Śāradā Navarātri begins

Hindu Victory and deliverance Usually October

The first of nine nights for the Goddess, each night a different form — the season of Durgā Pūjā in the east and Golu doll displays in the south.

When it falls

The first lunar day (pratipadā) of the bright half of Āśvina, the day after the ancestors' new moon, in late September or October. Nine nights follow; the tenth day is Vijayā Daśamī.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

How Vedic Phala finds the date

The autumn Navarātri marker is Āśvayuja śukla pratipadā, the first tithi after the new moon. Vedic Phala computes that tithi at local sunrise and begins the nine-night sequence there. A tithi can be shorter or longer than a civil day, so one may be lost between sunrises or extend over two mornings. The later festival dates are therefore not produced by adding eight or nine blocks of twenty-four hours; each day is checked against the lunar sequence.

That common starting point does not erase the regional calendars shown below. Bengal’s public Durgā Pūjā opens on ṣaṣṭhī, Telangana’s Bathukamma begins on Mahālaya amāvāsyā, and Kerala concentrates on the final three days. Mysūru, Gujarat and Nepal keep still other sequences. The app marks the pan-Indian Navarātri opening while retaining separate pages for Mahālayā, Durgāṣṭamī, Mahā Navamī and Vijayadaśamī. This lets a reader follow the lunar framework without treating every region’s first public celebration as the same event.

The story

The nine nights are the Goddess's. Mahiṣāsura, the buffalo demon, had a boon that no man or god could kill him; the gods pooled their powers into a woman, gave her their weapons, and she fought him for nine nights and killed him on the tenth. The Devī Māhātmya, seven hundred verses read through the festival, is the account.

Three sets of three: the first three nights are for Durgā, who destroys, the middle three for Lakṣmī, who provides, and the last three for Sarasvatī, who teaches. Some keep nine forms of Durgā, one a night (Navadurgā).

In Bengal the festival is Durgā Pūjā, and the story is a daughter's visit home: Umā comes to her parents' house with her four children for five days, and on the tenth the city weeps to send her back to Śiva on Kailāsa. Kolkata's paṇḍāls, some of them the size of temples, were inscribed by UNESCO in 2021.

How the day is kept

Ghaṭasthāpanā on the first day: a pot of water with a coconut on it is installed, and barley is sown in a tray beside it to sprout through the nine nights.
Gujarat dances every night: garbā in circles around the lamp of the Goddess, then ḍāṇḍiyā with sticks, in grounds that hold tens of thousands.
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra set out Golu (Bommai Kolu): dolls on an odd-numbered set of steps, gods at the top and the village at the bottom, with neighbours invited each evening to sing and take sundal (spiced chickpeas).
Mysore keeps the royal Dasarā, the palace lit with a hundred thousand bulbs each night; Telangana's women build flower stacks for Bathukamma and float them at the end.
Kanyā Pūjā on the eighth or ninth day: nine young girls are fed and honoured as the Goddess herself.

Where it is kept differently

Bengal, Odisha and Assam: The festival here is Durgā Pūjā and it is five days, not nine: it opens on ṣaṣṭhī, four nights after everyone else has begun. The first four nights are preparation — the paṇḍāls going up, the images arriving from Kumartuli — rather than the festival itself.
Telangana: Bathukamma runs on its own calendar, opening on the Mahālayā amāvāsyā and closing on Durgāṣṭamī. It neither starts nor ends with Navarātri, and its nine days are counted in flowers rather than in nights.
Andhra — Vijayawada: Kanaka Durgā on Indrakīlādri is dressed as a different form of the goddess each day of the festival: Bāla Tripura Sundarī, Gāyatrī, Annapūrṇā, Mahā Lakṣmī, Sarasvatī, Lalitā, Durgā, Mahiṣāsura Mardinī, Rāja Rājeśvarī. Which form falls on which date moves with the year’s tithis, so the temple’s own list is the one to read.
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra: The nine nights are a doll display. An odd number of steps goes up on the first morning and neighbours are invited in each evening, so the festival is kept indoors and by visiting, not in a procession.
Karnataka — Mysūru: The state festival, four hundred years old: the palace is lit every night of the nine, and Cāmuṇḍēśvarī is worshipped on Chamundi Hill above the city. The whole of it points at the tenth day rather than at any of the nine.
Kerala: Only the last three days are kept. Nothing marks the first six, and then on aṣṭamī evening the books are laid down before Sarasvatī and the state stops reading until the tenth.
Gujarat: Nine nights of dancing around the garbo, the perforated earthen pot with a lamp inside it, in grounds that hold tens of thousands. The nights are also counted in three sets of three — Durgā, then Lakṣmī, then Sarasvatī — the same division the south keeps.
Maharashtra: A garland is added to the ghaṭa each of the nine days, so the pot is buried in flowers by the end. Lalitā Pañcamī falls on the fifth, and the goddess seats of Tuḷjāpur, Kolhāpur and Saptaśṛṅgī fill.
The north: One of the nine forms of Durgā a night, Śailaputrī to Siddhidātrī, with a fast kept through the nine days. The Rāmlīlā is played each evening in the towns, building toward the burning of Rāvaṇa on the tenth.
Nepal and the Himalaya: Dashain begins with barley (jamarā) sown in the dark on the first day, to be worn behind the ear on the tenth. Phūlpāti on the seventh brings a procession of flowers and leaves from Gorkha to Kathmandu.

At the table

Fasting food in the north (sābūdānā, kuṭṭū flour, fruit); sundal each evening in the south, a different pulse each night; in Bengal the great bhog of khicuṛi and the sweets of the tenth day.