Border 2 vs Pathaan vs Fighter: Sunny Deol beats Hrithik Roshan, challenges Shah Rukh's stardom in Republic Day battle

Border 2 box office collections may not have set a new benchmark for Republic Day, but certainly challenged Pathaan's skyrocketing figures.

Updated on: Jan 27, 2026, 15:03:14 IST

By Abhimanyu Mathur

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It was in 2023 that Republic Day became a legitimate ‘festive’ weekend in Indian cinema’s release calendar. Shah Rukh Khan returned from his hiatus with Pathaan, and Bollywood breathed again as the film broke box office records. Since then, a patriotic film has released every year on the Republic Day weekend, formalising it as a big event weekend. Till now, no film had come close to what Pathaan had managed. But Sunny Deol’s Border 2 came close this year, almost threatening to knock the SRK blockbuster off its perch

Border 2 vs Pathaan vs Fighter: Who won the Republic Day box office battle

Border 2 vs Pathaan vs Fighter vs Sky Force

Pathaan released on a Wednesday, the eve of Republic Day, giving itself a massive five-day extended weekend. The film broke new ground for Bollywood, minting ₹280 crore net in five days, including a staggering ₹70 crore on Republic Day alone. The following year, Siddharth Anand tried to recreate the magic with Hrithik Roshan in Fighter. The film earned ₹41 crore net on Republic Day and an underwhelming ₹115 crore in its four-day extended weekend. In 2025, Akshay Kumar’s Sky Force fared even worse, opening badly at ₹16 crore, before recovering to earn ₹31.60 crore on Republic Day. Its weekend gross - in three days - was just ₹73 crore.

While many had assumed that Pathaan’s run was a one-off and Republic Day clearly wasn’t an event weekend, Border 2 proved that notion wrong. Riding on a wave of patriotism and nationalism, along with good-old nostalgia, the war drama earned ₹180 crore net in its four-day weekend, including a more-than-impressive ₹59 crore on Republic Day. On January 25, it earned ₹54.50 crore, just 3% shy of what Pathaan had managed on the same date three years prior. Clearly, the Sunny Deol-starrer came agonisingly close to dethroning Pathaan as the king of Republic Day releases. But even as the film failed to do that, it has shown that the weekend holds the power to launch a certain genre of films, and that Pathaan’s mark can be beaten.

Film	R-Day collection	Weekend net	Daily avg	Worldwide gross
Pathaan	₹70.5 crore	₹280 crore	₹56 crore	₹542 crore
Border 2	₹59 crore	₹180 crore	₹45 crore	₹251 crore
Fighter	₹41.2 crore	₹115 crore	₹29 crore	₹204 crore
Sky Force	₹31.6 crore	₹73.2 crore	₹24.4 crore	₹95 crore

All about Border 2

Directed by Anurag Singh, Border 2 is a spiritual sequel to JP Dutta’s 1997 hit Border, which starred Sunny Deol, Suniel Shetty, Akshaye Khanna, and Jackie Shroff. Border 2 brings Sunny back, pairing him with three new leads - Varun Dhawan, Diljit Dosanjh, and Ahan Shetty. The film opened to mixed reviews, but has done exceedingly well at the box office, minting ₹251 crore worldwide in four days.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhimanyu Mathur
Abhimanyu Mathur is Deputy Editor, Entertainment at Hindustan Times. With almost 15 years of experience in writing about everything from films and TV shows to cricket matches and elections, he inhales and exhales pop culture and news. Currently, he watches movies and TV shows and talks to celebrities for a living, while occasionally writing about them as well. A journalism graduate of Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, Delhi University, Abhimanyu began his career with Hindustan Times at the age of 20, swapping classrooms for newsrooms at an early age. He began his journey in the early days of digital journalism, later switching to the madness of print journalism. Work has led him to far off places like Japan and Jordan, as well as to the interiors of Haryana and the Indo-Pak border. He dabbled in city reporting in places like Meerut, Gurgaon, and Delhi, covered the Olympics and Cricket World Cups, before finding his calling in entertainment and lifestyle during the pandemic. A Rotten Tomatoes Certified Film Critic, he is equally at home covering stories on ground as he is interviewing celebrities and studios, and sometimes prefers to shepherd teams in delivering traffic through the day. Even as his role has evolved from reporter to supervisor over the years, his first love remains writing (and of late, talking on camera). With a good understanding of cinema and its trends, and a keen eye for detail, he continues to spark conversations around showbiz for readers around the world.Read More

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