When is Venus retrograde?
Next: 4 October to 15 November 2026 — Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio and turns direct back in Libra, a 42-day review season. Then nothing for a while. The calendar year 2027 gets no window at all, and the loop returns 11 May to 23 June 2028, entirely inside Gemini — a 43-day season, because the ~18-month rhythm simply doesn't respect our year boundaries.
The pattern is the synodic cycle: 583.9 days between successive Earth-Venus alignments, of which the retrograde phase is the 40–45-day slice near inferior conjunction. Because 583.9 days is not a whole number of years, each window drifts about a month later in the calendar before the famous 8-year near-resonance (five synodic cycles ≈ eight Earth years) snaps Venus back to almost the same part of the zodiac — which is why windows eight years apart station in similar signs.
How we compute it
We evaluate Venus's apparent geocentric longitude day by day from the astronomy-engine VSOP87 ephemeris. The window opens on the first day its apparent daily motion turns negative (station retrograde) and closes when it turns positive again (station direct). The signs printed for each end are the exact tropical longitudes at those instants.
Dates are to the day in UTC — a station is an instant, and depending on your timezone a printed date can legitimately differ by one from a local-table source, exactly as with our Mercury retrograde tool. The optional house overlay casts your natal chart locally and uses the window's midpoint longitude.
What you get
The calculator shows, for any year from 2025 to 2045:
- A live banner: whether Venus is retrograde right now, or the date it next stations.
- Every retrograde window in the chosen year with exact start and end dates and duration in days.
- The sign Venus stations retrograde in and the sign it stations direct in — the loop always backtracks through about one sign.
- For years with no window, a card explaining the ~18-month skip and pointing to the nearest real windows.
- Optionally, which of your natal houses each retrograde crosses once you add your birth data.
What the tradition says to do with it
Venus rules affection, attraction, spending, art and self-worth in the symbolic system, so its retrograde is traditionally read as a review period: old partners resurface, subscriptions and savings get a hard look, aesthetic U-turns happen, and 'don't buy the wedding dress' is the folk rule. When Venus turns direct again, the tradition treats the restarted period as the green-light time for what the review surfaced.
It is worth knowing how young and contingent this lore is. Pre-modern astrology actually treated retrograde planets as being in a position of strength (Mars 'rejoices' retrograde in traditional texts, and Venus gets a mixed reception), and Venus retrograde was not a staple of popular columns at all before the mass-media era. The advice layer is culture, not physics — the dates, however, are pure astronomy.
A worked example: the 2026 and 2025 windows
The tool lists for 2026 a single window: 4 October to 15 November, 42 days, stationing retrograde in Scorpio and turning direct in Libra — a backtrack across about one sign, the signature of every Venus loop. Our status banner agrees: on 1 October 2026 the retrograde sky holds Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and Venus joins the party three days later.
The previous window ran 3 March to 14 April 2025 — 42 days, retrograde in Aries and direct in Pisces — and the next-next one, 11 May to 23 June 2028, sits 43 days deep inside Gemini, clipped at no year end. And 2027? The calculator returns an honest zero: the rhythm steps cleanly over that calendar year, which no 'every year has a Venus retrograde' list can survive.
What this tool does not claim
Nothing about Venus's apparent backward motion has been shown to influence relationships: Venus is simply the second planet from the Sun, and its retrograde is an unavoidable parallax of overtaking orbits, visible to anyone with binoculars and a weeks-long patience. The break-up-and-reunion narratives are column folklore with no controlled evidence.
What the page does guarantee is arithmetic: station dates from the ephemeris to the day and signs you can verify against any professional table. All computation runs locally; if you add birth data it never leaves your browser.
Venus retrograde vs Mercury retrograde
Same geometry, different rhythm: Mercury loops three to four times a year for ~21 days because its 88-day orbit is overtaken often, while Venus's 225-day orbit produces one ~42-day loop every 18 months — rarer, longer, and traditionally tied to love and money instead of messages and machines. Our Mercury Retrograde tool covers the frequent one; the Planets in Retrograde overview shows everything looping at once.
Our method in one line
Stations detected from daily apparent motion of sub-arcsecond astronomy (VSOP87/ELP via astronomy-engine) geocentric longitudes; signs on the tropical zodiac; the optional house overlay uses your Porphyry quadrant houses (whole-sign available on every chart) cusps. Reviewed by Dr. Amara Osei, Astronomy Reviewer.
Step by step
- 1
Pick a year
Choose anything from 2025 to 2045 — the banner, window list and empty-year explainer update instantly.
- 2
Read the loop
Each window shows station dates, duration and the two signs it backtracks through — retrograde always starts about a sign ahead of where it ends.
- 3
Add birth data for houses
Optionally enter your birth details to see which natal house each Venus retrograde crosses — the tradition's area-of-life layer.
- 4
Plan around the direct station
If you follow the custom, the review runs between the stations; the folk 'green light' is after the direct date.
Tip — Expect an empty year now and then: the ~18-month cycle skips whole calendar years (2027 has no Venus retrograde at all). A list claiming an annual Venus retrograde is copying Mercury's calendar.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Venus actually moving backwards?
- No. Venus orbits the Sun in the same direction always; from Earth we periodically overtake it on our faster inner orbit, and the changing viewing angle makes it trace an apparent loop against the stars. It is the same perspective effect as a slower car appearing to drift backwards when you pass it.
- Why does Venus retrograde skip some years completely?
- Because the cycle is ~18 months long, not 12: consecutive windows land about a year and a half apart, so some calendar years catch a window and 2027 catches none — the 2026 season ends 15 November, and nothing stations again until 11 May 2028. The planet keeps no interest in our year boundaries.
- Should I really not get married during Venus retrograde?
- That is the modern folk rule, and it is barely a century old — pre-modern astrology did not treat Venus's retrograde as a wedding-taboo at all (it even considered retrograde planets strong). Couples who wed in the 2020 windows report ordinary marriages; the ephemeris imposes no relationship deadlines, and this page reports the dates, not the taboo.
- Do the window dates match other published lists?
- To the day, almost always — every serious list uses the same underlying astronomy. One-date differences happen when a source prints stations in a local time zone rather than UTC, since a station instant can fall on either side of midnight. The signs we show are the longitudes at those instants and match professional tables.
- Is my birth data private?
- Calculations run entirely in your browser. Your birth data is never uploaded, never stored on a server, and never shared. The window list is astronomy alone; the optional house mapping runs locally in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
Written by
Elena Marchetti
Founder & Staff Astrologer
Methodology reviewed by
Dr. Amara Osei
Astronomy Reviewer
Published 2026-10-01 · Updated 2026-10-01 · Calculated with sub-arcsecond astronomy (VSOP87/ELP via astronomy-engine)