Festive spending in India in 2025: what the numbers show, and what they do not

Every number said 2025 was the biggest festive season India has recorded. They were not all measuring the same thing, and the one-off behind them will shape every comparison made this year.

Written by the Colleviate Strategy desk

The 2025 festive season arrived with a tax cut attached. The reformed GST rates took effect on 22 September, the first day of Navratri, moving most goods to two main rates of 5% and 18%, with a special 40% rate for a short list of luxury and demerit goods. Small cars, two-wheelers, larger televisions and a long list of household goods became cheaper on the morning the season began.

What followed was a record on every measure anyone published. The useful question for a marketer is what each of those measures actually counts.

Vehicles: counted, and up 21%

The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations counts registrations, collated with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways from 1,400 of India’s 1,458 regional transport offices. Over its 42-day festive window, from 22 September to 2 November 2025, retail sales reached 52,38,401 vehicles, up 21.1% on the 2024 window. Two-wheelers rose 21.8% to 40,52,503 and passenger vehicles 23.4% to 7,66,918, a festive record.

FADA also recorded what happened before the cut. It described the first 21 days of September as muted, with buyers waiting for the new rates. Demand that would have arrived in early September arrived in late September and October instead.

Payments: counted, and a record month

Unified Payments Interface figures from the National Payments Corporation of India are counts of transactions. October 2025 brought 20.7 billion of them, worth Rs 27.28 lakh crore, the highest monthly volume UPI had recorded, up from 19.63 billion in September. On 18 October, the day of Dhanteras, the system crossed 750 million transactions in a single day for the first time.

UPI grows every year regardless of the season, so a record month says less about festive demand than it seems to. The single-day record on the main buying day of the season says more.

Trade: estimated, at Rs 6.05 lakh crore

The Confederation of All India Traders put Diwali 2025 sales at Rs 6.05 lakh crore, Rs 5.40 lakh crore of goods and Rs 65,000 crore of services, 25% above its figure of Rs 4.25 lakh crore for 2024. It is the most quoted festive number in India and it is an estimate: a survey by CAIT’s research arm across 60 distribution centres, including state capitals and tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Read it as a direction and a mix from a body that represents traders, not as an audited total.

The mix is still worth reading. CAIT attributed 12% of the trade to groceries and FMCG, 10% to gold and jewellery, 8% to electronics and electricals, and 7% each to consumer durables, ready-made garments and gift items.

Online: modelled, and up about a quarter at the start

E-commerce sale figures come from consultancies modelling platform data. Redseer Strategy Consultants estimated that online gross merchandise value grew 23% to 25% year on year across 22 and 23 September, the opening days of the sales, which coincided with the new GST rates. It credited smartphones and televisions, where GST on screens above 32 inches fell from 28% to 18%, and it had forecast growth of about 20% to 25% for the festive season as a whole.

Three kinds of number

Side by side, the season was reported in three different currencies. Registrations and payments are counted. Trade totals are surveyed estimates. Platform sales are modelled by analysts. All three pointed the same way in 2025, which is reassuring, but they should never be added together, set against each other or quoted with the same confidence. A board paper that puts a counted number beside an estimated one should say which is which.

The calendar flatters October

FADA’s own release holds the clearest warning in the data. Vehicle retail in October 2025 rose 40.5% on October 2024. Across the 42-day festive window it rose 21.1%. Same industry, same season, half the growth.

The difference is the calendar. In 2025 Dussehra (2 October) and Diwali (20 October) fell in the same month. In 2024 Diwali fell on 31 October and FADA’s festive window ran to 13 November, so much of that season’s buying, and more of its registrations, landed in November. A comparison of October with October measured the festival moving, not demand growing. FADA defines its window from the first day of Navratri to 15 days after Dhanteras for exactly this reason.

What 2026 will be compared against

This year the festival moves the other way. Dussehra falls on 20 October and Diwali on 8 November 2026, so a large share of festive buying shifts out of October and into November. Expect October 2026 to look weak against October 2025 and November to look strong, for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone’s marketing.

The base is also inflated. 2025 had a one-off: a tax cut on the first day of the season, after three weeks in which buyers held back. Without another one, festive growth in 2026 is measured against a year in which policy pulled demand into a few weeks. A brand that grows modestly this season may still have done well.

So set festive targets on festival-aligned windows rather than calendar months, compare share against named competitors rather than raw growth, and agree both before the season starts. The method is in measuring a festive campaign when everything goes up, and the timing of search demand in the festive search calendar.