Durga Puja 2026

Melbourne has several — Bongosathi’s Durga Utsav in the west at Hoppers Crossing and Aurora’s puja in Clayton among them — with Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra each keeping at least one; it is spring in Australia, so the pandal is sometimes outdoors.

The UK keeps more than a hundred pujas, from London’s large ones — Camden (the London Durgotsav Committee), Ealing, Wembley and Croydon — to the associations in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow and along the south coast; most run from Saptami to Dashami in a hired hall, with bhog at lunchtime and a programme at night.

Several Bengali associations keep the puja in the Netherlands, the largest in the Amsterdam and Utrecht areas, usually over the weekend in a rented hall.

Every American metro with a Bengali association has a puja — New Jersey and New York, the Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Atlanta — most held on the weekend nearest the dates in a school or community centre, a few keeping the dates exactly.

Toronto and the GTA have the largest pujas in Canada, with Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal behind; the Bengali associations rent halls and gymnasiums for the weekend, and the Sunday bhog draws the whole community.

Brussels has two Durga Pujas: Tero Parbon, the Probashi Bengali community’s association, holds a four-day puja whose main day in 2026 is Saturday 17 October at the Salles Excelsior in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre (with a Bijaya Sammelani evening on 7 November in Evere), and the Belgium Sarbojanin Durga Puja Samity keeps its own pandal in Schaerbeek. Both welcome Indian and Bangladeshi Bengalis alike; Antwerp’s association keeps a third.

Bengali associations in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Stuttgart keep the puja over a long weekend in a rented hall; the students’ groups run the smaller ones.