Karwa Chauth Bingo

Karwa Chauth bingo gives the long wait for the moon something cheerful to do. The template on this page has 28 squares that most Karwa Chauth evenings produce, from the pre-dawn sargi and a fresh coat of mehndi to the pooja thali, the bangles, the katha and the first glimpse of the moon. Pick a card size, press print, and every guest gets a different card, ready for the gathering before moonrise.

In short: open the card maker above and press Edit and print this card, choose how many cards you need and download one PDF. It is free, there is no account, and nothing you type leaves your browser. Every square can be rewritten, so a family, a friends group or a ladies circle can each make its own list.

How to play Karwa Chauth bingo

The rules of Karwa Chauth bingo are the bingo rules everyone already knows, with one change: nobody calls numbers, because the evening makes the calls. Each guest holds a card and a pencil, and when one of the squares happens in front of them, they mark it. Five in a row, across, down or on the diagonal, wins. The free center square, a little moon, is already marked, so a first line needs only four more.

1. Give every guest a card and something to mark with. Pencils, crayons or small round stickers all work. Skip wet markers on thin paper, which bleed through.
2. Agree on the rules first. A square counts when you see it yourself, and it counts once. Anyone may ask a player to point at the square they claim.
3. Mark the Karwa Chauth bingo squares as the evening unfolds. The lamps are lit, the thali is set, the bangles jingle: each of those is a square.
4. Announce a line out loud. The winner reads the five squares aloud, a friend checks them, and the prize changes hands.
5. Play another round of Karwa Chauth bingo. After the first line, switch to four corners, an X or a full card, or keep the same card for the next gathering.

Karwa Chauth is a good fit for bingo because the day is full of small, visible things. The Wikipedia article on Karva Chauth describes a day of fasting from sunrise to moonrise, a pre-dawn meal, adornments and mehndi, a puja with a decorated thali, a story told in a circle of women and the moment when the moon is seen. A Karwa Chauth bingo card that names those things invites everyone to notice them together, rather than only watching the clock.

What Karwa Chauth is, and why a bingo game suits the evening

Karwa Chauth is a Hindu festival kept by married women in northern and western India and in Nepal, in October or November. It falls on the fourth day of the waning moon, and the name says as much: karva is a small earthen pot of water and chauth means fourth.

Women who keep the fast do not eat or drink from sunrise until they see the moon, and they pray for the well-being and long life of their husbands. Everything in this section follows the Wikipedia article, and families of course keep the day in their own ways, which a Karwa Chauth bingo card can only sketch.

The day has a clear shape, which is why it works for a game. It begins before dawn with the sargi, a meal that in Punjab is traditionally given by the mother-in-law. Through the day the fasting woman rests from housework, applies mehndi and gets ready. In the evening women gather with their pooja thalis, a story is told with pauses by an older woman or a priest, a puja song is sung and the thalis are passed around in a circle. Then comes the long wait for the moon.

That wait is the reason Karwa Chauth bingo feels natural. For an hour or more the women are together, dressed up, hungry and thirsty and glad of conversation. A Karwa Chauth bingo card of friendly squares gives hands and eyes something to do and gives the group something to laugh about. Karwa Chauth bingo is a game for the waiting, and it should never compete with the puja or the fast.

When is Karwa Chauth? Dates from 2020 to 2026

Karwa Chauth follows the lunisolar Hindu calendar, so its date moves on the Gregorian calendar from year to year. The Wikipedia article lists the dates in the table below, and the dot chart shows how far the date wanders: from October 10 in 2025 to November 4 in 2020, a spread of 25 days. For your own city and year, check a local calendar, which also lists the exact moonrise time.

Friendship, harvest and the stories behind the day

The article gives several ideas about where the festival came from. One links it to the wheat-sowing season, since big earthen grain pots are also called karvas. Another links it to the bond between a new bride and the friend, the kangan-saheli or dharam-behn, she was traditionally given on marriage, so that the day also celebrates a lifelong friendship between women. Three traditional tales are retold: Queen Veeravati and her seven brothers, Draupadi in the Mahabharata, and a woman named Karva who is said to have saved her husband from a crocodile.

The friendship thread is worth keeping in mind when you plan a game. A Karwa Chauth bingo evening is, at heart, an evening of women keeping each other company, and the best Karwa Chauth bingo cards are the ones that make people talk to each other.

