Festival assistant · schedule, food, venue, tickets
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Hoichoi Netherlands · Bengali Community
Amstelveenসার্বজনীন
celebrating
DURGA PUJA 2026
দশে পা, উৎসবে মা
A Decade of Devotion
🎉10th Anniversary Durga Puja🎉
--Days
--Hours
--Mins
--Secs
16 – 20 October 2026
Diamant Party Centrum, Amstelveen
👋
New to Durga Puja? Tap here for a friendly first-timer’s guide.
দশ বছরের আনন্দের পথচলা
Ten Years of Joy & Togetherness
From our first Puja in Netherlands to this landmark 10th edition — we've laughed, danced, prayed, and celebrated together. This year, we go bigger than ever. 🙏
Festival Coming Soon
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—
📺
Watch LiveSoon
Stream the Puja online during 16–20 October
›
🔔
Get festival alerts
Live updates, programme changes & announcements
📢 Latest Updates
Our Sponsors
❤️
Support the Puja
Your contribution keeps this 10-year tradition alive. Every donation helps us celebrate together.
• Tickets are non-refundable • Transferable — email info@hoichoi.nl • Free walk-in all days except Sat evening (celebrity concert) • Early booking recommended — prices may increase
💝
Support with a Donation
Help make this 10th anniversary even more special. Every contribution goes towards the Puja experience.
Bodhon — Maa Durga is invoked and welcomed. The Puja begins with the sacred Bodhon ceremony at dusk.
🪷
Saptami — Day 2 (Sat)
Navapatrika Puja — Nine plants tied together represent nine forms of the Goddess. Ritual bathing in the river (Nabapatrika Snan).
🔥
Ashtami — Day 3 (Sun)
The holiest day. Kumari Puja worships a young girl as the Goddess. Sandhi Puja at the junction of Ashtami & Navami is the most intense moment.
🥁
Navami — Day 4 (Mon)
Maha Navami — Grand celebrations with pushpanjali, cultural performances, and community feasting.
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Dashami — Day 5 (Tue)
Vijaya Dashami — Sindoor Khela as women smear sindoor on each other. Tearful farewell as Maa returns to Kailash. "আসছে বছর আবার হবে!"
Traditions to Join
💃
Dhunuchi Nach
Dance with clay pots of burning coconut husk and incense before the Goddess. Everyone is welcome to participate!
Ashtami Evening
🌺
Pushpanjali
Offer flowers to Maa Durga with the chanting of mantras. A deeply moving collective prayer moment.
Morning rituals
👘
Wear Your Best
Sarees, dhotis, kurtas — Durga Puja is your chance to celebrate Bengali fashion. You'll see the community at its most colourful!
Traditional attire encouraged
🤝
About Hoichoi
Hoichoi ("হইচই") means chaos & joy — and that's exactly what we create! A Bengali community in Amstelveen since 2017, building a home away from home for Indians in the Netherlands.
Send the live stream to family back home so they can watch too 🙏
Our Sponsors
🙏
Can't make it in person?
We stream the key rituals — pushpanjali, sandhi puja, aarti & cultural programmes — live during the festival so family and friends anywhere can join. Streams go live during programme hours, 16–20 October.
Your Tickets
Ticket Wallet
Upload your purchased PDF ticket(s) to keep them on your phone — ready to show at the gate, even without internet.
📄
Drag & drop your PDF ticket
or tap to choose a file (.pdf)
Saved Tickets
🔒
Stored on your device
Your tickets are saved privately on this device only — never uploaded to any server — and stay available offline at the gate.
Organizers Only
Gate Scanner
Point the camera at a guest's QR pass to verify entry. For volunteers at the entrance.
✅
Valid Pass
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🔒
Camera Permission
Your browser will ask for camera access. This stays entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded.
Everything Else
More
Elders' Adda Corner
☕ Adda, Carrom & Gaaner Asor
A relaxed daily get-together for our elders and guests — carrom, antakshari, Rabindra Sangeet and good old adda. Come meet friends over a cup of cha!
