Venus Retrograde
2026

Venus Retrograde 2026: Dates, Times and Degrees

Venus turns retrograde at 8.5° Scorpio on October 3, 2026, at 07:16 UTC. The direct station follows 41 days later, at 22.9° Libra on November 14, 2026, at 00:27 UTC, after Venus has backed up 15.6° from Scorpio into Libra.

From Evening Star to Morning Star

Before each retrograde Venus is the evening star, bright in the west after sunset. Near the middle of the retrograde it crosses the line from the Earth to the Sun, the inferior conjunction, and soon afterward it rises before the Sun as the morning star. In this retrograde the inferior conjunction came on October 24, 2026, at 03:44 UTC, at 0°45′ Scorpio.

At that moment Venus comes closer to the Earth than any other planet ever does: 0.266 to 0.289 AU in these retrogrades, 40 to 43 million km. Its orbit is tilted, so it normally passes north or south of the Sun rather than across it. The narrowest miss in the table is on June 1, 2028, 49′ from the Sun's center. Venus last crossed the Sun's disk in June 2012 and next does so in December 2117.

The Eight-Year Repeat

Five Venus retrogrades take almost exactly eight years, so each returns eight years later in nearly the same place, slightly earlier. The retrograde that began on March 2, 2025 at 10.8° Aries comes back on February 27, 2033 at 8.5° Aries.

Across every pair in the data, the station retrograde lands 2.3° to 2.4° earlier in the zodiac and 2.4 to 2.5 days earlier in the calendar. Between repeats, each retrograde starts about 214° beyond the one before, so the five stations of a cycle spread around the zodiac: Aries, Scorpio, Gemini, Capricorn and Leo.

At about 2.3° per cycle, each of the five series needs roughly 102 years to work back through one sign, so a Venus retrograde in a given sign recurs every eight years for about a century before the series moves into the previous sign.

Why Venus Goes Retrograde, and What It Governs

Venus orbits the Sun in about 225 days, inside the Earth's orbit, and catches up with us once every 583 days or so (580 to 588 in this table). As it swings between the Earth and the Sun it appears to stop, back up for 40 to 43 days and stop again. Around each station it spends about six days less than 10 arc-minutes from its turning point.

Its own signs are Taurus and Libra and its exaltation is Pisces; opposite them lie its detriment, Scorpio and Aries, and its fall, Virgo. Venus signifies attraction and affection, pleasure, art and ornament, and the money spent on them, along with agreements between equals: partnerships, settlements, truces. A retrograde Venus is read as these matters coming back for a second look. An old attraction resurfaces, a purchase disappoints, or terms that seemed fair are reopened.

Because it happens so seldom, Venus retrograde carries weight in electional astrology. Weddings, engagements and the launch of anything sold on its looks are the classic cases where astrologers avoid the retrograde weeks, and many also avoid the days around each station.

Venus Retrograde Dates, 2025–2035

Seven Venus retrogrades from 2025 to 2035. Each lasts 40 to 43 days, and together they fill 7.3% of the span. In 2027, 2032 and 2035 Venus is never retrograde at all.

Station moments are where Venus's computed motion in longitude changes sign, refined to the minute; the shadow is measured between the two station degrees, a method described on the About page. Shadow dates are given as UTC dates.

The Venus Shadow and the Triple Crossing

Planning Around a Venus Retrograde

Natal Venus Retrograde, the Rarest of the Five

Over 2025–2035, Venus spends just 7.3% of its time retrograde, less than Mercury, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn, so only about one person in 14 is born with it.

Traditional texts count it as a debility, like any retrograde planet. Modern practice reads it as taste and affection that form slowly and privately: someone who keeps an old friendship or an old style for decades, and who decides what they value by returning to it rather than by first impressions.