Options Expiry Calendar (Complete)
Indian index options have staggered weekly and monthly expiry dates across Nifty 50, Bank Nifty, Nifty Financial Services, Nifty Midcap Select, and Sensex, with each exchange permitted only one weekly expiry index after SEBI's 2023 rationalisation.
India has one of the most active index options markets globally by volume, and managing the expiry calendar is operationally important for traders running multiple simultaneous index strategies. Historically, NSE offered weekly expiries on both Nifty 50 (Thursday) and Bank Nifty (Wednesday), while BSE offered weekly expiries on Sensex and Bankex. This created a situation where expiry events occurred on virtually every day of the trading week, fragmenting liquidity and creating complex hedging calendars for institutions.
SEBI issued a circular in October 2023 mandating that each exchange could offer weekly expiry contracts on only one benchmark index, effective from November 2023. NSE retained Thursday weekly expiry for Nifty 50 and discontinued weekly Bank Nifty contracts (shifting Bank Nifty to monthly expiry only). BSE retained Tuesday weekly expiry for Sensex. NSE subsequently introduced weekly expiry for Nifty Financial Services (FinNifty) on Tuesdays and Nifty Midcap Select Index on Mondays, though these are subject to liquidity-based review.
Monthly expiry for most NSE contracts falls on the last Thursday of each month. If the last Thursday is a market holiday, expiry shifts to the preceding Wednesday. The monthly settlement is based on the final settlement price computed as the Special Opening Quotation (SOQ) for index contracts — a volume-weighted opening price using opening trades of all constituent stocks on expiry morning. For single-stock futures and options, the final settlement price is the closing price of the underlying stock on expiry day.
Quarterly and annual expiries exist for select products like currency derivatives, interest rate futures, and commodity derivatives on NSE and MCX, but for equity index and stock derivatives, the longest standard expiry is three months (the far month contract in the near-month, mid-month, far-month cycle). Nifty 50 index options are also available as long-dated contracts (LEAPs) for six months and one year expiry, though liquidity in these is significantly lower than in near-month contracts.
For traders running expiry-week strategies — short straddles, butterflies, iron condors — mapping the full expiry calendar across all products is essential to avoid the inadvertent concentration of multiple strategy expiries in a single week, which would multiply operational workload and capital requirements simultaneously.