Dashain is the anchor of the Nepali year — fifteen days of homecomings, kites, goats, card games and blessings, built around the goddess Durga's victory over the buffalo demon Mahishasura. For Dashain 2083, the key dates are set: Ghatasthapana falls on Sunday, October 11, and Vijaya Dashami — the tika day — on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. The full resolved list, with every holiday between, is on our holidays calendar. Here is how the fortnight runs and what each day asks of you.
Ghatasthapana — Sunday, October 11 (Ashwin 25)
The festival opens quietly. A kalash of holy water is installed in the prayer room, and barley seeds are sown in a bed of sand and cow dung. Kept in the dark and watered daily, they sprout into jamara — the pale yellow shoots that will be placed behind ears on tika day, ten days later. The Navaratri count begins here: nine nights of the goddess, each with its own form and worship. Households that keep the full observance recite the Durga Saptashati daily from this morning on.
The middle days: Fulpati to Nawami
The festival gathers speed in its final week. Fulpati arrives two days before the tika day. The sacred bundle of flowers, leaves and sugarcane enters homes, and in the old royal ritual it travels from Gorkha to Kathmandu in a procession. Maha Ashtami follows — this year the ashtami vrata is marked on Sunday, October 18 (Kartik 1). It is the fiercest night of the goddess. Sacrifices are offered at Durga temples, and the night of Kalratri is kept. Maha Nawami, Tuesday, October 20 (Kartik 3), closes the Navaratri. It is the day of the Vishwakarma-style blessing of tools: vehicles, machines and instruments of trade get tika, flowers and incense. Taxis drive around with marigolds on their mirrors, and every workshop smells of sacrifice and incense.
Vijaya Dashami — Wednesday, October 21 (Kartik 4)
The tenth day is the point of the whole festival. Elders put tika — rice, yogurt and red vermilion — on the foreheads of the young. They tuck jamara behind ears, hand over dakshina, and speak blessings. Families move house to house in order of seniority, and the visiting continues for days. The tika window traditionally stays open until the full moon, Kojagrat Purnima, five days later. For the diaspora and for families split between cities, this is the day the phone lines and video calls run hottest. If you receive tika from only one person all year, it is on this day, from your eldest relative.
Planning around Dashain 2083
Practical calendar notes matter as much as ritual ones. The public holiday block clusters around Fulpati through the days after Dashami, and schools close for far longer — typically two weeks or more. Long-distance bus and flight tickets out of Kathmandu are the year's scarcest commodity in the week before Fulpati. Booking a month ahead is normal. This year that means securing tickets by mid-September. Banks squeeze into short pre-festival hours, remittance counters see their annual peak, and goat markets appear on open ground everywhere. If you need anything official done, do it before Fulpati or plan for early Mangsir.
Why the dates move each year
Dashain follows the lunar calendar: Ghatasthapana is the first day of the bright fortnight of Ashwin (by the lunar reckoning), and Dashami is the tenth. Because twelve lunar months run about eleven days short of a solar year, Dashain slides against both the AD calendar and the solar BS months, landing anywhere from late September to late October. That is why Dashain 2083 peaks on October 21 while other years peak weeks earlier. The daily panchang shows the tithi behind each festival day if you want to follow the mechanics — or just keep the holidays page bookmarked and let it do the math.