Navratri 2027: Dates, Puja Vidhi, Ashtami & Dussehra

Two Navratris, and Which One the Word Usually Means (नवरात्रि 2027: दोनों नवरात्रि)

Navratri is nine nights of Devi worship counted on the tithis of a bright lunar fortnight rather than on calendar days, and the Hindu year holds more than one of them. Two are widely kept: the spring cycle in Chaitra and the autumn cycle in Ashwin. The 2027 panchang carries both, and that is the first reason this page exists — most calendars date one properly and leave the other as a pair of numbers in a sentence. The second reason is that because the count runs on tithis and not on dates, nine nights are not guaranteed to occupy nine dates, and 2027 is a year in which they do not.

The spring nine open on 7 April 2027, a Wednesday. The autumn nine open on 30 September 2027, a Thursday. The table names the spring row Gudi Padwa, Ugadi & Chaitra Navratri — one tithi carrying three festivals, because the Chaitra Shukla Pratipada that starts Chaitra Navratri is also the first day of the lunar year, kept as Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra and as Ugadi in Karnataka and the Telugu-speaking states. The autumn row the table calls, more plainly, Sharad Navratri begins.

Used without qualification, the word usually points at the autumn one. That is the Navratri of the Kolkata pandals, of Gujarati garba grounds, of the Mysuru Dasara and of the northern Ramlila maidans, and it is the one that closes in Vijayadashami. The spring cycle carries a different weight: it opens the year and closes on Ram Navami instead. Two further Navratris, the Gupt Navratris of Ashadha and Magha, are counted in the classical reckoning and are kept mainly by initiated practitioners; the 2027 table holds no row for either, so this page does not put dates on them.

Chaitra Navratri 2027: A Clean Nine, and the Rule Behind Ram Navami (चैत्र नवरात्रि 2027 तिथियाँ)

Chaitra Navratri 2027 runs from 7 April 2027 to 15 April 2027: nine tithis on nine consecutive dates, which is the tidy case rather than the usual one. Shukla Pratipada opens at 05:21 on the 7th, 44 minutes before sunrise at 06:05 for New Delhi, and closes at 04:29 the following morning, before that day’s sunrise. It therefore stands at exactly one sunrise, its own, and every tithi behind it in the fortnight does the same. Ghatasthapana belongs to the morning of the 7th, and because the tithi is already running when the sun comes up there is nothing to wait for. Abhijit that morning is 11:58-12:48 and Rahu Kaal 12:23-13:58, both for New Delhi.

The row records the nakshatra for that morning as Revati, whose symbol the nakshatra table gives as the fish and whose presiding power is Pushan, ruled by Mercury and classed in the Deva gana, in Pisces. It is the twenty-seventh and last of the nakshatras, which is a pleasing place for a lunar year to begin and is worth noticing rather than reading anything into. This row carries no rule field, and neither does the autumn one; that absence is itself a fact about the table, and the section below on the autumn opening is where it matters.

Ram Navami 2027 is 15 April 2027, a Thursday, and its row is one of the few in the table that names the classical moment that fixed it: the rule reads tithi at madhyahna. That field is why the date is the date. The Navami tithi does not fit inside one sunrise-to-sunrise day: it opens at 15:24 on 14 April 2027 and closes at 13:21 on the 15th. Madhyahna is the middle stretch of the daylight, the third of the five parts the classical texts divide a day into, and for New Delhi the midpoint of the 15th’s light falls at 12:21 — inside that window. On the 14th the tithi had not begun by midday at all; it opened in the late afternoon. So madhyahna lands on the 15th, and so does the plain sunrise reckoning, since Navami is running at that morning’s sunrise too. Here the two rules agree. They do not always, and the autumn half of this page is where they come apart twice.

The nakshatra on that morning is Pushya, the cow's udder, presided over by Brihaspati and ruled by Saturn; the nakshatra table sums its character up as nourishing, devotional, protective, and the classical handbooks rank it among the most favourable of the twenty-seven for beginning something that is meant to be kept up. That is a report of how the tradition weights it, not a promise about an outcome.

Sharad Navratri 2027: Ghatasthapana on a Tithi That Holds No Sunrise (शारदीय नवरात्रि 2027 तिथियाँ)

Sharad Navratri 2027 begins on 30 September 2027, a Thursday. This row carries no rule field — no madhyahna, no aparahna, no nishita kaal — and that is not a gap to be filled in by guesswork. Where the generated table names no classical moment, the default reckoning applies: the tithi standing at sunrise names the day. Except that in 2027 this particular tithi stands at no sunrise at all.

