Nifty 50 returns over 1, 3, 5, 10 and 15 years

The numbers to 30 September 2026

The Nifty 50 closed at 22,620.45 on 30 September 2026. Here is what it returned over each period up to that close.

Periods of three years and longer are annual rates (CAGR). The price return is the index alone. The dividend column is our estimate of the total return: it adds NSE's published dividend yield for the Nifty 50, day by day, to the price index. An index fund earns roughly that column, minus its expense ratio and tracking error.

Two things stand out. From seven years out, the index has compounded at a steady 10–12% a year with dividends. And the last five years have been much weaker than the long record, because the index is 14.1% below its all-time high of 26,328.55, set on 2 January 2026.

Is five years at 5% normal?

To judge a trailing return you need the range it sits in. We took every trading day since September 2007 and measured the return to it over each window length. These rolling figures are for the price index alone, so add about a point and a half a year for dividends.

The current five-year figure of 5.13% sits well below the lower quartile of 8.79%. So it is a poor five years by the index's own history, but not a record: the worst five years, ending at the Covid low on 23 March 2020, lost 2.30% a year.

The pattern in the table is the useful part. Over one year, the Nifty lost money in more than one window in five. Over seven years or longer, it never did. The spread also narrows as the window lengthens: the gap between the best and worst one-year return is more than 150 percentage points, while over fifteen years it is about 8.

Why the start and end dates matter so much

Every trailing return is two dates, and both move the answer:

• The end date. Today's figures end in a falling year. The 5-year return measured at the January 2026 peak would have looked very different.
• The start date. The 10-year number starts at 8,611 in September 2016, an ordinary month. The 15-year number starts in September 2011, in the middle of a falling year, which flatters it.

This is why the worst ten-year return, 3.83% a year, ends on the Covid low, and the best fifteen-year return, 15.50%, starts close to the March 2009 low. If someone quotes a single Nifty return, ask for the dates. Rolling returns, explained in rolling vs trailing returns, remove most of that luck.

What the record says about the next ten years

It says nothing precise. What it does show is the range investors have lived through. Since 2007, every ten-year holding of the Nifty 50 made money on price alone, and most made between about 9.6% and 12.6% a year. Inflation over the same years ran at roughly 5–6%. The Nifty 50 returns calculator lets you pick your own start and end dates, and the year-by-year table shows how uneven the path was.

Valuation is the other half of the question. The index's P/E is near the bottom of its range since 2021; our Nifty P/E page tracks it daily, and we tested whether it predicts five-year returns in does Nifty P/E predict returns.

Notes on the data

• Closes are the Nifty 50 price index from 17 September 2007, the start of our daily series, to 30 September 2026. Where a date fell on a holiday we used the last close before it.
• The dividend-adjusted figures are estimates, not NSE's official total return index. They track it closely but not exactly.
• An index fund's return is lower by its costs. The direct vs regular calculator shows what a cost difference does over decades.

Sources. Index levels and the Nifty 50's P/E and dividend yield are published daily by NSE Indices. The figures above are computed from those series by WealthTicker.

This article is for education, not investment advice. Past returns do not predict future ones.