India · Festival travel
Every festival rush on Indian Railways, with the exact morning IRCTC booking opens for it. Pick your festival for the full list of outbound and return dates, or read the headline date off this table.
| Festival | Date | Busiest travel day | General booking opens | Status | All dates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ganesh Chaturthi 2026 | Sun 13 Sep | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Durga Puja & Dussehra 2026 | Thu 15 Oct | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Diwali 2026 | Sat 7 Nov | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Chhath Puja 2026 | Thu 12 Nov | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Christmas & New Year 2026 | Thu 24 Dec | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Pongal & Makar Sankranti 2027 | Wed 13 Jan | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Eid ul-Fitr 2027 | Mon 8 Mar | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Holi 2027 | Sat 20 Mar | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Ugadi & Gudi Padwa 2027 | Wed 7 Apr | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Raksha Bandhan 2027 | Mon 16 Aug | · 08:00 | — | All dates | |
| Onam 2027 | Fri 10 Sep | · 08:00 | — | All dates |
All times IST. “Busiest travel day” is the outbound date most people travel on; each festival page lists every date in the rush, including the return.
The booking date calculator gives the opening day and time for any journey date, and the reminder tool puts it in your calendar with an alert.
Indian Railways opens reservation 60 days before the date of journey, not counting the journey day, at 08:00 IST. There is no festival exception: a Diwali ticket opens on the same rule as any other, which is why the date is predictable to the day and why the people who get confirmed berths are the ones who were logged in at 08:00 on that morning.
Because every travel date opens on its own morning, a festival rush is not one booking date but a run of them. Going home on the Friday before Diwali opens two days before going home on the Sunday. The festival pages here list each date separately for that reason, and list the return dates too, which open a week or more later and are the ones most often missed.
Tatkal is the fallback, not the plan. It opens one day before travel — 10:00 IST for AC, 11:00 for Sleeper — for a small quota, on an Aadhaar-authenticated account only, and festival demand exhausts it in seconds.
Festival dates are taken from the published panchang and cross-checked against the mainstream Indian calendars. Lunar festivals are fixed once the year’s calendar is out, though a regional calendar occasionally puts one a day earlier or later. Eid depends on the moon sighting the evening before, so its date is the expected one.
The travel window on each page runs from three days before the festival’s first day to three days after its last, which covers the great majority of festival journeys. If yours falls outside it, the booking date calculator handles any date.
Sixty days before the journey date, not counting the journey day itself, for regular trains under the Advance Reservation Period that has applied since 1 November 2024. Reservation opens at 08:00 IST on that day. Each travel date opens on its own day, so a five-day festival rush opens across five consecutive mornings — the pages here list all of them.
General-quota reservation opens at 08:00 IST. Tatkal opens one day before travel at 10:00 IST for AC classes and 11:00 IST for Sleeper and other non-AC classes, and online Tatkal needs an Aadhaar-authenticated IRCTC account.
Usually not. Special trains are notified separately, often only weeks before they run, and their booking opens when the notification says. The dates on these pages are for regular trains. Keep an eye on IRCTC and the zonal railway announcements for specials on your route once the festival is close.
Diwali, Chhath Puja, Durga Puja and Dussehra, Christmas and New Year, Pongal and Makar Sankranti, Holi, Eid ul-Fitr, Ugadi and Gudi Padwa, Raksha Bandhan, Ganesh Chaturthi and Onam, for the current year and the next. Dates are checked against the published panchang and re-checked each year.
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Last reviewed
September 15, 2026
Content update
Auto-updated on Jun 28, 2026
Scope: Festival dates from the published panchang; booking dates from the 60-day Advance Reservation Period for regular trains. Special trains are notified separately.