Durga Puja is not the North Indian Navratri under another name. Where the North keeps a nine-night fast for the goddess in her many forms, Bengal keeps a homecoming for Durga herself — the daughter returned with her children — worked out on its own tithi reckoning. It does not begin with the first navratra but with Mahalaya on 10 October 2026, the amavasya that ends Pitri Paksha and calls the goddess to set out for home, and it turns on a single 48-minute window, the Sandhi Puja, that most of North India does not observe at all.
The public puja runs from Maha Saptami on Saturday, 17 October to Vijaya Dashami on Wednesday, 21 October. Two of those days share a date this year: Maha Ashtami ends at 10:53 AM on Monday, 19 October, so Maha Navami begins and is observed the same day, and the Sandhi Puja straddles their join. And because Bengal fixes Dashami by the day its tithi carries the immersion, Vijaya Dashami falls on the 21st — a day after North India's Dussehra on the 20th, the one festival season parting on two dates.
Durga Puja 2026 at a glance
Puja days
Sat 17 – Wed 21 October 2026
Mahalaya
Sat, 10 Oct — Devi Paksha begins
Maha Saptami
Sat, 17 Oct — Navpatrika puja
Sandhi Puja
19 Oct, 10:29 – 11:17 AM
Ashtami & Navami
Both on Mon, 19 Oct 2026
Vijaya Dashami
Wed, 21 Oct — Sindoor Khela, visarjan
The three days that carry the puja
Saptami's Navpatrika, the Sandhi Puja hinge, and Dashami's farewell
Maha Saptami · Navpatrika
Sat, 17 October 2026
Kola Bou bathed at dawn; the public puja opens
Sandhi Puja
10:29 – 11:17 AM · 19 Oct
The 48-minute Ashtami–Navami junction
Vijaya Dashami · Visarjan
Wed, 21 October 2026
Sindoor Khela, then Durga’s immersion
Maha Saptami on 17 October opens the public worship. At dawn the Navpatrika — nine plants bound together and known as Kola Bou, the banana bride — is bathed, wrapped in a red-bordered white sari and set beside Ganesha, and the goddess is invoked into the image. The festival's most charged moment comes on the 19th. Sandhi Puja falls in the 48 minutes that span the join of Ashtami and Navami — 10:29 to 11:17 AM in 2026 — the last twenty-four minutes of one tithi and the first of the next, because this sandhikshan is held to be the instant Durga took her Chamunda form and slew the buffalo-demon Mahishasura. It is tied to the tithi junction, not to a fixed clock time, so the window shifts every year. On 21 October, Vijaya Dashami closes the puja: married women play Sindoor Khela, offering vermilion and then marking one another, before the murti is carried out for visarjan.
The Bengal Durga Puja, day by day
From Mahalaya's invocation to the visarjan
Mahalaya, on 10 October, is the overture — the amavasya that closes Pitri Paksha and opens Devi Paksha, when the Chandi is recited before dawn and the goddess is called to begin her journey home. The public days start with Bodhon on Shashthi, the ceremonial awakening and the unveiling of Durga's face on the eve of Saptami. Maha Saptami (17 October) brings the Navpatrika bath and the pran-pratishtha. Maha Ashtami is the grandest day — anjali offered in the pandals, and in many the Kumari Puja, a young girl worshipped as the living goddess — and it closes into Sandhi Puja at its junction with Navami. Maha Navami, this year the same 19 October, carries the final homa and the maha-arati. Then Vijaya Dashami, on 21 October: Durga is honoured with Devi Boron and Sindoor Khela, and the murti is taken to the river for immersion — her return to Kailasa and to Shiva.
How it differs from North Navratri
Two festivals on one calendar — and why Durga is Mahishasura Mardini
North India's Sharad Navratri and Bengal's Durga Puja fall in the same fortnight and honour the same goddess, but they are kept differently. The North observes nine nights, often with fasting, worshipping the nine forms of Durga in turn, and marks the tenth day as Dussehra — Rama's victory and the burning of Ravana's effigy, on 20 October this year. Bengal fasts little; it raises pandals, commissions clay idols of Durga with her four children, concentrates the worship from Saptami to Dashami, and closes a day later, on the 21st, with immersion rather than an effigy. What both remember is the same conquest: Durga as Mahishasura Mardini, the warrior the gods forged from their combined light to kill Mahishasura when no single deity could. In the East she is also Uma, come to her parents' house for these few days — which is why her leaving on Dashami is mourned like a daughter's departure.
See the tithi and muhurat for your own city
The dates and the Sandhi Puja window above are computed for Bengal in IST. For the tithi, sunrise and choghadiya on any of these days where you live, open the live panchang.
Durga Puja 2026 — your questions
Dates, Sandhi Puja, and how it differs from Navratri