In brief: Navratri starts on Sunday 11 October 2026 and Diwali falls on Sunday 8 November. That is a four week run, and the expensive work comes before it opens. Set your festival hours on Google, get your templates and creative ready in September, and build audiences while reach is still cheap.
Most festive campaigns in Ahmedabad go up four days before Diwali. By then the ad auction is crowded. The good creative slots are gone, and the shop next door has been posting for a month.
Festive season campaign planning is mostly calendar work. The season is longer than people treat it, the expensive part arrives early, and one of the cheapest wins takes ten minutes.
This guide covers the real window, what has to be ready before October, and what to do in each week of the run.
Key Takeaways
- Navratri starts 11 October 2026 and Diwali falls on 8 November. That is four weeks.
- Both of those days are Sundays, so your weekend staffing matters more than usual.
- Google lets you set special hours for holidays. Most shops never do.
- Ad costs climb as the season fills, so build your audiences in September.
- The week after Diwali is one of the quietest for ads, and almost nobody uses it.
When Does Festive Season Campaign Planning Start?
Earlier than most people plan for, and it runs longer. Sharad Navratri begins on Sunday 11 October 2026 and runs nine nights. Dussehra falls on Tuesday 20 October. Diwali follows on Sunday 8 November (India holidays 2026). Dussehra and Diwali are both listed as gazetted holidays, while the first day of Navratri is only an observance.
Count that properly. From the first night of Navratri to Diwali is four weeks. So the season your customers are in runs from late September to the second week of November.
One detail matters more than it looks. Navratri opens on a Sunday and Diwali lands on a Sunday, so both peaks fall on your busiest footfall day. Staffing, delivery slots and your posted hours all need to survive a Sunday rush.
The run-up matters as much as the dates. Buying for Navratri starts in the fortnight before the first night. Picture a jeweller on C.G. Road taking enquiries in late September, well before any festival post goes up.
What Has to Be Ready Before the First of October?
Anything that involves money changing hands or a platform rule. These jobs cannot be rushed, and October is too late to find them. Two carry a deadline set by someone else, so they go first. Start with those two, and do them this week.
Your WhatsApp setup. What WhatsApp charges for is changing on 1 October 2026, ten days before Navratri opens. Our guide to WhatsApp Business marketing sets out what changes and what it costs, quoting Meta’s own pricing pages. Read it before you plan a festive broadcast.
Your message templates. Templates need approval before you can send them, and approval is not instant. Write and submit the festive ones in September, while nobody is queuing.
Your creative. Photography, reels and offer graphics all take longer than the week you will give them. Our guide to product reels that sell covers shooting a batch you can cut down through the season.
Your stock and your delivery promise. Neither of these is marketing, and both decide what you may advertise. Check with your supplier and your courier first. The date in your caption is the part customers quote back at you.
Your Google Profile Needs Festival Hours
Setting festival hours takes ten minutes, and hardly anyone does it. Google lets you set hours for single days on top of your normal week. Its guidance says you “may also specify special hours for particular days, like holidays or special events” (guidelines for representing your business). Nothing else in this guide costs so little.
Think about what a wrong entry costs during Navratri. Somebody searches at nine in the evening, sees closed, and goes to the shop that shows open. You lost a sale on your busiest night without ever knowing it happened.
Set the special hours for every day you plan to open late or close early, across the whole run. Then check them again in the last week of October, because plans change once the season starts. Our guide to Google Business Profile optimization covers the rest of the profile fields.
Why Do Ad Costs Rise, and What Do You Do About It?
Because everybody arrives at once. More buyers chase the same people in the same weeks. The auction responds, and every rupee buys less reach than it did in September. Our breakdown of Meta ads costs in India covers how far festive peaks push the numbers.
You cannot change the auction. What you can change is when you do the expensive part. Building an audience is cheaper in September than in October, because you are paying for reach at ordinary rates. That means the lists of people you can advertise to later.