Every day · 4:30–5:30 PM · near the tea stall
👋
First Time? Start Here
New to Durga Puja
📺
Live Stream
Watch the Puja online
🎫
Ticket Wallet
Your PDF tickets
💌
Send your Pronam
AI Pujo greeting cards · NEW
🤳
Photo Booth
Festive frames & selfies · NEW
📸
Gallery
A decade of photos
🛕
360° Pandal Darshan
Virtual pandal hopping · NEW
🎥
360° Videos
Watch Kolkata pandals in 360°
📖
Pujo Tales
Share a memory
📜
Community Guidelines
Rules for Tales & Adda
🙏
Know Your Puja
Rituals & traditions
🧸
Kids Corner
Games & activities
📷
Gate Scanner
For organizers
📣
Admin
Send notifications
❤️
Donate
Support the Puja
📞
Contact
Reach the team
💡
Send Feedback
Ideas, bugs & requests
Notifications
🔔
Get festival alerts
Live updates, programme changes & announcements
Connect With Us
📘
Facebook
@HollandHoichoi — news, photos & community
📸
Instagram
@hollandehoichoi — photos & reels
🌐
hoichoi.nl
Official website
For Our Little Ones
Kids Corner
🎨🧸🎈
Fun for Kids!
Games, activities & a Durga Puja quiz — coming soon
🧸
Coming soon
We're putting together games, activities and a fun Durga Puja quiz for our little ones. Check back closer to the festival!
Welcome — Start Here
First time at a Durga Puja?
Virtual Darshan
360° Pandal Darshan
Can't be in Kolkata? Hop between pandals in 360°. Drag or tilt your phone to look around — tap the glowing markers to move on or learn more. Pop your phone into cheap VR glasses and tap VR. 🛕
🛕
Loading the 360° experience…
Prototype · the pandal scenes shown are demo placeholders
Virtual Darshan
360° Videos
Watch real Kolkata Durga Puja pandals in 360°. Tap a video to open it in YouTube, where you can drag or tilt your phone to look all around (and use VR / cardboard). 🎥
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🥽 Watch in VR glasses: tap a video to open it in YouTube, then tap the cardboard / goggles icon in the player and pop your phone into your VR glasses — move your head to look around.
Videos open on YouTube, hosted by their creators.
Festive Wishes
Send your Pronam
Create a beautiful Durga Puja greeting in seconds — we'll write a warm message for you, then share it on WhatsApp. 💌
Your message — edit if you like
On phones this opens WhatsApp / share. Otherwise the card is saved so you can share it manually.
Say Cheese
Photo Booth
Snap a festive selfie with a Hoichoi frame and share it. 🤳
Starting camera…
Festival Food
Order from Stalls
Browse the stalls, add items, pay via the stall's own link, and collect with your pickup code. 🍲
Pay via the stall's link above. Your pickup code appears once you confirm payment.
Show this code at
Show this code at the stall to collect. 📸 Screenshot it!
Your order
Total€0.00
Share
Food Partners
Stall Dashboard
We'll email a code to confirm your address — enter it before registering.
Your stall is reviewed by the organisers before it goes live.
Today at your stall
…
🔔 Tip: tap the bell (top-right) and enable notifications to get an alert on every new order.
Stall details
Menu
Orders to collect
Tap refresh to load orders.
Adda Corner
Adda Room
☕ Join the Adda
Pick a name and chat with everyone at the Puja — share memories, plan a carrom match, swap recipes.
Community Guidelines · 🚩 report & 🚫 block any user in chat
You are
Be kind. Tap ⚑ to report anything inappropriate — organisers can remove it.
🧠 Daily Pujo Quiz
5 questions, fresh every day. How well do you know the Puja?
🔤 Shobdo — word of the day
Guess the festival word in 6 tries.
🎬 Guess the Song / Movie
A new Bengali clue every day — guess, then reveal.
Organizers Only
Admin Panel
or use your email & PIN below
🔐
Admin Login
Enter your email and PIN to continue
📧
Forgot PIN?
Enter your admin email. If it's registered, you'll receive a reset link.
🔑
Set New PIN
Choose a new PIN to access the admin panel.
🔑
Set Your New PIN
Your PIN was set by the organizer. Choose a new one before continuing.
⚡
Super Admin
Full access — notifications & admin management
🔔Admin Panel
Quick Send
Tap to prefill a message — then choose the audience below and tap Send.
🔴
We're Live!
