INS Trishul Reaches Toulon for 24th Exercise VARUNA

INS Trishul arrived at the French port of Toulon on 22 September 2026 to take part in the 24th edition of Exercise VARUNA, the bilateral maritime exercise of the Indian Navy and the French Navy. The Ministry of Defence announced the arrival on 24 September 2026.

What VARUNA is

VARUNA is the name given to the naval exercise India and France hold with each other, and the edition number is the detail examiners most often ask for, since it records how long the series has run. Toulon, where the visiting frigate has berthed, lies on France's Mediterranean coast and is the base from which the French Navy works in that sea.

How the exercise runs

The programme has a harbour phase and a sea phase, and professional activity fills both.

• Cross-deck visits, in which sailors of each navy go aboard the other's ship to see how it is run, from the bridge to the machinery spaces.
• Operational interactions, where the two crews compare the drills and procedures they follow.
• Sporting engagements between the ships' companies, the informal side of such a visit.

Why navies exercise together

The stated purpose is that the two navies share experience and best practices, improve their ability to work as one and build mutual understanding. That ability is called interoperability, and it is what decides whether ships of two different countries can actually operate together when something happens at sea, whether a rescue, an anti-piracy patrol or a joint deployment. Signals have to be understood, formations have to be held and refuelling or boarding procedures have to match; none of that can be arranged in the middle of a crisis, so it is rehearsed in exercises like this one.

The larger picture

The visit is presented as a mark of the long-standing maritime partnership between India and France and of a widening field of cooperation between the two countries at sea. For an aspirant, the exercise belongs with the other bilateral naval exercises India runs, and the safest way to hold it is as a set of four facts: the ship, the port, the partner navy and the edition number.