મકર સંક્રાંતિ 2026 માર્ગદર્શિકા: મકર રાશિમાં સૂર્યનો પ્રવેશ, ઉત્તરાયણ અને પતંગ ઉડાવવાની પરંપરા

Makar Sankranti 2026: January 14 Date, Solar Ingress and Why It Never Moves

Makar Sankranti 2026 falls on January 14, as it does in most years of the 21st century, making it one of the very few Hindu festivals celebrated on a fixed Gregorian date rather than a shifting lunar calendar date. The reason is astronomically precise: Makar Sankranti marks the moment when the Sun completes its southward journey (Dakshinayana) and enters Makara Rashi — Capricorn in Western astronomy — beginning the northward journey called Uttarayana. This is a sidereal solar ingress, calculated by Vedic astronomical methods, and falls on January 14 or 15 in the current era, slowly shifting over centuries due to precession. The word Sankranti means transition or passage, specifically of the Sun from one zodiac sign to the next, and the Makar (Capricorn) Sankranti is by far the most auspicious of the twelve annual solar transits because it marks the commencement of Uttarayana — the six-month period when the Sun moves northward and days begin to lengthen. The Mahabharata states that the dying patriarch Bhishma — who had the boon of choosing his moment of death — deliberately waited through the inauspicious Dakshinayana period wounded on his bed of arrows before departing his body on a day in Uttarayana, because death during Uttarayana was considered most favorable for the soul's onward journey. This single scriptural moment has embedded the auspiciousness of Makar Sankranti permanently in the Hindu imagination.