All Souls Day 2026: Prayers for the Faithful Departed

All Souls Day 2026 is Monday, November 2, the day after All Saints. On it the Church prays for everyone who has died, especially the souls being purified in purgatory. It is not a holy day of obligation. If you want one All Souls Day prayer, it’s this one:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace. Amen.

For one person, say “grant unto him” or “grant unto her” and change the rest to match. Many people add: “May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.” There’s more on its origin on our Eternal Rest prayer page.

If you’d like to pray longer, the Rosary is the prayer most families reach for on this day. Pray it with our Glorious Mysteries pray-along, adding the Eternal Rest after each decade (our guide to the rosary for the dead shows where it goes).

Prayers for All Souls Day

The Eternal Rest (above) is the prayer of the day. It comes from the opening chant of the old Requiem Mass, and it’s short enough to say at a grave, at a meal, or every time you pass a cemetery.

Psalm 129 (130), the De Profundis. This is the Church’s psalm for the dead, prayed in the Office of the Dead for centuries. In the Douay-Rheims:

Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. If thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: Lord, who shall stand it. For with thee there is merciful forgiveness: and by reason of thy law, I have waited for thee, O Lord. My soul hath relied on his word: my soul hath hoped in the Lord. From the morning watch even until night, let Israel hope in the Lord. Because with the Lord there is mercy: and with him plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

When it’s prayed for the dead, the Eternal Rest takes the place of the Glory Be at the end. Read it in context in Psalm 129.

The traditional collect for the faithful departed. This is the old Latin Mass prayer Fidelium Deus, in its traditional English form:

O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of thy servants departed the remission of all their sins, that through pious supplications they may obtain the pardon which they have always desired. Who livest and reignest, world without end. Amen.

A prayer in your own words. You don’t need a printed text. Say the person’s name, thank God for them, and ask him to bring them home: “Lord, I commend to you my mother, Anne. Forgive whatever she still needs forgiven, and bring her into your light.” That’s a prayer for the dead, and it’s as old as the Church.

For more prayers you can use all year, see prayers for the souls in purgatory. The St. Gertrude prayer is popular this month too; that page explains what is and isn’t true about the promise attached to it.

What are Catholics supposed to do on All Souls Day?

Nothing is required, but the Church’s own suggestions are clear (Directory on Popular Piety, nos. 255-260):

• Go to Mass, or have a Mass offered. This is the greatest help we can give the dead. Ask at your parish office to have a Mass said for someone by name; there’s usually a small customary offering.
• Visit a cemetery. Pray at the graves of your family, or at any grave. The Directory presents the visit as an act of love and faith, not a duty.
• Pray the Eternal Rest at meals and with the Rosary.
• Do something for the living in their name. Almsgiving and works of mercy offered for the dead are an old Catholic habit.

Some parishes keep a Book of the Dead through November where you can write the names of people you want remembered at every Mass. Ask whether yours does.

A simple plan for the day

1. Before you get out of bed, say the Eternal Rest for the people you’ve lost.
2. Go to Mass if you can. Check your parish schedule; many add an evening Mass for the day.
3. Visit a cemetery or a church (see the indulgence below).
4. Pray a decade or the whole Rosary for the dead in the evening. It takes about 20 minutes.
5. Say the Eternal Rest at supper and name your dead out loud, one by one.

Is All Souls Day on November 1 or 2?

November 2. The two days are easy to mix up because they sit side by side:

	All Saints Day	All Souls Day
2026 date	Sunday, November 1	Monday, November 2
Who we honor	All the saints in heaven, known and unknown	All the faithful departed, especially the souls in purgatory
What we do	Celebrate and ask their prayers	Pray for them
Holy day of obligation?	Yes (and a Sunday in 2026)	No

All Saints is a celebration of the Church in heaven. All Souls is the Church on earth praying for the Church being purified. The commemoration on November 2 began in the monasteries of Cluny under St. Odilo around the year 1000 and spread from there to the whole Church.

Is All Souls Day a holy day of obligation?

No. Canon 1246 lists the holy days, and All Souls isn’t one of them. In 2026 the question barely arises for All Saints either, because November 1 is a Sunday. You fulfill both the Sunday and the holy day at the same Mass.

The plenary indulgence for the dead, November 1-8

This is the part most pages get wrong, so here it is plainly, from the Church’s Manual of Indulgences, grant 29.

A plenary indulgence, applicable only to the souls in purgatory, is granted for either of these:

What you do	When
Visit a cemetery and pray for the dead, even silently	Any day from November 1 to 8
Visit a church or oratory and pray an Our Father and the Creed	On November 2 (your bishop may move it to the Sunday before or after, or to All Saints)

Then the usual conditions, which apply to every plenary indulgence:

• Sacramental confession, within about 20 days before or after (one confession covers several indulgences).
• Holy Communion, ideally the same day.
• Prayer for the Pope’s intentions. An Our Father and a Hail Mary are enough.
• Detachment from all sin, even venial. If that’s not complete, the indulgence is partial instead of plenary. Don’t let that stop you: a partial indulgence still helps.

You can gain one plenary indulgence per day, so the eight days of November 1-8 are eight chances to offer one for a different person. You do need to go to the cemetery; the “even silently” refers to the prayer, not the visit. Driving past doesn’t count.

Note on “all of November”: in 2020 and 2021 the Apostolic Penitentiary extended these indulgences to every day of November because of the pandemic. Those decrees were for those two years only. Some parish letters from that time are still online, so if you read “any day in November,” check the date.

Outside these dates, praying the Eternal Rest carries a partial indulgence for the souls in purgatory all year.

What color do Catholics wear on All Souls Day?

There’s no rule for the people in the pews. Black is the traditional color of mourning, and some families wear it. Hispanic families keeping Día de los Muertos on the same days often bring bright marigolds and candles to the graves; that’s a cultural custom alongside the Church’s prayer, and it’s fine. At Mass the priest wears violet or black, and in the United States white is also permitted (General Instruction of the Roman Missal, no. 346).

Why do priests say three Masses on All Souls Day?

In 1915, with the First World War filling Europe’s graves, Pope Benedict XV gave every priest permission to celebrate three Masses on November 2 (Incruentum altaris sacrificium). The first may be offered for any intention. The second is for all the faithful departed, and the third for the intentions of the Pope. It’s one of only two days a priest may say three Masses; the other is Christmas.

Why we pray for the dead

The Church teaches that those who die in God’s friendship but still need purifying are made ready for heaven after death, and that our prayers and the Mass help them (CCC 1030-1032). The idea is already in the Old Testament: Judas Maccabeus sent money to Jerusalem for a sacrifice for fallen soldiers, and the text concludes, “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46).

The help runs both ways. The Catechism teaches that our prayer for the dead helps them, and also makes their prayer for us effective (CCC 958). On All Souls Day you’re praying for them, and they’re praying for you.

If you’d like to keep praying past November 2, the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Rosary are both good daily prayers for the souls in purgatory.