Karwa Chauth bingo cards: all 28 squares

These Karwa Chauth bingo cards are made from a list of 28 squares. A standard 5×5 card with a free center needs 24 of them, so each card leaves out four and no two cards are the same. The table sorts the list into the groups a host usually thinks in, so it is easy to decide which squares to keep and which to swap for something that belongs to your own home.

The Karwa Chauth bingo list is not random. The shringar and puja squares fill in at nearly every Karwa Chauth gathering, so they are the engine of the game. The rarer squares (an evil eye charm, a dhol, a cloudy sky) turn a card into a treasure hunt. If every square on a card were as common as a diya, the first line would be over before the second guest arrived.

How many different cards can you print?

With 28 squares and 24 places on a 5×5 card, the number of different sets of squares is 28 choose 24, which is 20,475. Each set can also be arranged in a huge number of orders, so a ladies circle of 15 and a society hall of 150 can both give every Karwa Chauth bingo player a different card. Smaller grids need fewer squares, so a 4×4 or 3×3 card has even more possible sets.

Three ways to play the Karwa Chauth bingo game

One printed Karwa Chauth bingo card supports three very different evenings. Pick the Karwa Chauth bingo game that fits your group, or run two in a row. The table compares them, and the sections underneath give the rules and some prize ideas that are kind to a fasting guest.

Game one: the spotting game while you wait for the moon

This is the Karwa Chauth bingo game most hosts want, and the one this page is built around. Guests arrive in the late afternoon with their cards, and every time they notice a square (the mehndi, the red saree, the thali with its diya, a friend arriving with a gift) they mark it.

The puja deserves a quiet hand. The katha square can be marked once the story has begun, without a word, and the Moon sighting square waits for the real moon. A good rule for Karwa Chauth bingo is that nobody calls out a line while the story is being told.

• Prize for the first line: a small gift from the host, such as a bangle set or a bottle of attar.
• Prize for four corners: choose the song that plays after the fast is broken.
• Prize for everyone: a painted diya or a few sweets to take home.
• Avoid food prizes before moonrise. A prize that is a sweet is lovely for the guests who are not fasting, but it is unkind to hand it to someone who is. Save it for after the moon.

Game two: Karwa Chauth bingo game with calling cards

When the guests sit in one place, the drawn-card version is easier to run. In the Print tab, switch on the calling cards and the caller sheet. Cut the cards out, shuffle them in a bowl, and the host draws one at a time: “Bangles… who has bangles?” Everyone with that square marks it. For a live round on a screen, with guests joining by link, the play bingo online page hosts the 75-ball game, and the play custom bingo online page explains how to play with your own list.

This is also the version for relatives who live in different cities. One person reads the calls on a video call, everyone has the same printable PDF, and the winners show their line to the camera.

Game three: the sargi-to-moonrise tracker

The day itself can be the game. A Karwa Chauth bingo card sent out on the morning of Karwa Chauth picks up squares from the first meal before dawn to the dinner that ends the fast. Players keep their own card and send each other a photo of it in the evening.

Nobody needs to be in the same room, which suits sisters, cousins and friends in different cities. The simulation below shows how a Karwa Chauth bingo card fills up across a typical day, and why a first line almost always lands in the evening.

Karwa Chauth bingo for ladies: the circle, the kitty party and the neighborhood

Karwa Chauth bingo for ladies is the version most hosts have in mind. Many neighborhoods and kitty groups hold a Karwa Chauth gathering where women dress up, share the thali ceremony and wait for the moon together. A Karwa Chauth bingo card makes a good icebreaker for a mixed group, because the squares are things everyone has an opinion about. Who has the best mehndi? Whose dupatta is the prettiest? Who brought sweets?

A few small rules keep Karwa Chauth bingo warm. A square counts when someone else points it out to you, which turns the card into an excuse for compliments. Nobody is ever asked to show or compare jewelry or the price of a saree.

Keep the prizes simple and shared, and let the youngest players claim the first line now and then. For a gathering that also plays games with numbers, see Karwa Chauth tambola and the Chand tambola tickets: in bingo you mark squares for things you see, while tambola uses numbers called from a bag on a 3×9 ticket.

If the group already meets every month, Karwa Chauth bingo can share the evening with the kitty party bingo card and the handbag bingo game pair well with the festival evening, and the kitty party games guide has more ideas for the hour after the moon.