🙏
Anjali Starting
🍽
Food is Ready
🎶
Show Starting
Send for a Scheduled Event
Custom Notification
📢 Sent to everyone (public bell)
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🔒 Admin-only notifications
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Current Sponsors
Add Sponsor / Advertisement
🖼️
Drag & drop a banner here
or tap to choose an image · auto-resized · ~16:6 ratio looks best
✕ remove image
— or paste an image URL —
Upload a banner directly, or paste a public image link. Use the ▲▼ buttons on each sponsor to
set the order they rotate in. Banners appear on the Home and Live pages.
Overview
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Pujo Tales — review & approve
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360° Darshan — pandal scenes
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Add a 360° pandal
🛕
Drag & drop a 360° photo
equirectangular (2:1) JPEG · auto-resized to ≤4096px
✕ remove image
⚠️ This image isn’t 2:1 — it may not look right as a 360° panorama, but you can still add it.
Only upload 360° photos you have permission to use, and add the photographer’s credit. Scenes
appear in the in-app 360° Pandal Darshan with navigation arrows added automatically.
Use ▲▼ to set the order; toggle to hide a scene without deleting it.
🎥 360° Videos
Curated YouTube 360° videos shown in the in-app 🎥 360° Videos gallery (phone drag/tilt).
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Add a 360° video
Paste a YouTube link to a 360° video that allows embedding. A few Kolkata pandals
are pre-loaded; your added videos appear first in the gallery.
Home Announcements
Shown on the Home screen above the built-in default announcements — the defaults always stay; your ones appear on top (newest first).
Add announcement
বাংলা (Bengali) — optional
Built-in announcements
These ship with the app. You can hide any of them from Home and show it again later — nothing is permanently deleted.
Event programme
One schedule powers both the Schedule page and the Happening Now card — edit here and both update together.
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Add an item
🖼 Small GIF / image — optional (shows on the Schedule page)
Times are 24-hour (e.g. 18:30). Use an end time so “Happening Now” knows when an
item finishes. While the list is empty, the app shows the built-in default programme.
Puja Logistics — Samagri Checklist
One shared checklist of every ritual item — what's needed, who's bringing it, status and cost. Coordinate with the Purohit and the procurement team here. Internal only.
The template is a public-reference starting point — quantities are placeholders; please confirm every item with the Purohit and edit freely. Importing only fills an empty list (won't overwrite your edits).
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Add an item
All cost fields are optional — for record-keeping only. No payments happen in the app.
Cultural Program — Run of Show
One shared running order of every act — who's in it, when it runs, what it needs. The dashboard watches the clock (runtime vs slot). Internal only.
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Add an act
🎤 Tech / AV rider
Sponsorship — Pipeline & Financials
Generate, track and close sponsorship leads — log every touch, watch the pipeline and the money. Internal only.
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Add a lead
Tier / package catalog
Define your sponsorship packages and prices. Picking a tier on a lead pre-fills its value.
Food stalls — approve & manage
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Adda Room — moderate chat
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Assistant Knowledge Base
Add facts, FAQs and community details the assistant can use to answer visitors — e.g. finalised
menus, parking notes, programme details, contact info. The festival basics (dates, venue, languages)
are already built in; what you add here is appended to them. Plain text works best, one fact per line.
Web sources (re-scanned daily)
hoichoi.nl is already built in and refreshed daily. You can add more public
https pages here; each is scraped now and refreshed automatically every day,
then used as context. Snapshot only — JavaScript-rendered content may not be captured. Keep it
to a few pages: every source is sent to the AI on every question, so more/bigger pages cost more.
The assistant runs on Claude Haiku with strict daily and monthly usage caps to keep costs low. It
answers questions about the festival and about Bengali/Indian culture & community, and politely
declines anything clearly off-topic. Visitors' questions are sent to Anthropic for processing —
this is disclosed in the privacy policy.
Current Admins
Add New Admin
Capabilities
🔒 Every admin can notify other admins. Grant 📣 Broadcast to also send to everyone, and 🛒 Logistics to notify chosen logistics members. Choose what else this admin can do:
🧾 Notification Audit Trail
Every notification sent — who sent it, to whom, and when. Newest first.
Hoichoi Netherlands · Bengali Community