Festive peak 2027: a warehouse capacity plan from Navratri (30 September) to Bhai Dooj (31 October)

This year, Diwali falls on Sunday, 8 November 2026. Next year it falls on Friday, 29 October 2027.

That is ten days earlier.

Navratri moves even more, from 11 October 2026 to 30 September 2027 (Drikpanchang Hindu calendar for 2026 and for 2027, New Delhi). So a plan copied from the 2026 calendar will be more than a week late in 2027. I would not copy a single date across.

Checked against official sources on 28 October 2026.

My short answer: plan the 2027 peak from your own 2026 data, lined up by days before Diwali, not by date. Turn orders into packer-hours and stations. Lock packaging, people and courier capacity by fixed dates in September. Then plan the two weeks after Bhai Dooj for returns, because they come every year.

We make packaging, not warehouse software, so we see the peak from the supplier side. Every brand wants its tape, cartons and void fill in the same few weeks, from the same factories.

That alone is reason enough for us to ask you to plan early.

The 2027 dates that shape your peak

Dates are from Drikpanchang (New Delhi) and the central government holiday list for 2027. Raksha Bandhan, Janmashtami and Ganesh Chaturthi come earlier, in August and early September, and we would use them as rehearsals.

One thing is missing from this table on purpose: the big marketplace sale events. The marketplaces announce those dates close to the event, and no 2027 dates had been announced as of 28 October 2026. Do not build your plan on a rumoured date.

I know that is not what a marketing team wants to hear.

Start with this year's data, while it is happening

Your best input for 2027 is the 2026 peak, which is running right now.

Capture it before the floor forgets. In our view this is the most useful hour you will spend this month.

1. Export daily orders, units and order lines from 1 September to 30 November 2026. For the ten busiest days, add orders by hour.
2. Mark 11 October (Navratri) and 8 November (Diwali) on the sheet. Then add a column: days before Diwali. Line 2027 up on that column, not on calendar dates.
3. Write down, this week, where it broke. Note the hour the backlog started, the consumable that ran out first, the courier that missed pickups and the station that stood idle for want of one box size.
4. Note the box-size mix at the peak. Gift sets and combo packs change it, so a carton that moves slowly in June can be the first to run out in October.

Point 3 matters most.

A spreadsheet shows what happened. Only the floor lead knows why.

Turn orders into hours, stations and people

Orders do not tell you how many people you need. Hours do.

This is the calculation we would run first.

1. Forecast your peak-day orders. Start from the 2026 peak day and adjust only for growth you actually expect. I will not give you a multiplier, because nobody outside your business knows it.
2. Divide by your own orders per packer-hour, measured on your floor (see packing KPIs to track every week). Use the peak mix of single-item and multi-item orders, not the yearly average.
3. Divide by the productive hours in one shift. Breaks, start-up and handovers eat into it. That gives packers per shift.
4. Packers per shift gives stations per shift. A station is a bench, a screen, a scanner, a printer and its consumables, so every extra station is a small purchase list, not just a person.

Here is the arithmetic with round, made-up numbers, only to show the method. 2,400 orders on the peak day at 30 orders per packer-hour is 80 packer-hours. In one shift with about 7 productive hours, that is 12 packers, and so 12 stations.

Your numbers will be different. I would trust yours over mine any day.

Then repeat it for picking and for dispatch. A fast packing line fed by slow picking only moves the queue somewhere else.

A week-by-week plan for 2027

1. By 31 July: decide the space, the extra stations and how you will hire temporary staff (directly or through a contractor). Check the Labour Code points further down.
2. August: run Raksha Bandhan (17 August) and Janmashtami (25 August) as rehearsals. Test the extra stations, and the night shift if you plan one.
3. By early September: confirm packaging deliveries with your suppliers in writing, with dates. Ask each one for the last date they can promise.
4. Ganesh Chaturthi (4 September) to the end of Pitru Paksha (29 September): train the temporary team, re-slot fast movers close to packing (see warehouse layout and slotting), set up the extra stations and fill the consumables cage.
5. 30 September to 9 October (Navratri to Dussehra): the first wave. Review the backlog every evening.
6. 10 to 26 October: the second wave builds towards Dhanteras. Most lane cut-offs fall due in this window.
7. 27 to 31 October (Dhanteras to Bhai Dooj): courier pickups may change on the festival days. Get each courier's pickup schedule for these five days in writing by mid-October.
8. 1 to 15 November: returns and RTO parcels come back. Chhath (4 November) takes some staff home. Restock for the wedding season, which restarts with Devuthani Ekadashi on 10 November.