Shukla Pratipada opens at 08:06 on the 30th, 113 minutes after sunrise at 06:13 for New Delhi, and closes at 05:35 the next morning, 38 minutes before that morning’s sunrise at 06:13. It is squeezed inside one day and night without ever holding a sunrise: a kshaya tithi, the exact opposite of the swollen one waiting a week later. The daily panchang confirms it from the other side. The tithi at sunrise on the 30th is still Amavasya, and by the next morning it is already Shukla Dwitiya; Shukla Pratipada never appears in the sunrise column. The convention for a kshaya tithi is to keep the observance on the date the tithi begins, so Ghatasthapana is the 30th and not the 1st, and the kalash should not go up before 08:06, because until then the fortnight has not turned. Abhijit for the 30th is 11:47-12:34, Rahu Kaal 13:40-15:09 and the pradosh window 18:08-20:32, all for New Delhi.

The row’s nakshatra for that opening is Hasta, whose symbol is the hand and whose presiding power is Savitar, ruled by Moon, Deva gana, in Virgo. The traits column reads skilful, witty, hands-on, and the tradition reads the open hand as standing for both what it can take and what it can give — which is not a bad emblem for a rite whose first act is to set a pot down with your own hands.

Three separate irregularities land in one fortnight, which is unusual enough to be worth naming together. Pratipada holds no sunrise. Shukla Ashtami holds two, so the eighth day covers two dates. And Shukla Dashami arrives early enough on the ninth day to take Vijayadashami onto it. The last two cancel in the arithmetic: one tithi swells across an extra date, two tithis compress onto a single one, and the ten days of the observance occupy exactly ten dates, 30 September 2027 to 9 October 2027. A calendar that prints nine consecutive dates for Sharad Navratri 2027 and then a separate date for Dussehra has not read the tithis; it has counted forward from the first day and hoped.

Durga Ashtami 2027 and the Vriddhi Flag (दुर्गा अष्टमी 2027 और वृद्धि तिथि)

Durga Ashtami 2027 is 7 October 2027, a Thursday, and it is the one row in this cluster that carries the generator’s vriddhi marker. That flag is the most useful thing on this page for anybody holding two almanacs that disagree. Shukla Ashtami opens at 04:13 on the 7th, comfortably before that day’s sunrise at 06:17, and closes at 06:28 on the 8th — 11 minutes after that morning’s sunrise at 06:17, all for New Delhi. 11 minutes is the whole of it. The tithi holds sunrise twice, and the daily panchang duly prints Shukla Ashtami at sunrise on the 7th and again on the 8th.

That is what vriddhi means: a tithi long enough to hold the deciding moment on two consecutive days. It is the one situation in which two published almanacs can print different dates for the same festival and both be defensible. One authority takes the first day the tithi holds, another takes the second, and no arithmetic settles it, because the sky has supplied two candidates rather than one. The generator behind the 2027 table takes the first and records in its own header that a vriddhi row is precisely where authorities legitimately differ, which is why a page quoting one of these should not be corrected against a panchang that chose the other.

So this page does not adjudicate it, and neither should any website. If your family’s pandit, your local panchang or your temple keeps Ashtami on the 8th, that is not a correction of the 7th — it is the other reading of the same 11 minutes, and it is the reading your kanya pujan and your neighbours will be on. Follow the one your household follows. What the table can settle is the junction itself: Ashtami gives way to Navami at 06:28 on the 8th, and the sandhi puja kept at that joint is timed from the tithi and not from the clock face. In the Bengal reckoning of Durga Puja the tradition weights that junction above any other moment of the ten days.

One more detail on that morning rewards a second look, because it is the same lesson in miniature. The festival row gives the nakshatra as Moola — tied roots for a symbol, Nirriti presiding, Ketu ruling, the Rakshasa gana — while the daily table gives Purva Ashadha for the same date. Both are right. The row reads the sky at the instant the tithi opens, which on the 7th is well before dawn; the daily table reads it at sunrise, by which time the Moon has moved on. Same day, two correct answers, taken at two different moments. That is the whole subject of this page in one line.

