Diwali Emojis 2026: A Day-by-Day Guide with Greetings

The Diwali emoji is 🪔, the diya lamp, and if you only send one this year it should be that one. Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November, the night of Lakshmi Puja, inside a run of festival days from Friday 6 November to Wednesday 11 November. Below is a copy-ready set for each of those days, with greetings in English, Hindi and Hinglish.

The lamp is newer than most people assume. It only reached phones in 2019, which is why older Diwali forwards are full of candles and flames. More on that further down.

The 2026 calendar, and why it has six days this year

Diwali is usually described as five days. In 2026 the panchang stretches it. Drik Panchang's calendar for New Delhi puts the new-moon tithi across Sunday night and Monday, which pushes the last two festivals back a day:

• Friday 6 November: Dhanteras
• Saturday 7 November: Chhoti Diwali for many families (Drik Panchang lists Naraka Chaturdashi on the 8th, the same day as Lakshmi Puja)
• Sunday 8 November: Diwali, Lakshmi Puja
• Monday 9 November: the gap day, with the amavasya still running
• Tuesday 10 November: Govardhan Puja and Annakut
• Wednesday 11 November: Bhai Dooj

Some calendars, especially ones printed for the Gulf and for diaspora temples, put Govardhan Puja on Monday 9 and Bhai Dooj on Tuesday 10. Neither is wrong. The date follows the tithi at sunrise where you live, so check your local temple or family pandit before you schedule a message for the exact morning. Our festival countdown page tracks the main night.

Friday 6 November: Dhanteras

Dhanteras opens the festival, and it's traditionally the day for buying something new and metal: gold, silver, a steel vessel for the kitchen. The messages lean on prosperity, so coins and sparkle work better than lamps today.

• 🪙✨🪔Copy
• 💰🪷✨Copy
• 🪙🛍️💛Copy
• Happy Dhanteras! May the new year bring more than just new utensils 😄🪙
• धनतेरस की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं 🪔🪙Copy
• Dhanteras ki dher saari badhaai, ghar mein khushiyan aur barkat aaye 🪙✨

🪙 the coin is an Emoji 13.0 character from 2020. Grandparents on a handset bought around 2019 may get an empty rectangle where the coin should be. If the person you're messaging uses an old handset, 💰 the money bag from 2010 is the safe fallback. Our guide to emoji showing as boxes explains what is going on when that happens.

Saturday 7 November: Chhoti Diwali

Chhoti Diwali (Naraka Chaturdashi) remembers Krishna's victory over the demon king Narakasura. In practice it's the evening the first lamps go out on the doorstep and the house gets its final clean. Messages are lighter and more anticipatory.

• 🪔🧹🏠Copy
• 🪔🪔✨Copy
• 🌼🪔🌙Copy
• One more day! First diyas are out on the balcony 🪔🪔
• छोटी दिवाली की शुभकामनाएं, कल मिलते हैं 🪔
• Kal ki taiyaari ho gayi? Rangoli, mithai, sab ready? 🌼🍬

The broom is there on purpose. Cleaning before Lakshmi Puja is part of the festival, and 🧹 says "we spent the afternoon scrubbing" more honestly than another sparkle does.

Sunday 8 November: Lakshmi Puja, the main night

This is the night most people mean by Diwali. Families perform the puja to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good fortune, and in much of North India the night also marks Rama's return to Ayodhya after fourteen years of exile. Among many Bengali families the same new moon is Kali Puja instead.

The set for tonight carries the most weight, so it's the longest:

• 🪔🪷🙏Copy
• 🪔🎆🎇Copy
• 🕉️🪔✨Copy
• 🪔🍬🎁Copy
• 🛕🪔🙏Copy
• 🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔Copy
• Happy Diwali to you and the whole family 🪔🪷 Light, sweets and zero arguments about the guest list.
• शुभ दीपावली! माँ लक्ष्मी आपके घर सुख और समृद्धि लाएं 🪔🪷🙏Copy
• Happy Diwali yaar, mithai bachaa ke rakhna mere liye 🍬😌
• Wishing you a bright Diwali from across the time zones 🪔🌏

Our favourite is the row of five lamps, because it mirrors the line of diyas along a rooftop. ✨ after 🪔 is the second most natural pairing. 🎆 and 🎇, fireworks and sparkler, both date from 2010, and they're fine for younger friends. For an elder or a work contact, lead with 🙏 and the lamp and leave out the bangs.

Monday 9 November: the quiet day

When the new moon runs into a second day, as it does this year, there's a lull. Shops reopen, leftovers come out, and half the family is asleep by nine. You don't need to send anything. If you do, make it a reply rather than a broadcast.

• 🍬🍬😴Copy
• 🪔➡️🛋️Copy
• Still eating yesterday's kaju katli. No regrets 🍬

Tuesday 10 November: Govardhan Puja and Annakut

Govardhan Puja remembers Krishna lifting Govardhan hill to shelter the people of Vraj from Indra's storm. Annakut, literally a mountain of food, is the offering of dozens of dishes piled before the deity, and in many homes cows are decorated and fed.

• ⛰️🍛🙏Copy
• 🐄🌼🙏Copy
• 🍚🍛🥘⛰️Copy
• गोवर्धन पूजा की शुभकामनाएं 🐄🙏Copy
• Annakut ka prasad kab mil raha hai? 🍛😋

No emoji shows Krishna, and that's fine. ⛰️ plus a heap of food tells the story without trying to draw a god.

Wednesday 11 November: Bhai Dooj

Sisters apply a tilak to their brothers' foreheads and pray for their long life; brothers bring gifts. The festival closes on something personal, so the messages get funnier and more specific.

