Dussehra — Vijayādaśamī, and the aparāhna rule
The popular claimIn 2026 the ninth night and the tenth day are the same Tuesday. Here is why that is correct.
Most festival dates come from one question: which tithi is present at sunrise? Vijayādaśamī asks a different one, and that is the whole reason it so often lands on a day that looks wrong.
The rule
The nibandha texts — Dharmasindhu, Nirṇayasindhu — take Vijayādaśamī as the day on which Daśamī is present in the aparāhna. Not at sunrise; in the afternoon. And "afternoon" is not a loose word. The day from sunrise to sunset is divided into five equal parts — pūrvāhṇa, saṅgava, madhyāhna, aparāhna, sāyāhna — and aparāhna is the fourth of them. On a day with eleven hours of light, that is a window of about two hours and a quarter, beginning a little after one in the afternoon.
Two further clauses decide the hard cases. If Daśamī reaches the aparāhna on both of two consecutive days, the first is taken. And where Daśamī coincides with Śravaṇa nakṣatra, that day is preferred — the texts single the conjunction out by name.
That is the whole of it. Three sentences, and every calendar that prints a Dussehra date is applying them — whether or not it says so.
2026 in Delhi, computed
Daśamī begins at 12:50 PM on Tuesday 20 October and ends at 2:12 PM on Wednesday 21 October. It touches two afternoons, so the rule has to be applied to both.
- Tuesday 20. Sunrise 6:25 AM, sunset 5:45 PM — eleven hours twenty minutes of daylight, so each fifth is 136 minutes and the aparāhna runs 1:13 PM to 3:29 PM. Daśamī, which began at 12:50, covers the whole of it. Śravaṇa nakṣatra is present until 6:02 PM.
- Wednesday 21. Sunrise 6:26 AM, sunset 5:44 PM; the aparāhna runs 1:13 PM to 3:28 PM. Daśamī ends at 2:12, so it is present for the first hour of the window and absent for the rest. Śravaṇa has passed.
Both days qualify on the bare test, so the two-day clause applies and the first day is taken. Śravaṇa points the same way. Vijayādaśamī 2026: Tuesday 20 October.
Why it is the same day as Mahānavamī
This is the part that unsettles people. Navamī is present at sunrise on the 20th, so by the ordinary rule the 20th is Mahānavamī — the last night of Navrātri. And yet the 20th is also Vijayādaśamī. Two festivals, one Tuesday.
Nothing has gone wrong. The two observances are attached to different parts of the day. Navamī governs the morning of the 20th because it is the tithi at sunrise; Daśamī governs the afternoon because it has arrived by then and fills the aparāhna. The navamī vrata ends when Navamī ends, at 12:50 PM, and the day continues into its afternoon under a new tithi. A calendar that put Dussehra on the 21st to keep the two apart would be tidier and would be wrong.
The moment within the day
Vijayādaśamī has a moment as well as a day. The daylight is also divided into fifteen muhūrtas, and the eleventh — called Vijaya — is the one the texts attach to the crossing of the boundary, the śamī pūjā, and the beginning of undertakings. On the 20th in Delhi each muhūrta is a little over 45 minutes and the eleventh runs from about 1:58 PM to 2:44 PM. It sits inside the aparāhna, which is not a coincidence: the rule for the day and the rule for the hour were written by people looking at the same afternoon.
Toronto: the same answer by a different road
Move the question to Toronto and the arithmetic changes shape. The tithi boundaries convert directly: Daśamī begins at 3:20 AM on Tuesday 20 October and ends at 4:42 AM on Wednesday 21. Toronto's sunrise on the 20th is 7:39 AM and sunset 6:24 PM, so its aparāhna is roughly 2:06 PM to 4:15 PM, and Daśamī is present throughout. On the 21st, Daśamī is gone before the Sun is up. There is no two-day case at all: only one afternoon qualifies.
Delhi needed the tie-break; Toronto did not. Both arrive at the 20th. That agreement is not guaranteed — there are years when the two cities keep Vijayādaśamī on different dates, and both are right — which is the reason the panchang on this site computes your own city rather than copying Delhi.
What this page does not say
It does not tell you what to start on Vijayādaśamī, and it does not promise that something begun in the Vijaya muhūrta will succeed. The texts name a day and an hour; the naming is what we have computed and shown. What you do with the afternoon is yours.
Source — Dharmasindhu and Nirnayasindhu on aparahna-vyapini dashami, on the two-day case, and on the Shravana nakshatra preference; the fivefold division of the day (purvahna, sangava, madhyahna, aparahna, sayahna) as the nibandhas state it; tithi, nakshatra, sunrise and sunset computed by this site's panchang engine for Delhi and Toronto
Every claim on this site names its source, and every calculator shows its arithmetic.