Courier cut-offs, lane by lane

A customer who orders a diya set on 26 October wants it before Diwali.

Whether that is possible depends on the lane.

For each of your main destination states, take the real transit time from your 2026 data, not the promised one. The last dispatch date for "before Diwali" is 29 October minus that transit time, minus one day of buffer. Work out the same for Dhanteras.

Then tell the customer the truth. Change the delivery promise on your website by pin code as each cut-off passes. A festive parcel that arrives after the festival is easy to refuse, and an RTO costs you freight both ways.

For weak lanes, we suggest lining up a second courier before the peak, not during it (see choosing a 3PL or courier partner).

If your team includes people from Bihar or eastern Uttar Pradesh, ask early who will travel home for Chhath. Plan the first week of November around the answer.

Packaging stock, and the space it needs

1. Work out consumables per order from your 2026 records: cartons and mailers by size, metres of tape, void fill, labels and document envelopes.
2. Multiply by the forecast orders for each peak week, size by size.
3. Plan the space before the truck arrives. Cartons come flat but still take pallet positions. Rolls of void fill paper and air pillow film are bulky. Without a planned place, they end up in the packing aisle.
4. Keep a peak consumables cage close to packing, and refill stations from behind at fixed times (see designing a fast packing station).
5. Hold a reserve of the fastest box sizes that nobody touches until the reorder lands.

From our side of the table, I have one request.

Tell your packaging supplier in July that you will need twice the tape in October. Hearing it on 20 October helps nobody. Your supplier serves many brands with the same festival dates, and our machines can only run so many hours in a day.

People: the Labour Codes and your temporary team

Temporary staff are employees or contract workers like anyone else. These points are from the PIB backgrounder on the OSH Code (22 November 2025), and the Code has been in force since 21 November 2025:

1. Every employee gets an appointment letter in the prescribed format. That includes the person hired for six weeks.
2. A contractor with 50 or more contract workers needs a licence. Contract labour is allowed even in core work when a sudden increase in volume has to be handled in a set time.
3. If the contractor fails to pay wages, the principal employer has to pay them.
4. Overtime is with the worker's consent and at twice the normal wage rate.
5. Women may work before 6 am and after 7 pm with their consent, and the employer must arrange safety, facilities and transport.

I would add one more point, because it catches warehouses out. For the factory test, the Code counts every worker on any day of the previous twelve months. A big festive team can change your status for a whole year. Labour Codes in 2027: a checklist for warehouses explains it.

Temporary staff will also see customer data. Give them pick lists without names and logins of their own, as in customer data on shipping labels and packing slips.

Paperwork that holds trucks

Moving stock to marketplace warehouses before the peak usually needs e-way bills, and e-invoices too once turnover is above ₹5 crore. The e-way bill portal now asks for a one-time password at login (multi-factor login, reported mandatory since April 2025). If the only registered user is on Diwali leave, nothing moves. Add a second user well before October. E-invoices and e-way bills for D2C dispatch in 2027 has the rules.

After Bhai Dooj: plan for the returns wave

In the days after Bhai Dooj, parcels that went out in the peak start coming back as returns and RTOs.

We would plan for them as a second, smaller peak. Keep a returns bay free, with its own table and its own people for those two weeks. Grade every returned item before it goes back on a shelf. An unchecked return sitting in a pick face turns one complaint into two.

What to do now

1. This week: start the 2026 peak log with the four points above. Ask your floor lead to keep a notebook at the dispatch desk until the returns settle.
2. By 31 December 2026: build the days-before-Diwali sheet and the hours calculation.
3. By 31 March 2027: decide space and stations, and talk to your packaging suppliers about September deliveries.
4. By 30 June 2027: finish the hiring plan, the contractor checks and the courier talks about festive pickups.

Diwali 2027 is on a Friday. If the plan is ready by the end of July, the dispatch team might even get that evening off ;)