Retrograde Planets Now

What each planet's retrograde means

What retrograde means

No planet ever reverses on its orbit. Earth and the other planets all go around the Sun in the same direction, but at different speeds, and we watch them from a moving platform. When Earth overtakes Mars, Jupiter or any planet farther out, that planet seems to slide backward against the stars for a while, the way a slower car looks to drift back as you pass it on the highway. Mercury and Venus, closer to the Sun than we are, look retrograde when they swing between Earth and the Sun and overtake us on the inside track.

Each retrograde starts and ends with a station, the day the planet seems to stand still before it changes direction. Astrologers watch the station days most closely, since the planet hangs on one degree for days. The tradition calls the weeks before and after, when the planet crosses the same stretch of sky for the first and third time, the shadow.

In astrology the retrograde planet's themes turn inward. The usual advice is to review, repair and finish what is already started, and to wait on brand-new launches in that planet's area of life. The tradition frames this as advice about pace.

How often each planet is retrograde

Beyond Earth's orbit, the farther out a planet is, the more of its time it spends retrograde. In our count of 35,064 days from 1930 to 2025, Mars was retrograde on 9.5% of them, Jupiter on 30.1% and Saturn on 36.6%, and Uranus, Neptune and Pluto sat between 41% and 43.5%. The two planets inside Earth's orbit follow their own rhythm: Mercury on 19.2% of days, because it laps Earth so often, and Venus on only 7.2%.

CHANI writes that the planets from Jupiter to Pluto "are retrograde for approximately half the year," and Astrology.com puts Jupiter and Saturn at "about a third of the time." Our count sits between the two: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto a little over two days in five, Saturn at 36.6% and Jupiter at 30.1%.

Mercury, Venus and Mars turn back in short, sharp loops. Mercury does it three or four times a year, for about 22 days each time. A Venus retrograde averages 42 days, and in 31 of the 96 years Venus had no retrograde day at all. Mars averages 74 days and missed 38 of the 96 years.

Year-by-year counts for each planet are in our zodiac and retrograde statistics, with the data as CSV. Everything else we counted: research.

How many planets are retrograde at once

On an average day 2.3 planets are retrograde. Two or three at once is the most common count, covering 46.2% of days since 1930. No planet was retrograde on 10.8% of days, a little more than one day in ten.

The record in our count is seven at once, on just 12 days: January 6 to 9, 1944, April 30 to May 5, 1984 and July 13 to 14, 1986. On no day from 1930 to 2025 were all eight retrograde together.

The next stretch with none starts on Apr 12, 2027 and lasts until May 8, 2027, about 25 days. In the next 12 months the most at once is 5.

Retrograde planets in a birth chart

Most people are born with some planet retrograde. In our count 89.2% of birth dates from 1930 to 2025 have at least one. The planets that are retrograde often, Jupiter through Pluto, are shared by everyone born in the same months, so astrologers read them as a generation's style more than a personal trait. A retrograde Mercury, Venus or Mars at birth is rarer and is read more personally: the planet's energy works inward first, then comes out.

Astrology.com says most people have two or three retrograde planets in their chart. Our average across all 35,064 dates is 2.3, so the rule of thumb holds. To see yours, enter your birth date in the birth chart calculator; a small R next to a planet means it was retrograde that day.

Questions about retrograde planets

Related pages

Mercury retrograde · Venus retrograde · Mars retrograde 2027 · planets today · Saturn return calculator · eclipses 2026–2027 · transit chart calculator · all planet hubs · horoscopes 2027 · birth chart calculator.