When Are the Fall Feasts in 2026? Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot

Short answer, then the reasons.

The fall feasts of 5787

Why they start at sunset

Because the day does. Genesis counts evening first — there was evening and there was morning — so a biblical day runs sunset to sunset rather than midnight to midnight. Yom Teruah does not begin on the morning of the 11th. It begins as the sun goes down on the 11th and runs through to nightfall.

This trips up more households than anything else on the calendar, usually in the form of a family sitting down to a meal roughly twenty-four hours late.

Why your dates might differ — and why that is not an error

The dates above follow the rabbinic calendar, the calculated reckoning fixed by Hillel II and used by most Jewish communities and most Messianic Jewish congregations.

Many Hebrew Roots households keep a different reckoning. Some watch for the sighted new moon from Jerusalem rather than a calculated conjunction, which can move a feast by a day. Some determine the start of the year by the ripeness of the aviv barley rather than by calculation, which can move a whole month. A smaller number keep a solar reckoning drawn from Enoch or the Zadokite calendar, which produces different dates again.

These communities disagree with one another, sometimes sharply. We are a bookshop, not a beit din, and we are not going to settle it from a product page. What we will do is tell you which reckoning any dated item follows, so you can buy the one you actually keep.

What each day asks of a household

Yom Teruah — the day of the blast

The commanded act is a sound. Leviticus 23 calls it a memorial of blowing, a holy convocation. A household keeping this day needs a shofar it can actually sound — which is why the difference between a horn that is kosher for blowing and one that is silver-plated for a mantel matters more on this day than any other.

If you have never blown one: buy short. A twelve to fourteen inch ram's horn takes far less breath than a thirty-eight inch kudu, and it will speak for you on the first evening rather than the third.

Yom Kippur — the day of covering

A fast and a day of affliction. White is customary. For many people this is the one day of the year they wear a tallit who otherwise do not.

Sukkot — the season of our joy

Eight days, and the most social feast on the calendar. Households build, host, and feed people. It is the feast most likely to involve guests who have never kept one, which makes it the feast most worth having something on the table to hand them.

How much time you actually have

Less than it feels like. If you are ordering anything — a book to read beforehand, a study to work through with a group, a gift — count backwards from sunset on 11 September and give yourself a week of margin. Anything shipping from Israel needs considerably more, because the workshops there close for the feasts themselves.

We would rather turn an order away than take your money for something that lands on the 14th.

See our full calendar of the appointed times through Shavuot 2027, or browse what we have stocked for the fall feasts.