Festivals · 7 min read
Durga Puja, Dussehra & Diwali 2026: the dates, and where to be for each
By Beauty of Bharat — India travel guide, every place, every flavour.
Guides covering all 36 States and UTs, researched from official sources and checked at publish time. Corrections welcome — see About Beauty of Bharat.
Durga Puja ran 17–21 October, Dussehra fell on 20 October, and Diwali's main day is 8 November. A traveller's guide to India's great festival corridor — Kolkata, Mysuru, Varanasi and beyond.
It begins with nine nights. Sharad Navratri ran from 11 to 19 October 2026 — garba and dandiya nights in Gujarat, Ramlila performances across the north, Devi temples at their busiest. Its eastern crescendo is Durga Puja, 17–21 October, when Kolkata becomes an open-air art festival: hundreds of themed pandals, each a temporary temple built to be walked through, admired and photographed. The celebration is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and the local wisdom stands — pandal-hop late in the evening, when the lights are on and the crowds thin a little.
Dussehra — Vijayadashami — falls on Tuesday 20 October, the climax of the season's first act. In Mysuru, Dasara is a royal spectacle: the palace illuminated with close to a hundred thousand bulbs and the Jamboo Savari procession carrying the goddess Chamundeshwari through the city on a caparisoned elephant. Across North India the same evening ends the Ramlila cycle with the burning of Ravana effigies. Three weeks later the calendar peaks again: Diwali runs 6–10 November 2026, with the main day — Lakshmi Puja — on Sunday 8 November. Expect the year's biggest homeward travel rush in the days just before it.
The corridor has a luminous coda. On 24 November, Kartik Purnima, Varanasi celebrates Dev Deepavali — the Diwali of the gods — when every ghat along the Ganga is edged with oil lamps and the river carries the reflections. November also brings the Pushkar Camel Fair in Rajasthan around Kartik Purnima, and opens the Rann Utsav season in Kutch, which runs through the winter. Planning notes that matter: festival-town trains and stays sell out weeks ahead, so book before the season opens; arrive a day early to watch the preparations; and confirm the final programme locally, because civic schedules can shift by a day. The Festivals & Culture pages of this atlas map each celebration to its state guide.
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