Maha Navami and Vijayadashami on One Date (महानवमी और विजयादशमी एक ही दिन)

Both rows read 9 October 2027, a Saturday. This is the single most interesting fact about Navratri 2027, and it follows from one line of data rather than from anybody’s opinion. Shukla Navami opens at 06:28 on 8 October 2027 and closes at 09:02 on the 9th, so Navami is the tithi standing at sunrise on the 9th and that date is Maha Navami under the default reckoning. Shukla Dashami takes over at that same 09:02 and runs to 11:41 on the 10th.

Now the rule, which is the part no calendar bothers to print. Dussehra’s row names its own: tithi in aparahna. Aparahna is the fourth of the five parts into which the classical texts divide the daylight — the later afternoon, neither midday nor dusk. On the 9th, Dashami has been running since mid-morning, so Dashami is the tithi in aparahna. On the 10th it is over by 11:41, long before that day’s later afternoon begins. There is exactly one aparahna in the whole of 2027 that this Dashami covers, and it belongs to the 9th. Vijayadashami is therefore the 9th, the same date as Maha Navami.

It is worth saying plainly what a different rule would have produced, because this is where almanacs part company. Under the plain sunrise reckoning Dashami stands at sunrise on the 10th — the daily panchang prints Shukla Dashami for that morning — and Dussehra would be the 10th, a Sunday. A calendar showing that date is not making an arithmetic mistake; it is applying the default rule to a row whose own rule is aparahna. Aparahna is the classical rule for Vijayadashami, which is why the table records it, and in 2027 it is what folds the ninth and the tenth day of the observance onto one Saturday. Households that keep the kanya pujan in the Navami morning and the Dussehra rites in the afternoon will be asking both of a single day. The sunrise and sunset that frame it are 06:18 and 17:58, the pradosh window is 17:58-20:22 and Abhijit is 11:45-12:31, all computed for New Delhi; the panchang will give you the same columns for any single date.

The nakshatra the Dussehra row records is Uttara Ashadha — elephant tusk for a symbol, the Vishvedevas presiding, ruled by Sun, Manushya gana, spanning Sagittarius 26°40′ – Capricorn 10°00′. The classical accounts of it turn on a victory that holds rather than a quick one, which is at least a fitting coincidence for the day the tradition names after victory. The nakshatra is what the table read at the moment the tithi turned; it is not a reason the date is the date. The rule is.

Sharad Purnima Closes the Season (शरद पूर्णिमा 2027)

Sharad Purnima 2027 falls on 14 October 2027, a Thursday, five days past Vijayadashami, and it closes the autumn cycle. Its row names a third rule, different again from the other two: tithi at nishita kaal. Nishita kaal is the middle of the night, the classical night’s own midpoint rather than twelve on a clock. The full moon tithi opens at 18:49 on the 14th — 56 minutes after sunset at 17:53 for New Delhi — and closes at 19:17 on the 15th.

Put those two instants beside the rule and the date follows. Purnima is running through the middle of the night that belongs to the 14th, so that is the night the rule points at. It is not running through the next one, having ended in the early evening of the 15th. The date is the 14th. Under the sunrise reckoning the answer would be the 15th instead, because the daily table prints Purnima at sunrise that morning — the second place in one fortnight where the named rule and the default rule differ by a day. A page that prints a single date without saying which moment fixed it has given you nothing you can check.

The Moon rises at 16:57 for New Delhi on the 14th, ahead of the tithi’s own start, and the observance is kept outdoors under it: kheer set out in the moonlight through the night, bhajan and jagran until it is taken in the morning. The row’s nakshatra is Uttara Bhadrapada, the twin, presided over by Ahirbudhnya, ruled by Saturn, Manushya gana, in Pisces; the table’s traits column for it reads deep, wise, controlled.

The Nine Forms, in the Order the Devi Kavacha Names Them (नवदुर्गा के नौ रूप)

One form of the goddess belongs to each of the nine nights, and the order is not a modern arrangement. The Devi Kavacha, the protective hymn that stands at the head of the Durga Saptashati, names them in the sequence below, and the sequence is the same in Chaitra and in Ashwin. What follows is the attested iconography, which is what the dhyana verses actually describe; the modern additions to the scheme are the subject of the next section but one.

