Navratri 2026: Dates, the Nine Goddesses & Colours

Navratri is a nine-night festival of the Goddess, kept four times a year in the Hindu lunar calendar and most widely as Shardiya (autumn) Navratri, when Durga is honoured in nine forms before Vijayadashami on the tenth day. According to Drik Panchang, Shardiya Navratri 2026 begins with Ghatasthapana on Sunday, 11 October 2026 and ends with Vijayadashami on Tuesday, 20 October 2026.

That is the short answer, and most of what follows explains the parts of it that matter: why nine nights, which nine goddesses, how the dates are actually fixed, and how the same nine days become Durga Puja in Bengal, Garba in Gujarat and Golu in Tamil Nadu. This site is about Shakta and Tantric religion, so the page also covers what the festival looks like from inside the Goddess traditions — its relation to the Devi Mahatmya, to the ten Mahavidyas, and to the two quiet Navratris most people never hear about.

What Is Navratri and Why Is It Celebrated?

The word comes from Sanskrit nava (nine) and ratri (night): नवरात्रि, “nine nights”. Across those nights the Goddess — Durga, Devi, Amba, Bhagavati, Shakti under many names — is invited, housed, honoured and finally sent home again. The tenth day, Vijayadashami or Dussehra, celebrates her victory.

The narrative core is the Devi Mahatmya, also called the Durga Saptashati or Chandi Path: seven hundred verses embedded in the Markandeya Purana and, on the usual scholarly dating, composed by about the sixth century CE. It tells three myths of the Goddess defeating demons — Madhu and Kaitabha, Mahishasura the buffalo demon, and the brothers Shumbha and Nishumbha — and argues in between that all goddesses are forms of one Devi, who is herself the ground of the universe. Navratri is, in practice, that text turned into a calendar. Many households read one section a day across the nine nights.

Why nights rather than days? Partly because the older Shakta and Tantric strata of Indian religion treat night as the Goddess's own time, and partly because the lunar reckoning that fixes the festival counts by tithis, lunar days that do not line up neatly with sunrise. A second explanation, given in many regional traditions, is agricultural: the autumn Navratri sits at the turn from monsoon to harvest, and the spring one at the sowing.

Two other strands feed the festival. In north India it merges with the Ramayana: Rama is said to have worshipped Durga before killing Ravana, which is why Ramlila plays run for nine nights and Ravana effigies burn on Dussehra. In Bengal the same worship became Durga Puja, a household-and-neighbourhood reception of the Goddess as a married daughter returning to her parents.

How Many Navratris Are There in a Year?

Four. Each falls in the bright fortnight of a lunar month and runs Pratipada to Navami.

Chaitra and Ashvina are the prakat or manifest Navratris, celebrated in public. Ashadha and Magha are the gupt or hidden ones, kept privately and long associated with initiated practitioners; our separate guide to Gupt Navratri explains what is done during them and why they are linked with the Mahavidyas rather than the Navadurga. Most calendars in Indian homes mark only two of the four.

Navratri 2026: Dates and Tithis

The dates below are for Shardiya Navratri 2026, the autumn festival. According to Drik Panchang, Ghatasthapana falls on Sunday, 11 October 2026, with the muhurat given for New Delhi as 6:19 to 10:12 AM; Maha Navami falls on Monday, 19 October 2026 and Vijayadashami on Tuesday, 20 October 2026.

In the same window, Bengal's Durga Puja occupies the last five days — Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami and Dashami — so the pandals open in the second half of October 2026 and the immersion follows Vijayadashami on 20 October.

Check a panchang for your own city. Ghatasthapana muhurat times are calculated for a specific location and the New Delhi window above will not be correct elsewhere. A tithi can also begin or end part-way through a solar day, which is why a few panchangs place a given day one date earlier or later, why Navratri is occasionally counted as eight days rather than nine, and why Bengali, Odia and north Indian almanacs sometimes disagree. Treat the table as a guide and confirm the current year's timings locally.

For later years, the rule matters more than the table: Shardiya Navratri always runs from Shukla Pratipada to Navami of the lunar month of Ashvina, with Vijayadashami on Dashami. Because those are lunar dates, the Gregorian equivalents shift by roughly ten or eleven days each year and are reset whenever an intercalary month is inserted, so the festival lands anywhere from late September to mid-October.

The Nine Goddesses of Navratri (Navadurga)

The nine names recited during Navratri come from the Devi Kavacha, the “armour of the Goddess”, one of the subsidiary hymns (angas) recited with the Durga Saptashati. It lists the nine in a fixed order, and household practice assigns one to each night.

Read in sequence the nine are often understood as a progression: the Goddess as daughter and ascetic, then as warrior, then as the dark night in which ordinary identity dissolves, then as radiance and the giver of attainment. Kalaratri on day seven is the point where the Navadurga and the fierce Tantric goddesses meet; she is frequently identified with Kali. The nine Navadurga and the ten Mahavidyas are, however, different lists from different bodies of literature — we compare them directly in Mahavidya vs Navadurga.

