Diwali 2026 Train Ticket Booking Dates

There is no single booking date for a festival. Indian Railways opens reservations 60 days before the train leaves its originating station, so every journey date has its own window. Travelling out on one day and back on another means two different booking mornings, and the return leg is the one people forget until it is waitlisted.

Everything below counts back 60 days from each journey date. Times are 8:00 AM IST, when the advance reservation window opens. Correct as of 11 September 2026.

About Dussehra

Dussehra closes the nine nights of Navratri and marks Rama’s victory over Ravana. Effigies burn on the evening of the tenth day in most of north India, while in Bengal, Odisha and Assam the same day is Vijaya Dashami, when the Durga idols are carried to the river.

How people travel for it

The rush is shorter and sharper than Diwali’s. Most people are travelling for a long weekend rather than a fortnight at home, so the outbound and return legs sit only days apart and both fill quickly. Kolkata-bound trains are the tightest, because Durga Puja pulls people into the city rather than out of it — the opposite direction to every other festival on this list.

Travelling there

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About Diwali

Diwali is the festival of lights and the largest annual homecoming in India. Houses are cleaned and lit, Lakshmi is worshipped on the main night, and the days either side carry their own observances — Dhanteras before, Govardhan Puja and Bhai Dooj after — which is why the travel does not compress into a single day.

How people travel for it

This is the heaviest travel week of the Indian year, and the pattern is unmistakable in booking data: trains towards Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand sell out within minutes of the window opening, while the same trains run half empty in the other direction. A waitlist on those routes over Diwali rarely clears. If you can only secure one leg, secure the outbound: returns spread over a longer tail and are marginally easier.

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About Chhath Puja

Chhath is a four-day observance to the sun god, kept most widely in Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Devotees stand in water at sunset and again at sunrise to offer arghya. It demands presence at a particular river bank with particular family, which is why it moves people who did not travel for anything else that year.

How people travel for it

Chhath falls about a week after Diwali and pulls on the same corridors again, so anyone keeping both is booking two round trips inside a fortnight. Special trains are announced on these routes every year and are usually the only realistic option left by then. The return leg is the one that catches people out: it opens later, and by the time the festival is over the trains out of Patna and Muzaffarpur are long gone.

Date to confirm. Chhath Puja is not a gazetted holiday, so it is absent from the calendar the rest of these dates come from. The date shown here follows the usual interval after Diwali — check it against a panchang before booking around it.

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About Christmas & New Year

Christmas is a gazetted holiday across India and, with New Year a week later, anchors the one stretch of the year when school holidays, mild weather and a long weekend line up.

How people travel for it

The demand here is leisure rather than homecoming, so it points at destinations instead of home towns: Goa, Kerala, the hill stations and Rajasthan. That changes the shape of the booking problem — the return legs after New Year are as contested as the outbound ones before Christmas, and the window covering both is unusually long. Book the whole trip on the day the first leg opens.

Travelling there

Coming back

Book the outbound and the return separately, on their own mornings. The return date opens later than the outbound one, and by the time people think about it the popular trains have gone. Put both booking dates in a calendar the moment you know your plans.

Be logged in before 8:00 AM. On festival dates the difference between booking at 08:00 and 08:05 is routinely the difference between confirmed and waitlisted on the Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh corridors.

A waitlist on these dates is not like a waitlist in March. Clearance rates drop sharply when every seat on the train is wanted, so a long waitlist over a festival is worth treating as a no rather than a maybe. If you miss the window, Tatkal opens the day before travel, and berths that fall vacant after the chart is prepared are the last realistic chance.

Any other date

Travelling on a date that is not listed? The calculator works for any journey date.

Missed the window?

Tatkal opens the day before travel. Work out the exact minute for your train.