So run your cheap awareness work now and your selling work later. A person who has already watched one of your reels in September costs less to reach in November than a stranger does. That is our own rule of thumb, and no published figure sits behind it. It is still the one thing we push clients on every year.
What Should You Actually Post, and When?
Different things in each stretch of the run. The mistake is posting the same offer for the whole run and wondering why it stops working. The run has three moods, and each one wants a different kind of post from you.
Plan the gap week now. The gap between Dussehra and Diwali is the part people waste. Customers are still buying, but they have stopped responding to the same festive graphic. Use it for practical things, which is also when your delivery promises matter most.
One offer per stretch is enough. Two competing offers in the same week split the response.
Keep the posting itself boring and regular. Our guide to building a social media content calendar covers planning a run like this without writing every caption on the day.
Which Festive Season Campaign Planning Mistakes Repeat?
By deciding them in September. Three come up every year, and none of them needs a budget to avoid. Each is a choice you make once, then write down on paper so that nobody has to make it again in October.
Blasting the whole contact list. This one is a rule. The rule reads: “you have received opt-in permission from the recipient confirming that they wish to receive subsequent messages or calls from you”. That is Meta’s own messaging policy. Meta also suggests asking for opt-in by type of message. Doing that, it says, “mitigates the risk that users will block your business because they receive unsolicited messages”.
So a festive offer sent to every saved number sits outside the policy. The blocks it earns follow you into the next campaign.
Leaving the hours wrong. Covered above, and it is the single most common error we find on local profiles going into a festive season. It is also the cheapest to fix.
The third is the one people forget. Do not promise a delivery date you have not checked with whoever actually delivers. A missed Diwali delivery earns a one star review that sits on your profile all year.
What Happens After Diwali?
Costs fall, and almost no one is buying ads. The week after 8 November is one of the quietest ad weeks of the year. Every rival has spent their budget and gone home, and your own team is tired by then. That makes it a cheap week.
Do two things with it. Reach the people who looked but did not buy. Then ask happy festive customers for a review, while the purchase is still fresh.
It is also the right week to write down what happened. Which posts pulled, which offer moved stock, what you ran out of. Next September you will be glad it exists, because no one remembers the detail ten months later.
Keep the note to one page. A short honest note beats a dashboard nobody opens, and it survives a change of staff.
Where to Start This Week
Open your Google profile and set the special hours for every day of the run, Dussehra included. That is the ten minute job, and it is worth doing before anything else. Nothing you do this week will pay back faster than that.
Then write down your two dates, 11 October and 8 November, and work backwards. Templates and creative in September, audience building through late September, selling from Navratri onwards.
If you would rather hand the run over, our social media team plans festive campaigns as one block, so nothing depends on a free evening. Talk to us and we will tell you what is realistic in the time left.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it too late to start if it is already October?
No, but your order changes. Skip the slow awareness work and go straight to the people who already know you: your WhatsApp list, your past customers, your followers. Reaching strangers in October costs more than it did in September, so spend the remaining time on people who already have a reason to buy.
How much should a small shop budget for the festive season?
There is no number that fits every trade, and anybody quoting one without asking about your stock and your margins is guessing. What we can say is that the split matters more than the total. Put a portion into September reach, and hold the larger share for the fortnight around Diwali.
Should I run offers through Navratri and Diwali both?
Usually yes, but not the same offer. Navratri buying and Diwali buying are different moods, and a single discount running the whole month stops being news. Treat them as two campaigns with a quiet week in between.
Should I keep posting during the gap week?
Yes, and change what the posts are for. Buying has not stopped. What has stopped is the response to the same festive graphic. Use the week for delivery times, restock notices and service posts.
What is the one thing most businesses forget?
The hours. Every year we open local profiles during the festive run and find shops showing closed on the nights they were open until eleven. It costs nothing to fix and a full evening to leave alone. Set them for every festival day at once, then check again in late October.
