Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November, with the five days running from Friday 6 November to Tuesday 10 November. The third day is the one the whole festival is built around: the new moon of Kartik, and the night of Lakshmi puja.
This is a guide to the aarti sung at that puja — the order it comes in, and what the words are actually claiming.
The order on Diwali night
The puja is usually done after dusk, once the house is cleaned, the diyas are lit and the doorway is marked. The aartis follow a fixed sequence:
- Ganesh aarti first. Ganesha is invoked before any undertaking, and Lakshmi puja is no exception. In Maharashtrian homes this is Sukhkarta Dukhharta.
- Om Jai Lakshmi Mata — the Lakshmi aarti, sung while the lamp is circled in front of the goddess and the account books or house keys placed before her.
- Om Jai Jagdish Hare to close, as at the end of almost every puja.
Many households then sing Ghalin Lotangan as the surrender sequence, and finish with the mahamantra.
What the Lakshmi aarti actually argues
Most aartis praise. This one makes a case, and it is a more interesting one than it first appears.
Verse five says it outright: without her there is no yajna and no cloth. No sacrifice performed, no clothes obtained, no richness of food and drink. Read plainly, that is a claim about the ceremony taking place in the room — the lamp, the thali, the clothes the family is wearing, the sweets on the table all rest on material means. The aarti is defending prosperity as a religious good rather than treating it as something to apologise for.
Verse four is the one people actually feel. It promises that in the house where she lives, every good quality arrives, everything becomes possible, and — the line that lands — "man nahin ghabrata", the mind is no longer afraid.
That is a precise description of what money does at the level most families experience it. Not luxury. The end of panic.
Why she is called ocean-born
The sixth verse calls her kshirodadhi-jata — born of the ocean of milk — and says that without her nobody obtains the fourteen jewels.
That is the samudra manthan, the churning of the ocean, from which fourteen treasures rose and Lakshmi with them. Naming it in the aarti ties the small lamp on a Diwali table to that story: the goddess in the house is the same one who came out of the churned ocean.
The tek is worth a second look too. It says Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma attend on her night and day — the three great gods, in service. In an aarti sung by householders about household prosperity, that is a deliberately large claim.
Practical notes
Fridays, not just Diwali. Om Jai Lakshmi Mata is a weekly aarti in many households, sung on Friday evenings, and again at Kojagiri Purnima. Diwali is its biggest night, not its only one.
Variants are normal. Some households sing "sab tumse pata" where others sing "sab tumse aata" in the fifth verse; some editions carry an extra closing couplet. These are inherited readings, not mistakes.
The circles are numbered, in theory. The formal instruction is to circle the lamp four times at the feet, twice at the navel, once at the face and seven times over the whole form. Most families simply circle it clockwise and pass it around, which is also fine.
The five days, in short
- 6 Nov — Dhanteras. Metal is bought; Dhanvantari and Kubera are remembered.
- 7 Nov — Naraka Chaturdashi / Chhoti Diwali. The oil bath before dawn.
- 8 Nov — Diwali, Lakshmi Puja. The main night, after dusk.
- 9 Nov — Govardhan Puja / Annakut.
- 10 Nov — Bhai Dooj.
Regional calendars differ by a day in places, and both Diwali and Lakshmi puja timings depend on the local amavasya muhurat — check a panchang for your city rather than assuming a single national clock.
The full texts
Every aarti named here is on the aarti page, each with the Devanagari, a singable romanisation, and a plain-English explanation of what each verse says. All of them are reproduced from a cited printed source, with variants disclosed on the page — worth caring about, because these are prayers people recite from memory once a year and want to get right.