• Day 1, Shukla Pratipada — Maa Shailaputri: Parvati born again as the daughter of the mountain king, on the bull, a trident in one hand and a lotus in the other. The first night is the ground the other eight stand on.
• Day 2, Shukla Dwitiya — Maa Brahmacharini: the form kept through the long austerity before the marriage to Shiva: no ornament at all, a rosary in one hand and a water pot in the other.
• Day 3, Shukla Tritiya — Maa Chandraghanta: named for the crescent worn at the brow like a bell, mounted and armed. This is the warrior form of the nine.
• Day 4, Shukla Chaturthi — Maa Kushmanda: the eight-armed form holding the ash gourd, which the Puranas read as the egg of the world; the name is read as the one in whose hands that egg sits.
• Day 5, Shukla Panchami — Maa Skandamata: the mother of Skanda, seated on a lion with the child on her lap, and the only one of the nine worshipped together with her son.
• Day 6, Shukla Shashthi — Maa Katyayani: born in the household of the sage Katyayana, from whom the name comes; this is the form the Devi Mahatmya sets against Mahishasura.
• Day 7, Shukla Saptami — Maa Kaalratri: the dark and unornamented form, on a donkey, and the fiercest of the nine to look at. The tradition calls her Shubhankari, the one whose work turns out well, which is its own commentary on the appearance.
• Day 8, Shukla Ashtami — Maa Mahagauri: the pale form, restored after the austerity that had darkened it; the bull returns, with a trident and a drum.
• Day 9, Shukla Navami — Maa Siddhidatri: seated on the lotus, her name read as the giver of the siddhis. The ninth night is where the sequence is understood to arrive rather than to stop.

Because a Navratri day is a tithi rather than a date, the form belongs to the tithi and moves with it. That is visible in the autumn table above without any commentary from anyone: Maa Mahagauri is kept across two dates in 2027 because Shukla Ashtami stands at two sunrises, and Maa Siddhidatri shares her date with Vijayadashami. The count does not gain or lose a night either way. Nine nights remain nine nights; it is the calendar underneath them that stretches and folds.

Puja Vidhi, and the Place These Timings Belong To (नवरात्रि पूजा विधि)

Ghatasthapana is the rite the first day is built around. Barley is sown in a shallow clay bowl of earth, which is watered each morning through the nine days; the kalash is filled with water, a coin, a whole betel nut and a few grains of rice, five mango or ashoka leaves are set at its mouth, and a coconut wrapped in red cloth is placed on top. The pot goes down in the north-east of the puja space, the image or picture of the goddess beside it, and a household that keeps an akhand jyoti lights it here and does not let it go out until the parana. On the autumn opening in 2027 that whole sequence waits on a clock, for the reason given above: the tithi does not begin until 08:06.

The daily order after that is settled and does not change from day to day. What changes is which of the nine forms the dhyana verse names.

• Bathe early, then achamana and sankalpa: the resolution stating what is being kept and for how long.
• Kalash puja, with fresh water for the barley and fresh flowers and akshata for the pot.
• Devi puja by the sixteen upacharas, the shodashopachara, from avahana through to pradakshina.
• The dhyana verse and the mantra of the day’s form, a mala of one hundred and eight being the common count.
• Durga Saptashati path, or where the full path is not kept, the Devi Kavacha with the Argala and Kilaka stotras.
• Naivedya, then aarti at dusk with camphor and a ghee lamp.
• Ashtami or Navami: kanya pujan, nine girls fed and given dakshina, and the sandhi puja at the junction of the two tithis.
• Parana, breaking the vrat, once the Navami has closed by the reckoning the household follows.

Every clock figure on this page — sunrise, sunset, the pradosh window, Abhijit, Rahu Kaal, the moonrise and the opening and closing of each tithi — comes out of the generated 2027 table, and the sunrise-dependent ones are computed for New Delhi at 28.6139°N, 77.209°E. The tithi instants hold anywhere in India, because a tithi is an angle between the Sun and the Moon and does not care where you are standing. Everything hung off sunrise does not: move a few hundred kilometres in any direction and the windows move with you, by minutes at first and by most of an hour at the far edges of the country. Take a local panchang for your own city, or read a single date off the daily panchang, and where a household rite turns on a window rather than on a date, ask an astrologer to compute it for your place instead of trusting a national figure printed on a page.

