A verse from the Ramcharitmanas set the tone — 'sagun hohin sundar sakal, man prasann sab ker' (all omens are auspicious, every heart is glad) — and on the night of 8 November 2026, the ghats of Ayodhya lived up to every syllable of it. The Chief Minister's Office of Uttar Pradesh confirmed that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan, and Governor Anandiben Patel jointly attended the grand Deepotsav 2026 celebration at Ram Ki Paidi, marking a decade of the festival's unbroken run.

A Decade on the Banks of the Sarayu

The hashtag #deepostav1dasak — 'one decade of Deepotsav' — tells the story in a single tag. Since 2017, the Uttar Pradesh government has staged this festival of lamps on the Sarayu riverfront every year without interruption, steadily scaling it into one of India's most photographed public spectacles. What began as a cultural statement has grown into an annual assertion of Ayodhya's identity as the country's pre-eminent pilgrimage city.

Ram Ki Paidi, the historic stepped ghat that serves as the festival's central stage, transforms each year into a river of flame — thousands of earthen diyas arranged along the waterfront in patterns visible from the air. The 2026 edition carries the added weight of being the first Deepotsav to complete a full decade, lending the gathering of constitutional dignitaries an unmistakably ceremonial gravity.

Three Constitutional Offices, One Riverbank

The presence of Vice President Radhakrishnan alongside the Governor and the Chief Minister is not incidental. When the second-highest constitutional office in the land shares a dais at a state cultural festival, it signals that Ayodhya's reinvention has moved well beyond regional politics into the national imagination. High-level attendance of this kind has been a deliberate feature of successive Deepotsav editions — a way of broadcasting the event's scale to a national audience.

The 2024 Ram Temple consecration sharpened that signal considerably. With the temple now open to pilgrims, each subsequent Deepotsav doubles as a showcase for the broader tourism and infrastructure investment the state government has poured into the city — new ghats, riverfront promenades, and connectivity upgrades that together aim to handle a sustained surge in footfall.

What the Tenth Edition Means for Ayodhya's Tourism Arc

A ten-year festival cycle is long enough to measure real change. Uttar Pradesh's sustained push to position Ayodhya as a major religious tourism destination has made Deepotsav its most visible annual proof point — a live demonstration, repeated every November, that the city can host spectacle at scale. Visitor numbers, illumination records, and any infrastructure or tourism announcements tied to the 2026 edition will be the metrics that tell whether the decade of investment is compounding.

For now, the diyas are lit, the dignitaries are present, and the Sarayu reflects it all back. Ten years in, Deepotsav is no longer just a festival — it is Ayodhya's annual report to the nation.