Nifty 50 returns by year: every calendar year since 2013, and the falls inside them

Where these figures come from

Every number in this guide comes from NSE's daily index file, the closing value of the Nifty 50 on each trading day, read from 21 Feb 2012 to 12 Oct 2026. A calendar year return is the last close of the year against the last close of the year before. Two things to know before reading the table:

• This is the price index. It ignores dividends. The total return index (TRI) adds them back; NSE's Nifty50 Dividend Points index puts the dividends paid by the 50 companies at about 1.0% to 1.2% of the index level in a normal year (0.68% in 2020). So the TRI return is roughly one point a year higher.
• A close is a close. The highs and lows here are closing values, not the intraday extremes you see quoted in news headlines.

If you want to see how an index is built before reading its record, the indices and benchmarks module is the place to start.

Nifty 50 returns, year by year

Three patterns stand out. The big years come in clusters and are rare: four years above 20% (2014, 2017, 2021, 2023) did most of the work. Flat years are common: 2016, 2018 and 2022 each returned between 3% and 4.5%. And the one negative full year, 2015, was mild at the close but hid a fall of almost 16% inside it.

The fall inside every good year

The column most people skip is the last one. In nine of the thirteen full years, the index closed at least 10% below its high for that year at some point. The average of those yearly falls is 13.18%. That includes 2020, the year of the pandemic crash: the index closed at 12,362.30 on 14 Jan 2020, fell to 7,610.25 on 23 Mar 2020, a fall of 38.44%, and still finished the year 14.90% higher.

This is the gap between the record and the experience. Reading a table of yearly returns, you see the December number. Living through the year, you see the March number. In my years of running rules on Indian equities, the decisions that cost investors most were made in the March of a year that ended up.

Average return against CAGR

Add up the thirteen yearly returns and divide by thirteen and you get 12.59%. The compound rate, the one that turns ₹1 at the start into what you actually had at the end, is 12.12%. The average is always at least as high as the compound rate, and the gap grows with the swings: a fall of 20% followed by a rise of 20% averages zero but leaves you 4% down.

The blog notes on the average year myth and average return vs CAGR work through the arithmetic, and the CAGR vs XIRR guide shows which return number fits which situation.

Longer windows: 1, 3, 5 and 10 years to 12 Oct 2026

Calendar years are a convenient cut, not a natural one. Here is the same index measured back from the latest close:

The same index shows 12.12% a year to the end of 2025 and 4.45% a year over the five years to October 2026. Both are true. The end point moved from a record close to a point 15.06% below the record of 26,328.55 set on 2 Jan 2026. Any single return figure depends heavily on the two dates chosen, which is why the guide on how long to stay invested looks at every possible start date instead.

What the yearly record does not tell you

• It is not your return. An investor who added money every month, or sold in March 2020, earned something different from the index. A SIP's return is measured with XIRR, not with these yearly figures.
• It leaves out costs and tax. An index fund charges an expense ratio, and gains are taxed when you sell. The figures above are before both.
• It is one index. In the same years the mid cap and small cap indices had very different paths, covered in the large, mid and small cap guide.
• Thirteen years is a short sample. It contains one crash, several flat years and a strong run from 2020 to 2024. The next thirteen can look different.

Reading the current year

The Nifty 50's record close is 26,328.55, set on 2 Jan 2026. By 8 Oct 2026 it had closed as low as 22,231.80, 15.56% below the record, and on 12 Oct it closed at 22,363.35. On the yearly table that is the worst calendar year in the sample so far. On the inside fall column, it sits next to 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2022, all years in which the index later moved to new highs, and below 2020. Whether 2026 ends like those years is not knowable from the table, and this guide does not try to say.

The Nifty 50 against the wider market

The Nifty 50 is the 50 largest companies, not the market. Over the same thirteen years, 31 Dec 2012 to 31 Dec 2025, NSE's broader indices did differently on the same daily closes:

The broader and smaller the index, the higher the return over this stretch and the deeper its bad years. The Nifty Next 50 guide looks at the tier just below the top, and the large, mid and small cap guide at the rest. A comparison of years is only fair when each index is measured over the same dates.

How this shows up in RupeeCase

The index line on every RupeeCase strategy page is the Nifty 50 TRI, with dividends, so that a rule is compared with the return an index investor could actually have had. Nifty 50 Equal Weight holds the same 50 companies at 2% each in your own demat, rebalanced every 4 weeks: model CAGR 16.35%, deepest fall −15.71%, against an index line of 9.8%, as of 27 Apr 2026. Its page shows each year of the model next to the index, and the worst falls with their recovery dates, in the same format as the table above. The CAGR calculator works out the compound rate between any two values you enter.

Questions investors ask