Mercury Retrograde Dates and Other Planets

Three times in most years, four in some. Between 2000 and 2050 the calculation finds 161 Mercury retrogrades: one every 116 days on average, each lasting 19 to 25 days. Eight of those fifty-one years have four, and Mercury spends almost a fifth of the time retrograde overall.

On average over 2000–2050: Mercury 22 days, Venus 42, Mars 73, Jupiter 121, Saturn 138, Uranus 151, Neptune 159 and Pluto 162. The slower the planet, the longer its loop. How often it comes round varies more: Mercury every 116 days, Venus every 584, Mars every 781, and the planets beyond Mars about once a year.

Because the Earth is moving too. When it catches up with and overtakes an outer planet, that planet seems to slide backwards against the stars, like a slower car you pass on the motorway. Mercury and Venus, which move faster than the Earth, create the same effect as they pass between the Earth and the Sun. No planet ever actually turns round in its orbit.

It is the stretch of the zodiac the planet covers three times: once before the retrograde, once backwards, and once after. The shadow opens when the planet first reaches the degree where it will turn direct again, and closes when it passes the degree where it turned back. For Mercury that adds about 17 days before and 17 days after the loop, close to two months in all; for the slow planets the shadow covers most of the year.

Pluto, almost 45% of the time, followed by Neptune (44%), Uranus (41%), Saturn (37%) and Jupiter (31%). Mercury is retrograde about 19% of the time, Mars 10% and Venus, the rarest, 7%. Beyond Mars the planets are so slow that the Earth overtakes each of them about once a year, and the loop that follows lasts four to five and a half months.

No. Seen from the Earth, the Sun and the Moon always move forward through the zodiac, only faster or slower: retrograde motion comes from two planets circling the Sun at different speeds, and neither of them is one. That is why this tool follows eight planets rather than ten bodies.

They land on the right day. Each station is found at the instant the planet's speed changes sign, which pins it far more firmly than a sign ingress, and the calculation has been checked against every published Mercury station of 2025 and 2026. Dates are in Universal Time, to the day and never to the hour: depending on your time zone, a station can fall the day before or after.

See whether Mercury, Venus, Mars or any other planet is retrograde today, and when its next retrograde begins. All eight planets that go retrograde are covered — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — with every loop of any year and its shadow periods. Stations are computed from each planet's own change of direction, so the dates land on the right day.

Looking up what a birth date or a name is said to mean: a sun sign, the rest of a birth chart, a life-path number, or the same for someone else before a conversation about it.

Taking a sun sign as the whole chart. Someone born a day either side of a cusp changes sign depending on the year and the time of day, and the moon and rising signs move much faster than the sun does — a birth time is what separates a chart from a guess.