Karwa Chauth bingo ideas for couples, families and friends

The festival is mostly kept by women, but a lot of the evening belongs to everyone in the house. These Karwa Chauth bingo ideas stretch the same card across different groups, and every one of these Karwa Chauth bingo ideas is a small edit. Each one changes only a few squares, and every change takes a minute in the card maker.

The Wikipedia article also notes that the lack of a partner can be felt acutely at this festival, because it is so closely tied to marriage. A kind host keeps that in mind: make the Karwa Chauth bingo list about friendship, beauty, light and food, and let anyone play. A card that names the moon, the lamp and the friend next to you is welcoming to every guest.

Karwa Chauth bingo game: a real simulation

A host planning a Karwa Chauth bingo game always asks the same question: will it be over before the moon rises? To answer with numbers instead of a guess, we simulated 8,000 days of Karwa Chauth bingo. Every square has an assumed chance of showing up in a given window of the day.

The chances are our assumptions, chosen to feel like a typical gathering. They are not survey data. The moon rises somewhere between 7:30 and 8:45 p.m., one evening in four is cloudy, and a cloud delays the sighting by 15 to 60 minutes. Real moonrise depends on your city and date, so always use a local calendar.

The timeline shows what the model assumes. Sargi comes first, well before dawn, and only about 70% of players are up for it. Mehndi, shringar and bangles fill the afternoon. The pooja thali, the diya and the katha cluster in the hour before moonrise, and the moon, the water, the couple and the dinner come last.

Karwa Chauth bingo from 4 p.m.: a first line comes by about 7:30 p.m.

We assumed the Karwa Chauth bingo gathering starts at 4 p.m. and only squares seen after that count. In an average evening of Karwa Chauth bingo a guest sees about 17 of the 28 squares, so a 5×5 card ends the night with about 15 of its 24 squares marked, plus the free center. A full card never happened in 8,000 evenings: the rarer squares keep it out of reach, which is why the usual prize is a line or four corners.

A single Karwa Chauth bingo guest has a first line only 68% of the time before the evening ends, and just 25% of single cards have one before the moon appears. With six guests the first line arrives around 7:30 p.m., soon after the puja, and 71% of six-card groups finish before moonrise. With twelve guests the median is 7:07 p.m.. A 3×3 card is much quicker: with six players the median is 5:55 p.m. and 99% finish before the moon.

The chart on the right is the planning tool for Karwa Chauth bingo. If your group has six guests and the moon is due at 8 p.m., a 5×5 card gives you about 71% odds of a winner before the sighting, and a 4×4 card about 79%. For three guests, use a 4×4 or a 3×3 card, or the game may still be going when the moon arrives. Treat these as guides for how long to plan the game, not promises.

Four corners, X and a full card

The first line is not the only prize in Karwa Chauth bingo. In the same simulation with six guests, four corners is reached by 54% of groups, at a median of 9:20 p.m.. The X pattern is rarer: only 9% of six-guest evenings produce one, and a full card (blackout) happened in none. So four corners is a good second prize, and an X is a bonus round for the next gathering.

Calling cards: how many calls, and how often do two players tie?

The drawn-card version of Karwa Chauth bingo is the most predictable. All 28 squares are called exactly once, in random order, so we simulated 8,000 games to see how many calls it takes before someone has a line, and how often two or more players complete a line on the very same call. The table counts calls out of the 28.

A circle of 15 players usually sees a first line after 10 calls, a little over a third of the way through the list, and in 21% of games two or more players shout together. With 100 cards the median falls to 7 calls and ties climb to 30%. Plan a tie-break for Karwa Chauth bingo (a quick trivia question about the festival works well) before the first call.

For a quicker game, 4×4 cards with 8 players reach a first line at 10 calls and 3×3 cards with 8 players at 5. The assumptions: every call is equally likely at each step, cards are independent random draws, and nobody misses a call.

Printable Karwa Chauth bingo: print, cut and hand out

For printable Karwa Chauth bingo, the Print tab has the controls you need and nothing you do not. Choose how many different Karwa Chauth bingo cards to print, from 1 to 100, how many go on a page (1, 2, 4 or 6), Letter or A4 paper, and portrait or landscape. Cut guides are available for sheets that need trimming. For a circle of 12, print 14 cards, two per page, and keep two spares for the friend who arrives late.

