Chaitra Navratri begins 2026

Chaitra Navratri, the nine nights beginning on the Shukla Pratipada of Chaitra, is the spring Navratri — the one that opens the Hindu lunar year and ends, on the ninth day, in the birth of Rama at Ram Navami. Its first day is the new year of much of India (Gudi Padwa, Ugadi), so the year begins in the worship of the Goddess.

As in autumn, the nine nights are given to the nine forms of Durga in order, from Shailaputri to Siddhidatri, with Ghatasthapana on the first day and fasting through. But where Sharad Navratri leads to Durga's victory over Mahishasura, Chaitra leads to Rama — the Goddess worshipped first, and her grace carried into the birth of the ideal king.

It is the elder of the two great Navratris in the ritual sense — the spring worship being the older, natural season of the Devi — even if the autumn festival is the more spectacular.

The nine forms are one Goddess seen at nine depths, and the story behind the nights is the Devi's slaying of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura, told in the Devi Mahatmya. Chaitra also gathers the new-year myths — Brahma's creation of the world on this Pratipada — and closes in the Ramayana, on the ninth day, with the birth of Rama at Ayodhya, so that the Goddess's nine nights open into the descent of Vishnu as the perfect man.

The worship of the Goddess across the spring and autumn ritukala (season-junctions) is ancient, and the spring Navratri is traditionally reckoned the original — the sharadiya being called an akala-bodhana, an 'untimely awakening', when Rama is said to have invoked Durga out of season before facing Ravana. Chaitra Navratri's coincidence with the Chaitra new year and Ram Navami wove Devi worship, the year's beginning and the Rama tradition into a single spring festival kept from Kashmir (Navreh) to the Deccan (Ugadi).

The nine nights rest on the Devi Mahatmya (the Durga Saptashati) of the Markandeya Purana, recited through Navratri; the ninth day's meaning is drawn from the Ramayana's account of Rama's birth. The Ghatasthapana rite and the nine-fold worship are set out in the dharma-nibandhas and the Navaratra sections of the Puranas.

Chaitra Navratri sits at a ritukala — the junction of winter into summer — one of the two seasonal turns when the body's balance shifts and the tradition prescribes lightness and cleansing. The nine days of fasting on fruit, samak and singhara, without grains, onion or garlic, are in effect a spring reset of diet and routine, matching the body to the changing season exactly as the Goddess's nine nights renew the year.

The nine nights re-tell the Devi Mahatmya: how the buffalo-demon Mahishasura, granted that no man or god could kill him, drove the gods from heaven, and how they poured their energies into a single blaze of light that took form as Durga — each god's weapon in her many hands. For nine nights she and the demon fought, his shapes shifting under her, until on the tenth she struck him down. The autumn Navratri ends there, in victory.

Chaitra ends elsewhere. Its ninth day is Ram Navami — noon at Ayodhya, when Kausalya bore Rama, Vishnu descended as the prince who would keep his word though it cost him everything. So the spring Goddess's nine nights do not end in a battlefield but in a cradle: the year begins with the Devi's worship and opens into the birth of the one the tradition holds up as dharma made a man.