Saturn is retrograde 137 days this
year — 37.6% of it. Every station time below is computed, not
copied, and the shadow periods are derived from their own definition rather than
estimated.
Right now · 30 July 2026
Yes — retrograde
♄ Aries 14.44°
Moving backward 0.0057° per day.
Direct again on 11 December 2026.
What the other pages do not tell you
The part that is measurable
36.1%
of all time Saturn is retrograde — an average of
131.9 days a year across
2016–2036. Not a rare event: it is the
normal state roughly
one day in 3.
137 days
including the shadow periods either side — against
137 days of retrograde proper. That is
38% of 2026 inside the affected window, which is
the figure that actually matters and the one nobody prints.
119–141
days, the spread between the lightest and heaviest year in that window. The
total is not fixed, because the synodic period of
378.09 days does not divide evenly into a calendar year.
2026 in detail
Station times are UTC, found by bisection on the sign of daily motion. Degrees are the
ecliptic longitude within the sign.
Period 1 of 1 · 137 days
· retreats 6.82°
26 July → 11 December 2026
Stations retrograde
26 Jul 2026, 19:38 UTC ·
Aries 14.45°
Stations direct
11 Dec 2026, 01:06 UTC ·
Aries 7.63°
Falls in Aries, which
traditionally colours it toward
initiative, appetite and the willingness to go first
Which signs it happens in
62 retrograde periods counted between 2000 and 2050, grouped by the
sign the station falls in. Worth noting because the folklore says these cluster in
certain signs — over fifty years they do not, and here is the count.
Saturn never moves backwards. What reverses is its apparent
path against the fixed stars, and it reverses because we are watching from a moving
platform. As Earth and Saturn pass each other, the line of sight
between them swings the other way for a while — the same effect as a car on the
motorway that seems to slide backwards when you overtake it.
The interval between one retrograde and the next is the synodic period:
378.09 days for Saturn. That number is why the count
per year is not constant. 378.09 does not divide evenly into 365.25,
so the periods drift through the calendar and occasionally three fit inside one year
where usually there would be fewer, or the reverse.
Reading it, traditionally
Saturn is associated with
structure, duty, limits and the work you postponed. The traditional advice during its retrograde is to
revisit rather than initiate — which, stated plainly, is advice that would be
reasonable at any time.
The honest context is the number at the top of this page: if
Saturn is retrograde 36.1% of the time, then any
rule of the form “do not do X during it” rules out
36.1% of your life. Include the shadow periods and the figure
roughly doubles. We publish the arithmetic precisely so you can decide how much weight
that deserves.
The shadow periods, defined
Astrologers talk about the “shadow” or “storm” either side of a retrograde, but the
dates are usually given by eye. They do not need to be. The planet enters its
pre-retrograde shadow the moment it first reaches the degree the retrograde will
end on, and leaves the post-retrograde shadow when it returns to the degree
the retrograde began on. Both are crossings of a known longitude, so both can
be found exactly — which is what the table above does.
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