Anant means endless. On Bhadrapad Sud Chaudash, Vishnu is worshipped in exactly that form: Ananta, the one without limit, resting on the coils of Shesha, the serpent whose name also carries the same sense of what is left over when everything else ends. Two observances sit on this single day. One is the Anant vrat, kept for Vishnu. The other is the close of Ganeshotsav. In Gujarat most people now know the day by the second one.
The vrat has one object at its centre: the Anant sutra, a cotton thread coloured with turmeric, kumkum and saffron, with fourteen knots tied into it. The fourteen are the fourteen lokas, the worlds of Hindu cosmology, all of which are said to rest in Anant. That is why this vrat belongs to a Chaturdashi, a fourteenth, and not to any other tithi. The number is not decoration, it is the whole argument of the day in a piece of string.
The katha behind it comes from the Mahabharata. With the Pandavas worn down by their exile, Krishna told Yudhishthira to keep the Anant vrat, and explained it with a story. A woman named Sushila had come upon women worshipping Anant beside a river and had taken the fourteen knotted thread onto her arm, and her house had filled with plenty. Her husband Kaundinya, certain that the good fortune was his own doing, treated the thread with contempt and destroyed it. The plenty left with it. Only after keeping the vrat properly for fourteen years did the two of them get their life back.
Ganeshotsav opens on Bhadrapad Sud Choth and runs ten days, so it arrives at the Chaturdashi at the far end. That is the entire reason the two share a date. The Anant vrat is quiet and domestic, a thread and a puja inside the house, while the visarjan is a street full of drums, so the street won the name. Both are kept on 25 September 2026 and neither cancels the other. The ten day arc, the Sthapana muhurat and the modak belong to Ganesh Chaturthi. What happens here is the farewell.
Gujarat immerses on a scale that has changed what visarjan day looks like. Surat holds one of the largest Ganeshotsavs in the state, and immersion in the Tapi and in other natural water bodies is now barred outright. The city instead builds artificial ponds zone by zone, across Athwa, Varachha, Limbayat, Udhna, Rander, Katargam and Central, and every murti goes into those. Ahmedabad does the same, with the municipal corporation putting up dozens of immersion ponds and steering families towards clay murtis rather than plaster of Paris. The rule comes from the National Green Tribunal and the pollution control board, but the reasoning is older than any tribunal. A murti of river clay is made to go back to the water and dissolve into it. Plaster will not dissolve, and the paint on it will not either.
For Digambar Jains this same Chaturdashi is the tenth and last day of Das Lakshan Parva, in which each day is given to one of the ten virtues, and the day after it is Kshamavani, when forgiveness is asked of everyone with the words Uttam Kshama and Micchami Dukkadam. It is worth knowing that this is not the whole Jain picture. Shvetambar Paryushan runs eight days rather than ten and has already closed with Samvatsari earlier in the month. So on Anant Chaturdashi one Jain tradition stands at its final day while the other has finished for the year.
Anant Chaturdashi 2026 falls on Friday, 25 September. It is fixed by the tithi and not by the English calendar: it is always the Chaturdashi of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapad, Bhadrapad Sud Chaudash, which is why the date moves every year.
They are the same day but not the same observance. Anant Chaturdashi is the vrat of Vishnu in his endless form, and it is what the day is actually named after. Ganesh Visarjan falls on it because Ganeshotsav begins on the Chaturthi and runs ten days, which lands it here. In 2026 both are on Friday, 25 September.
It is a cotton thread coloured with turmeric, kumkum and saffron, tied with fourteen knots, worshipped along with Vishnu and then tied on the arm. The fourteen knots stand for the fourteen lokas, the worlds of Hindu cosmology, which are all held to rest within Anant. The number is why the vrat sits on a Chaturdashi, the fourteenth tithi.
Men tie it on the right arm and women on the left. It is worn for fourteen days and then removed. Tradition holds it should come off with the same respect it went on with, which is the plain lesson of the Kaundinya katha.
It is a vrat, but not one with a single fixed rule like Ekadashi. Practice varies from family to family: some keep a full fast, many eat once after the puja is done and the sutra is tied, and others keep only the puja. Follow what your family has always done. The puja, the katha and the sutra are the part everyone agrees on.
In the artificial pond your city has built for it. Surat bars immersion in the Tapi and in other natural water bodies altogether and runs ponds zone by zone instead, and Ahmedabad puts up dozens of them through the municipal corporation. Check your ward for the nearest one. A clay murti is the other half of it, because clay is what actually dissolves.
Bhadarvi Poonam the very next day, 26 September, and then the fortnight turns. From 27 September the dark fortnight of shradh begins and runs to Sarva Pitru Amavasya on 10 October, so Anant Chaturdashi is the last of the loud days before a quiet stretch given to the ancestors. The festivals pick up again with Sharad Navratri on 11 October.