Navratri in Shakta and Tantric Religion

For Shaktas, Navratri is not one festival among many; it is the annual high point of the tradition. The Devi Mahatmya is not merely read during it but used as a ritual instrument: the full Chandi Path, with its angas — the Devi Kavacha, Argala Stotra and Kilaka Stotra — is recited in one sitting or spread across the nine days, sometimes as a navachandi or shatachandi in which the text is repeated a set number of times by a group of reciters. Our page on the Agamas, Tantras and Shakta scriptures sets the text in its wider literary context.

Two features tie the festival to Tantra proper. The first is the idea of a bounded, intensive vow: a fixed number of nights, a fixed mantra, a fixed deity, ending in a completion rite. That is the structure of a purashcharana, described on our page on Tantric practices, and Navratri is the most common occasion on which householders attempt a short one. The second is the ritual treatment of the Goddess as the substrate of everything: the ghata or pot installed on day one is not a symbol of the Goddess so much as a temporary body for her, invited on Pratipada and dismissed on Dashami. Hillary Rodrigues's study of the Durga Puja liturgy documents this invitation-and-dismissal structure in detail.

In Tantric lineages the emphasis shifts. Where household practice honours the nine benign-to-fierce Navadurga, initiated practitioners are more likely to spend these nights on a single chosen deity (ishta devata) from the Dasha Mahavidya, with night practice, japa counted on a rosary, and recitation rather than public celebration. The tradition insists that such mantra practice be received through initiation from a qualified teacher, and it promises no particular result from doing it unguided. Much of the “Navratri remedy” material circulating online belongs to a genre our page on myths and misconceptions treats sceptically.

Durga Puja, Garba and Golu: The Regional Forms

The same nine nights look completely different depending on where you stand.

The southern three-by-three division — Durga for the first three nights, Lakshmi for the next three, Saraswati for the last three — is worth noting because it cuts across the Navadurga scheme entirely. Neither is more authentic than the other; they are different regional systems that grew around the same lunar dates.

Ghatasthapana, Fasting and Kanya Pujan

What follows describes widespread customs. It is not a set of instructions, and no result is promised for any of them.

Ghatasthapana (also kalash sthapana) opens the festival on day one. A clay or metal pot is filled with water, often set on a bed of soil sown with barley, and the Goddess is invited to be present in it for the nine nights. The barley shoots that come up by Navami are treated as an auspicious sign. Manuals specify that the pot be installed within a particular window of the Pratipada tithi, which is what a published “Ghatasthapana muhurat” refers to.

Fasting. The range of practice is very wide. Some people eat one meal a day; some keep to phalahar — fruit, milk, and foods made from permitted flours such as kuttu (buckwheat), singhara (water chestnut) and samak rice, with rock salt instead of table salt; some avoid grain, pulses, onion and garlic for the nine days without otherwise fasting; some observe only the first and last days; and many observe nothing at all. Bengali Durga Puja practice, by contrast, is generally feasting rather than fasting except for a short fast before the Ashtami anjali.

Kanya pujan (also kanjak or kumari puja) is usually kept on Ashtami or Navami: young girls, in some households accompanied by a boy as Bhairava, are received as forms of the Goddess, their feet washed, and they are fed and given small gifts. In Bengal the equivalent is Kumari Puja, performed most famously at Belur Math, a practice associated with Swami Vivekananda and, before him, with Ramakrishna's worship of the Goddess in a living woman.

A note on fasting. Fasting is a personal religious choice, not a health practice, and nothing on this page is medical advice. Anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding, who has diabetes, low blood pressure, kidney disease or any other ongoing condition, who takes regular medication, or who has any history of an eating disorder should speak to a doctor before fasting, and children and the elderly should not undertake long fasts. If fasting is making you unwell, stop and eat.

Navratri Colours: Where Do They Actually Come From?

“Navratri colours with date” is one of the most searched things about the festival, so here is an honest answer: the nine-colour scheme is a modern popular custom with no scriptural basis whatsoever. It does not appear in the Devi Mahatmya, in the Puranas, or in any ritual manual. It grew up in western India — Gujarat and Maharashtra — in the later twentieth century, spread through Garba culture and newspaper supplements, and is now published afresh each year by Indian media. That does not make it illegitimate; festivals acquire new customs constantly. It does mean nobody should be told they have worshipped wrongly because they wore the wrong shade.

The lists are generated by the weekday, not by the goddess of the day, which is why they change every year and why two publications often disagree. The associations most commonly printed are these:

Because nine consecutive days always repeat two weekdays, every year's list needs two substitutions, and different newspapers choose different ones. The rationale usually offered is that each weekday is ruled by a planet with a colour; the colour sets actually printed are not consistent with each other or with classical astrological colour lists, so the explanation is best read as a rationalisation after the fact. In 2026 the nine days run from a Sunday through to the following Monday, so any list you see for this year will differ from last year's.