Krishna Janmashtami saw 133x more Wikipedia readers than usual

What this article is

Krishna Janmashtami, also known simply as Krishnashtami, Janmashtami, or Gokulashtami, is an annual Hindu festival that celebrates the birth of Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu. In the prominent Hindu scriptures, such as the Mahabharata, Bhagavata Purana, Gita Govinda, etc. Krishna has been identified as the supreme God and the source of all avatars. Krishna's birth is celebrated and observed on the eighth day (Ashtami) of the dark fortnight in Shravana Masa or Bhadrapada Masa.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "Krishna Janmashtami", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

Where editors were working

Wikipedia editors made 5 edits to this article on 2026-09-04, concentrated in these sections. This is evidence about the surge, not an explanation of it.

• History

What changed that day

The article lost 28 characters on balance that day. The largest single addition was 4 characters. See everything that changed on 2026-09-04 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.