Mercury Retrograde Dates
☿℞ — the computed stations, the degrees, and whether the arc touches your chart.
Mercury is retrograde 3 times a year, for a median 23 days each time. The next one runs 24 Oct 2026 to 13 Nov 2026. Retrograde is an apparent motion: Earth overtakes Mercury on the inside of its orbit and the planet appears to track backwards through the zodiac for a few weeks before resuming.
Computed 2026-08-24 · Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03 (pyswisseph) via POST /api/scan · 3° canonical envelope (CANONICAL_PRESSURE_ORB). Recomputed on every deploy.
Does this one touch your chart?
Your Ascendant and Midheaven need a birth time and place, so they are left out here; the full chart is what /#start computes.
Mercury retrograde dates
Every station Swiss Ephemeris resolves between 1 Jan 2025 and 1 Jan 2030, computed on a six-hourly lattice — a daily one would place a station to within half a day, which is wider than the disagreement between published tables.
| Year | Stations retrograde | At | Stations direct | At | Days | Arc | Shadow period |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 15 Mar 2025 | 9.5° Aries | 7 Apr 2025 | 26.8° Pisces | 23 | 12.8° | 1 Mar 2025 → 26 Apr 2025 |
| 2025 | 18 Jul 2025 | 15.5° Leo | 11 Aug 2025 | 4.2° Leo | 24 | 11.3° | 30 Jun 2025 → 25 Aug 2025 |
| 2025 | 9 Nov 2025 | 6.8° Sagittarius | 29 Nov 2025 | 20.7° Scorpio | 20 | 16.2° | 21 Oct 2025 → 17 Dec 2025 |
| 2026 | 26 Feb 2026 | 22.5° Pisces | 20 Mar 2026 | 8.4° Pisces | 23 | 14.1° | 11 Feb 2026 → 9 Apr 2026 |
| 2026 | 29 Jun 2026 | 26.2° Cancer | 23 Jul 2026 | 16.3° Cancer | 24 | 9.9° | 13 Jun 2026 → 7 Aug 2026 |
| 2026 | 24 Oct 2026 | 20.9° Scorpio | 13 Nov 2026 | 5.0° Scorpio | 20 | 15.9° | 4 Oct 2026 → 30 Nov 2026 |
| 2027 | 9 Feb 2027 | 5.9° Pisces | 3 Mar 2027 | 20.9° Aquarius | 22 | 15.1° | 25 Jan 2027 → 23 Mar 2027 |
| 2027 | 10 Jun 2027 | 6.3° Cancer | 4 Jul 2027 | 27.4° Gemini | 24 | 8.9° | 26 May 2027 → 19 Jul 2027 |
| 2027 | 7 Oct 2027 | 4.9° Scorpio | 28 Oct 2027 | 19.3° Libra | 21 | 15.6° | 17 Sep 2027 → 13 Nov 2027 |
| 2028 | 24 Jan 2028 | 19.6° Aquarius | 14 Feb 2028 | 3.9° Aquarius | 21 | 15.7° | 8 Jan 2028 → 5 Mar 2028 |
| 2028 | 21 May 2028 | 16.3° Gemini | 14 Jun 2028 | 7.7° Gemini | 24 | 8.6° | 6 May 2028 → 29 Jun 2028 |
| 2028 | 19 Sep 2028 | 18.5° Libra | 11 Oct 2028 | 3.4° Libra | 22 | 15.1° | 30 Aug 2028 → 26 Oct 2028 |
| 2029 | 7 Jan 2029 | 3.6° Aquarius | 27 Jan 2029 | 17.5° Capricorn | 20 | 16.1° | 21 Dec 2028 → 16 Feb 2029 |
| 2029 | 1 May 2029 | 26.6° Taurus | 25 May 2029 | 17.5° Taurus | 24 | 9.1° | 17 Apr 2029 → 10 Jun 2029 |
| 2029 | 2 Sep 2029 | 1.8° Libra | 25 Sep 2029 | 17.4° Virgo | 23 | 14.4° | 13 Aug 2029 → 9 Oct 2029 |
What the numbers mean
What the retrograde actually is
Mercury never reverses. Earth and Mercury both orbit the Sun in the same direction, and Mercury is faster; when it passes between Earth and the Sun, the line of sight from here swings the other way for a few weeks, exactly as a car you overtake appears to slide backwards against the landscape. The zodiac positions in the table below are those apparent geocentric longitudes, which is what astrology has always worked from.
The three dates that matter, not one
A retrograde is usually reported as two dates. There are really four, and the table gives all of them. The station retrograde is where Mercury appears to stop and turn; the station direct is where it turns back; and either side of those sit the shadow periods — the day Mercury first reaches the degree it will later station direct at, and the day it finally clears the degree it stationed retrograde at. Between the pre-shadow and the post-shadow Mercury covers the same arc three times. The tradition reads the shadow as part of the passage rather than a preamble to it, which is why the arc is the more useful number than the dates alone.
Why the degrees are on the table
Whether a retrograde has anything to do with your chart depends entirely on where it happens. A retrograde arc is 12.8° or so wide; if none of your natal degrees fall inside it, Mercury stations and turns and re-crosses nothing of yours. If one does, that point is contacted three times in a few weeks. That is a computable yes or no, and it is what the calculator above answers — no other reading of the retrograde is as concrete as that one.
What this page does not claim
Cosmic KPI dates the stations and measures the arc. It does not tell you what to avoid, and the widespread advice attached to this transit is not something the instrument can measure one way or the other. What it can give you is the exact window, the exact degrees, and whether they touch your chart; the reading of that is yours.
How this appears in Cosmic KPI
Cosmic KPI treats a retrograde as a phase of a body rather than an event: the terminal marks which planets are retrograde right now, the timeline shades the shadow periods, and the calendar feed publishes the stations. A retrograde that crosses one of your natal points shows up as a contact with three exact hits rather than one.
Common questions
- When is Mercury retrograde next?
- 24 Oct 2026 to 13 Nov 2026, from 20.9° Scorpio back to 5.0° Scorpio — 20 days.
- How many times a year is Mercury retrograde?
- About 3 times — 15 retrogrades between 1 Jan 2025 and 1 Jan 2030, computed rather than averaged. Each runs a median 23 days, ranging 20 to 24.
- What is the Mercury retrograde shadow period?
- The stretches either side of the retrograde proper in which Mercury is covering the same arc of zodiac it will retrace. The pre-shadow starts when Mercury first reaches the degree it will later station direct at; the post-shadow ends when it finally clears the degree it stationed retrograde at. Both are computed in the table below, and both are shown as unavailable rather than estimated when they fall outside the computed range.
- Does Mercury retrograde affect my chart?
- Only if one of your natal degrees falls inside the arc it retraces — a span of about 12.8°. The calculator above checks that from your birth date and names the points, if any. For most retrogrades and most charts the honest answer is that nothing of yours is in range.
- Why does Mercury go retrograde?
- It does not. Mercury orbits faster than Earth on a tighter orbit, and when it overtakes us on the inside the line of sight from Earth swings backwards for a few weeks. The motion is apparent, which is exactly what the zodiac has always measured.
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