• Use light cardstock. A Karwa Chauth bingo card that will be carried between rooms and held with mehndi-wet hands survives the evening better when it is thicker than copy paper.
• Print names on the cards. The Design tab can put a name on each card, which prevents arguments about whose card is whose.
• Use big squares for little hands and older eyes. One Karwa Chauth bingo card per page in portrait gives the biggest squares.
• Print the caller sheet and calling cards for the drawn-card Karwa Chauth bingo game. They come out of the same Print tab.
• Pick warm colors. The Design tab holds color themes, and a red and gold Karwa Chauth bingo card looks the part beside a brass thali.
• Be careful with mehndi. Fresh mehndi smudges. Offer stickers or a spare pair of hands for marking the squares.

Hosts who are away from a printer can save the PDF to a phone or a USB stick and print it anywhere. The shareable link in the card maker keeps only your word list, with no names or photos, so you can send it to the group chat and let everyone print their own.

Karwa Chauth bingo free printable: what you get

Free, private and nothing to install

This Karwa Chauth bingo free printable does not ask for an email or an account, and nothing is added to your PDF but the card itself and a small footer. The editor runs in your browser, so your word list never goes to a server. You need only a printer or a PDF viewer.

What you can change

The card maker has five tabs: Setup, Items, Design, Templates and Print. On the Items tab you can rewrite any square, add an emoji or upload your own picture, and decide what the free space shows.

The Design tab holds color themes, fonts, text size, ALL CAPS, borders, rounded corners, tiles or plain grids, and a card background that can be a color, a pattern or your own picture. You can also add a title, a logo and a footer line, for example “Sharma family Karwa Chauth”. The Print tab holds the numbers: how many cards, which paper, which layout.

You do not have to start from this page. The bingo card generator offers every card type in one place, and the blank bingo cards page gives you an empty grid to fill by hand.

Customize the Karwa Chauth bingo cards in the card maker

The best Karwa Chauth bingo card names your own home. Open the Items tab and every square turns into a text box. Here is how a few common situations change the list.

• Your family. “Mummy-ji brings the sargi,” “The aunt with the best mehndi,” “Dadi tells the katha.”
• Your own region. Replace a square with a local custom: the song you sing, the sweet you make, the name of the thali you use.
• A group where some women are not fasting. Swap Sargi and Water to break the fast for squares about company and finery.
• A very young group. Delete the squares that need explaining (Evil eye charm, Pooja aarti) and add friendly ones such as “A sparkly bindi.”
• A language-learning or heritage class. Write the squares in Hindi or Punjabi next to the English word.

The Karwa Chauth bingo list has 28 words and a 5×5 card uses 24, so every card differs. With exactly 24 words, every card has the same words in a different order, and with more than 28 the mix between cards widens further. The free space can say “Free” or show its own emoji, text or picture, for example a little moon. Shuffle re-deals the squares across all cards, Undo takes back your last change, and the preview lets you zoom in before you download.

Playing Karwa Chauth bingo respectfully

Karwa Chauth is a religious and personal observance, and a game of Karwa Chauth bingo beside it needs a light touch. These habits apply to any bingo you play at a festival, and a few are especially important here.

• Keep prayer separate from play. Do not interrupt the katha, the aarti or the sighting of the moon to claim a line. Wait for the natural pause.
• Never pressure anyone to play, or to fast. The game is for company, and some guests will choose to sit it out.
• Do not joke about the fast. A woman who has gone all day without water deserves kindness, not teasing about hunger or thirst.
• Think about food. Do not hand out sweets as prizes before the fast is broken, and ask about allergies afterward.
• Keep it kind to everyone. The festival is tied to marriage, so avoid squares that compare husbands, gifts or jewelry, and keep a place at the table for guests who are single, widowed or simply not observing.
• Ask an elder. A grandmother or aunt can look over the list before you print. She will find the square you forgot and the one that might not sit well.

None of this is a rulebook. It is the care a good host already takes, and a Karwa Chauth bingo card works best when it is made together with the people who keep the day.

More bingo cards for the festive season

Karwa Chauth bingo is one of a whole set of occasion lists in the card maker. The festival of lights follows soon after, and the Diwali bingo card is ready for it, while the nine nights before have their own Navratri bingo list.

A winter evening of songs and a bonfire has its own Lohri bingo card, and for a Bollywood-style evening the Bollywood party games guide has more ideas. Couples who like a quiz can try the couple quiz questions after the fast. Every template is gathered on the printable bingo cards hub, and number-based bingo runs on the bingo caller.