• 👫🪔🎁Copy
• 🫶🍬🎁Copy
• Happy Bhai Dooj! The gift had better be bigger than last year's 🎁👀
• भाई दूज की बहुत बहुत बधाई, हमेशा साथ रहना 🫶
• Didi, tilak lagwaane aa raha hoon, mithai ready rakhna 🍬🙏

🫶 heart hands came with the lotus in that same 2021 batch. It reads as affectionate without being romantic, which is exactly the register a sibling message needs.

Before 2019 there was no Diwali emoji

For most of emoji history the festival of lights had no light of its own. People improvised with 🕯️, the candle that arrived in Unicode 7.0 in 2014, or simply 🔥. The candle is a Western taper on a holder. It never looked like a clay lamp, and everyone knew it.

The fix began with a proposal from the scholar Anshuman Pandey, dated 25 July 2017 and filed with the Unicode Consortium as L2/17-356. It argued that nothing already encoded conveyed the lamp or Diwali. Then came a naming argument: the Emoji Subcommittee floated the generic name OIL LAMP, and a follow-up submission (L2/18-033) argued the word DIYA was not too specific to keep. The character was released as U+1FA94 in Emoji 12.0 in 2019, with the short name "diya lamp".

The same release brought 🥻 sari and 🛕 hindu temple, so 2019 was the year South Asian festivals got real vocabulary on the keyboard. 🪷 lotus followed two years later (Emoji 14.0), and it's now the natural partner for the diya on Lakshmi Puja, since the goddess is so often shown seated on one. Our Unicode version index lists everything else that shipped alongside the lamp.

What does 🪔 mean? (and 🪔 是什么意思)

Our Search Console data shows people arriving with a Chinese query, "🪔 意思", asking what the glyph means. Fair question if you've only seen it in a friend's story. Here's the answer in both languages:

• 🪔 is a diya, a small clay oil lamp with a cotton wick. Rows of them are lit at Diwali, and the lamp stands for light winning over darkness.
• 🪔 是 diya 油灯，一种用陶土做的小油灯。印度人在排灯节（Diwali）点亮成排的油灯，象征光明战胜黑暗。这个表情在 2019 年随 Emoji 12.0 加入。

Emojipedia notes the same lamp is used across Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Zoroastrian festivals, so you'll also see it outside the Diwali week. Our diya lamp emoji page has the platform designs side by side.

Diwali things with no emoji, and the closest stand-ins

We checked every name in the Unicode 18.0 list, all 3,963 fully-qualified emoji. A lot of the festival is simply missing:

• Rangoli: nothing. 🎨 artist palette with 🌸 or 🌼 is the usual workaround. Some people send a little grid of coloured circles instead, which works better than you'd expect.
• Lakshmi, Ganesha, Rama: no deity emoji exist, and we'd steer away from improvising one out of animals. 🪷 and 🪙 point at Lakshmi without depicting her.
• Ladoo, barfi, jalebi: no Indian sweets at all. 🍬 is a wrapped Western candy and 🍮 a custard. Neither is right, but 🍬 has become the accepted shorthand for mithai in Diwali messages.
• Marigold garland and toran: no marigold. 🌼 blossom is yellow and close enough; 🏵️ rosette works as the orange flower.
• Akash kandil (hanging lantern): 🏮 is a Japanese red paper lantern. People use it anyway, but it reads as East Asian to anyone who knows the original art.
• Firecracker: this one exists. 🧨 arrived in Emoji 11.0 in 2018 and gets heavy use at Lunar New Year too.

For the sweets gap in particular, our food emoji guide covers which glyphs people bend into other cuisines.

Jain, Sikh and Buddhist Diwali messages

Diwali isn't only a Hindu festival, and a message that assumes Lakshmi Puja can land awkwardly. The Tanenbaum Center's 2026 fact sheet sets out the main traditions:

• Jains mark the day Mahavira attained final liberation. Many Jains also treat it as the start of a new year, and some fast through the festival. 🪔🙏 alone is the right register.
• Sikhs celebrate Bandi Chhor Divas, also on 8 November in 2026, remembering Guru Hargobind's release from imprisonment in 1619, together with 52 Hindu princes, and his arrival at Amritsar, where the Harmandir Sahib was lit up. 🪯 khanda, from Emoji 15.0 in 2022, is the Sikh symbol to use: 🪯🪔✨.
• Newar Buddhists in the Kathmandu Valley mark the day Emperor Ashoka is said to have embraced Buddhism. ☸️ wheel of dharma with 🪔 fits.

If you don't know which tradition a friend keeps, the lamp is the one glyph every version of the festival shares. Send 🪔 and let them add the rest.

Building your own Diwali line

The sets above follow three habits worth copying. First, the lamp goes first. Recipients read left to right, and 🪔 at the front tells them which festival this is before anything else does. Second, keep it to three or four glyphs. A wall of twenty emoji in a family WhatsApp group reads as a forward, and forwards get skimmed.

Third, match the day. Coins on Dhanteras, a broom on Chhoti Diwali, the lotus on the main night, food on Annakut, a gift on Bhai Dooj. A message that knows which day it is feels written by a person, which is the whole point of sending one. Even a single word in Hindi from someone who usually texts in English gets noticed.

When you want more raw material, the Diwali topic page collects every relevant glyph in one grid, and the Diwali emoji copy page has combos ready to paste. For longer chains built around lamps and flowers, try our Diwali emoji combos. 🕉️ om and 🙏 folded hands both have their own pages, the om symbol and folded hands, and the second is worth reading: some people read 🙏 as a high five rather than a namaste, and our hand emoji meanings guide covers that confusion. For the other festivals on the calendar this year, our emoji calendar runs from Lunar New Year to New Year's Eve.