Venus retrograde 2026

Venus is retrograde 42 days this year — 11.4% 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

No — direct

♀ Virgo 21.77°

Moving forward 1.0464° per day. Next retrograde begins 3 October 2026.

What the other pages do not tell you

The part that is measurable

7.2% of all time Venus is retrograde — an average of 26.1 days a year across 2016–2036. Not a rare event: it is the normal state roughly a fraction.
106 days including the shadow periods either side — against 42 days of retrograde proper. That is 29% of 2026 inside the affected window, which is the figure that actually matters and the one nobody prints.
0–43 days, the spread between the lightest and heaviest year in that window. The total is not fixed, because the synodic period of 583.92 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 · 42 days · retreats 15.64°

3 October → 14 November 2026

Stations retrograde 3 Oct 2026, 07:35 UTC · Scorpio 8.11°
Stations direct 14 Nov 2026, 00:26 UTC · Libra 22.48°
Pre-retrograde shadow opens 31 Aug 2026 · 33 days early
Post-retrograde shadow closes 15 Dec 2026 · 32 days after
Full affected window 106 days

Falls in Scorpio, which traditionally colours it toward intensity, privacy and refusal to accept surfaces

Which signs it happens in

32 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.

7 Aries · 21.9% 7 Scorpio · 21.9% 6 Gemini · 18.8% 5 Capricorn · 15.6% 4 Leo · 12.5% 2 Virgo · 6.3% 1 Aquarius · 3.1%

Other years

2023 43 days retrograde 2024 0 days retrograde 2025 42 days retrograde 2026 42 days retrograde 2027 0 days retrograde 2028 43 days retrograde 2029 15 days retrograde 2030 26 days retrograde 2031 43 days retrograde 2032 0 days retrograde
Was it retrograde when you were born? Enter a birth date and get all five planets, with the degree and the period it fell inside. All retrograde planets Mercury through Saturn, how long each one reverses and why the outer planets take months. How this is calculated The orbital elements, the geocentric longitude, and the accuracy we claim for the station times.

What is actually happening

Venus 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 Venus 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: 583.92 days for Venus. That number is why the count per year is not constant. 583.92 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

Venus is associated with affection, money, taste and the people who come back. 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 Venus is retrograde 7.2% of the time, then any rule of the form “do not do X during it” rules out 7.2% 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.