If you do wear a sari for the first time, practise walking in it before Ashtami. Ten kilometres is a lot of pleats.
The rest
A small bag worn across the body rather than a backpack, which is a nuisance in a crush and a target in one. Sunglasses for the day, nothing for the rain but an attitude — see the rain guide.
The 12 pujas on this guide
Twelve pujas with confirmed coordinates, in alphabetical order — so you can see how far a day of this actually walks.
Every one of these has a confirmed position, so the Route Planner can order them and draw the walk between them.
Read next
What to carry
A short list. Everything on it earns its place across a ten-hour day on foot.
Rain during Pujo
It rains, most years, at least once. It empties the streets in twenty minutes and refills them in an hour — which, handled right, is an opportunity.
Staying well over five days
Heat, humidity, ten kilometres a day and four hours of sleep. A small amount of care makes the difference between five good days and three.
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.