Eight days outdoors, and the only appointed time Scripture commands you to be glad on.
Sukkot 2026 begins at sunset on Friday 25 September and runs to nightfall on Friday 2 October. Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah follow immediately, from sunset 2 October to nightfall 4 October.
Rabbinic reckoning. See the calendar page for other reckonings.
What Scripture says
Leviticus 23:42–43 gives the command and the reason in the same breath: you shall dwell in booths seven days … that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.
The point is memory built into the body. You do not read about the wilderness; you sleep in a structure with a roof you can see stars through, and you find out what it is to depend on someone else for shelter.
Deuteronomy 16:14–15 adds something no other feast has: you shall rejoice in your feast … and you shall be altogether joyful. Joy is commanded here. Tradition calls it z'man simchateinu — the season of our gladness.
Building a sukkah
The requirements are simpler than people expect. Three walls will do — the fourth may be open, and an existing wall of your house can count as one. What matters is the roof: it must be made of cut vegetation, loose enough to see the sky through, dense enough to give more shade than sun. Branches, bamboo, palm fronds, cornstalks.
You eat in it. Sleeping in it is the fuller practice and not everyone does. In cold or wet climates, most households eat every meal there and sleep indoors, which nobody regards as a failure.
Children decorate it, and that is half the point.
Teachings
“Sukkot: You Shall Rejoice” · 119 Ministries — Hebrew Roots. Teaches Torah as applying identically to Jewish and gentile believers; Messianic Jewish bodies hold a different position.
“What is Sukkot?” · FIRM Israel — a Messianic Jewish network based in Israel. Useful if you want the feast as it is actually kept in the land.
The fourth day of creation, and the water
Two things worth knowing that rarely make it into introductions.
First, the water-drawing ceremony. During Temple times, water was carried from the pool of Siloam and poured out on the altar each morning of the feast, with singing and torchlight that reportedly ran through the night. It is against that backdrop that John 7:37 places Yeshua standing up on the last and greatest day of the feast and calling out about living water. The scene lands differently once you know what was happening around him.
Second, Shemini Atzeret — the eighth day — is technically its own appointed time rather than part of Sukkot, an extra day added on. In Jewish tradition Simchat Torah, the rejoicing over completing and restarting the annual Torah cycle, is kept alongside it.
Common questions
Do I have to build a sukkah?
The command is to dwell in booths. How completely a household does that varies enormously — some build and sleep in it for eight days, some eat every meal in a simple frame on a balcony, some are in an apartment and keep the feast by gathering with others who have one. Start where you are.
What are the four species?
Leviticus 23:40 names branches taken for rejoicing before the LORD. Jewish tradition identifies them as the lulav (palm), etrog (citron), hadas (myrtle) and aravah (willow), bound and waved. Messianic Jewish households commonly keep this; many Hebrew Roots households read the verse as describing materials for building the sukkah rather than a bound set to be waved. Both readings are held seriously.
Is Sukkot the same as the Feast of Tabernacles?
Yes. Sukkot is the Hebrew plural for booths or shelters; "Tabernacles" is the older English rendering. Also called the Feast of Ingathering.
Was Yeshua born at Sukkot?
A widely held view in this community, argued from the priestly courses in Luke 1 and from John 1:14's language of the Word tabernacling among us. It is a reasonable inference, not a certainty, and Scripture does not date the birth. Hold it lightly.
To read alongside
- Practicing the Biblical Feasts — the most practical book we carry for a household actually doing this
- God's Appointed Times — Barney Kasdan
- Jesus and the Feasts — good to hand a guest who asks why you are eating outside
Previous: Yom Kippur · back to the Learning Hub