The Vrat, and the Colour Lists This Page Does Not Print (नवरात्रि व्रत और रंग)

Those who keep the nine-day vrat set grain, pulses, onion and garlic aside, and cook with sendha namak, rock salt, in place of table salt. The vrat kitchen runs on kuttu and singhara flour, sabudana, potato and other roots, fruit, and dairy in all its forms; food is prepared fresh and offered before it is eaten. How much is kept varies enormously and traditionally so: some households eat one meal after the evening aarti, some two light ones, and many keep the full discipline only on the first day and on Ashtami or Navami. The classical material treats the vrat as an undertaking freely chosen and freely scaled, which is the right frame for that variation — it is not laxity. This page prescribes no severity, and on whether any dietary restriction is advisable for a particular person, a physician is the authority and a panchang is not.

Almanacs, newspapers and apps assign a colour to each of the nine days, and readers reasonably arrive expecting a list. This page prints none, and the reason is worth more than the list would be. No colour sequence for the nine nights appears in the shastras; the lists are a modern popular convention that varies by publisher and by region, and they are keyed to the weekday rather than to the position in the count. Two things follow. A sequence copied from one year is wrong in the next, because the nine days start on a different weekday. And nine consecutive dates always repeat at least two weekdays, with no settled answer for what a repeat wears, so the tail of any nine-item list is a publisher’s choice dressed as a rule. In 2027 the weekday keying fails outright at one point: the eighth day of the autumn count covers a Thursday and a Friday, two different weekdays for one night of the nine, so no nine-item list can say what the eighth night wears. Wear what your own community wears: there is nothing here to be wrong about.

How the Ten Days Are Kept Across India (क्षेत्रीय परंपराएँ)

In Bengal, Assam and Odisha the fortnight is Durga Puja, and the public festival runs from Shashthi to Dashami rather than across all nine nights: the bodhon that wakes the image, then the four great days in the pandals, the sandhi puja at the joint of Ashtami and Navami, and sindoor khela and immersion on Dashami. In 2027 that compresses. The Navami morning and the Dashami rites fall on one date, and committees will differ over whether the immersion is kept that same afternoon or held to the following day, when Dashami still stands at sunrise. Either choice is defensible from the tithis; neither is a mistake.

In Gujarat the nine nights are garba and dandiya raas, danced in circles around a perforated earthen lamp, the garbo, which is the goddess in the form the dance is addressed to. Maharashtra keeps both cycles visibly: the gudi raised on a pole for the spring opening, and apta leaves exchanged as symbolic gold on Dussehra in the autumn. In Tamil Nadu and Karnataka the display of figurines on tiered steps — Golu, Bommai Kolu, Bombe Habba — is the household form of the festival, and Mysuru keeps the state Dasara with the Jamboo Savari procession on the final day.

Two southern observances are worth a specific note this year. Ayudha Puja, when tools, instruments, vehicles and account books are set before the goddess, belongs to the Navami, and Vidyarambham, when a child is first taught to write, belongs to Vijayadashami. In 2027 those two fall on the same date. Across the north the nine nights are Ramlila, staged nightly on open ground, with the effigies of Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Meghnath burnt on the Dussehra evening — after sunset, which on that date is 17:58 for New Delhi, with the pradosh window running 17:58-20:22.

What to Take From the 2027 Calendar (निष्कर्ष)

Four dates carry the autumn cycle of 2027, and each of them is decided by a different moment. Ghatasthapana on 30 September 2027, by a tithi that begins after sunrise and holds none. Durga Ashtami on 7 October 2027 or the day after, by 11 minutes that two traditions read two ways. Maha Navami and Vijayadashami together on 9 October 2027, by the aparahna rule. And Sharad Purnima on 14 October 2027, by the middle of a night. The spring cycle, 7 April 2027 to 15 April 2027, is the well-behaved one, and Ram Navami is fixed by madhyahna in a year where madhyahna and sunrise happen to agree.

The general lesson is worth carrying past this festival. A Hindu festival date is not a number somebody decided; it is the answer to the question “which day holds this tithi at the moment the rule names”, and when a site prints a date without printing the rule, there is nothing in it you can verify. The same logic sets the solar festivals from the other direction, which is the subject of our page on Makar Sankranti 2027, where a crossing after sunset moves the whole observance to the next morning.

For the household questions this page deliberately declines to answer — which of the two Ashtami readings your family’s line keeps, what time the kalash should go up where you actually live, whether the parana belongs to the Navami afternoon or the Dashami morning when the two share a date — the answer comes from a person who can work with your own place and your own family practice. A kundli and a local panchang between them settle most of it, and an astrologer can take the rest.