Dussehra 2026

Why the 20th and not the 21st

Dashami starts at 12:51 PM on 20 October and runs until 2:12 PM on the 21st, so it touches two calendar days. The rule that picks between them is the afternoon: Vijayadashami is kept on the day Dashami covers Aparahna, the window from about 1:15 to 3:30 PM in Delhi when the day's puja is done.

On the 20th Dashami covers all of it. On the 21st it runs out at 2:12 PM, halfway through. Shravana nakshatra, which the tradition likes on this day, is also running on the afternoon of the 20th. Every published calendar we checked agrees on the 20th.

What the day marks

Two stories end on this day, and India splits roughly along the line between them. In the north it is the day Rama killed Ravana, the last day of a Ramlila that has been running each evening through Navratri, and the night ten-headed effigies of Ravana, his brother Kumbhakarna and his son Meghnad go up in fireworks.

In the east it is the day after Durga's nine-night battle with Mahishasura ended. Bengal calls it Bijoya Dashami: married women smear sindoor on the goddess and on each other in sindoor khela, and the idols are carried to the river and immersed. The same goddess, as Chamundeshwari, is at the centre of Mysuru's Dasara.

A third story is quieter. The Pandavas spent the last year of their exile in disguise and hid their weapons in a Shami tree; Arjuna took them back on Vijayadashami before the battle with the Kauravas. It is the reason for the Shami puja, and for the custom of cleaning and worshipping tools, books and vehicles on the day. The date also carries a Buddhist meaning: B. R. Ambedkar chose Ashoka Vijayadashami, 14 October 1956, for his conversion at Nagpur, and Deekshabhoomi still fills on the day.

Kullu Dussehra: when the gods come down to the valley

Kullu does things the other way round. Its Dussehra begins on Vijayadashami, the day the festival ends everywhere else, and runs for a week. There is no Ramlila and no Ravana effigy. What there is instead is a gathering of the valley's own gods: around two hundred village devtas and devis, carried down from their temples to sit together on the Dhalpur ground in Kullu town for seven days.

How it started

The story goes back to Raja Jagat Singh, who ruled Kullu from 1637 to 1662. Told that a villager named Durgadatta owned a treasure of pearls, the king demanded them. Durgadatta had none to give, and rather than face the king he burned himself and his family in their house, cursing Jagat Singh as he died: the king's rice would look like worms to him and his water like blood.

The king fell ill. A Ramanandi saint, Krishnadas Payahari, told him the only cure was the idol of Raghunath, Rama, from the Tretanath temple in Ayodhya. A Brahmin, Damodar Das, was sent to fetch it and brought it back in 1651. The legend has it that the idol grew too heavy to carry whenever the pursuers from Ayodhya tried to take it home, and light again the moment it was turned towards Kullu.

Jagat Singh installed Raghunath, drank the water from the idol's feet, and the curse lifted. He then gave his kingdom to the deity and made himself Raghunath's chharibardar, the staff-bearer who serves him. From then on the king ruled as the god's regent, and he ordered every deity of the valley to come to Kullu each Vijayadashami and pay homage to their new overlord. That order is the festival.

The devtas

In Kullu the devtas are treated as living rulers of their villages, and each one arrives like a small court. The deity rides in a palanquin, its face masks of silver and gold dressed in silk and flowers, shouldered by the men of its village. In front go the musicians with the long curved narsingha horns, the karnal trumpets and the drums. Behind come the people who run the deity's affairs: the kardar, who manages its land and temple, and the gur, the oracle through whom the devta speaks when it chooses to.

They used to walk in, some for days. Most now travel by vehicle and are taken onto shoulders only at the edge of town. Once at Dhalpur, each devta has its own camp, and people from its village stay beside it through the week. The devtas also call on the royal family at Rupi Palace, where the descendants of Jagat Singh still receive them.

One goddess matters more than the rest. Nothing begins until Hidimba Devi arrives from her temple at Dhungri near Manali. She is the patron goddess of the Kullu royal line, and Raghunath's chariot does not move until she has come. Not every deity of the valley joins in: Jamlu, the god of Malana, has long kept his own counsel and stands apart from Raghunath's court.

The seven days

On the first afternoon, Raghunath is brought from his temple at Sultanpur, set in a wooden chariot and pulled to Dhalpur with ropes by thousands of hands, the devtas following. For the next days the ground is part temple and part fair: devtas visit one another, people come to the camps of their own village god, and the evenings fill with Kullu nati, the circle dance, and the International Folk Festival that the state runs alongside.

On the sixth day comes the Mohalla, when all the deities gather together around Raghunath and the singing and dancing go on through the night. On the seventh, the chariot is drawn to the bank of the Beas for Lanka Dahan, the symbolic burning of Lanka, after which Raghunath goes back to his temple and the devtas start for home. Animal sacrifice was once part of that last day; it ended when the Himachal Pradesh High Court banned animal sacrifice in 2014.

The state has given it the status of an international festival, and between four and five lakh people come through Dhalpur in the week. In 2022 Narendra Modi became the first sitting Prime Minister to attend.

If you are going

Dhalpur is in the middle of Kullu town, about 10 km from Bhuntar airport and 40 km down the valley from Manali. The first afternoon, when the chariot moves, and the Mohalla night draw the biggest crowds; the middle days are the time to walk among the camps and see the devtas up close. Hotels in Kullu and Manali fill weeks ahead. Visitors are welcome at the camps, but a palanquin is a god in residence, so ask before photographing the gur, and never step across the path in front of a moving devta.

Mysuru, Bastar and Kota

Mysuru Dasara is a royal festival. The palace is lit with nearly 97,000 bulbs through Navratri, and on Vijayadashami the Jamboo Savari procession carries the goddess Chamundeshwari about 5 km through the city in a howdah of roughly 750 kg, plated with some 80 kg of gold, on the back of the lead elephant. Since 2020 that elephant has been Abhimanyu.

Bastar Dussehra in Chhattisgarh lasts seventy-five days, the longest Dussehra anywhere, and is not about Rama at all. It honours the goddess Danteshwari, whose chariot is pulled through Jagdalpur by hundreds of men from the surrounding Adivasi villages. No Ravana is burnt.

Kota in Rajasthan holds the Dussehra Mela, a fair the city has run for centuries, with effigies of Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Meghnad that now stand at 75 feet or more. Delhi's Ramlila grounds, at Ramlila Maidan and beside the Red Fort, do the same on a crowded urban scale, and in Gujarat the morning after the last garba night belongs to fafda and jalebi.

Puja on Vijayadashami

1. In the Aparahna window, clean a spot in the north-east of the house, draw an eight-petalled lotus with rice or kumkum, and worship the goddess Aparajita, the unconquered, with flowers and a lamp. With her go Jaya and Vijaya, on either side.
2. Go to a Shami tree, or keep a branch at home, offer water and rice, and pray at its roots. Many families tie a sacred thread to it or take a few leaves home to keep with their money.
3. Lay out the tools of your work, from books and pens to weapons, machines and the car, clean them, mark them with tilak and do a short puja. In the south this Ayudha Puja usually falls on Navami, the day before.
4. In the late afternoon, cross the edge of your village or neighbourhood and come back. This is Seemollanghan, the old marching-out of kings after the monsoon, kept now as a walk.
5. After sunset, go to the Ravan Dahan if there is one near you, or, in Bengal, follow the goddess to the immersion. Then visit elders, touch their feet, and give apta or Shami leaves as gold if that is your family's custom.

Dussehra in the coming years

Common questions