The planet transits of 2026, with the actual dates

Three slow planets do something worth noting in 2026. Jupiter leaves Gemini for Cancer on 2 June, then moves on to Leo on 31 October. Saturn sits in Pisces the whole year and does not change sign at all. Rahu and Ketu shift axis on 5 December, Rahu from Aquarius to Capricorn and Ketu from Leo to Cancer.

Those are the dates. Below is what each one actually indicates, and where reading a transit stops being useful.

The dates, in one place

All times are Indian Standard Time, computed on the sidereal zodiac that Indian panchangs use.

What	When
Jupiter turns direct in Gemini	11 March 2026
Jupiter enters Cancer	2 June 2026, around 01:50
Jupiter enters Leo	31 October 2026, around 12:02
Jupiter turns retrograde in Leo	13 December 2026
Saturn turns retrograde in Pisces	27 July 2026
Saturn turns direct in Pisces	11 December 2026
Rahu enters Capricorn, Ketu enters Cancer	5 December 2026, around 22:32

One caution before you compare this with anything else you read. Indian astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, measured against the fixed stars. Most Western sites use the tropical zodiac, measured from the equinox. The two are about 24 degrees apart now, so on any given day they will name a different sign for the same planet. Neither is a typing error, and the one thing you must not do is mix them. Everything on this page is sidereal.

Saturn in Pisces, all year

Saturn entered Pisces at the end of March 2025 and stays there through the whole of 2026, moving backwards from 27 July to 11 December. It will not leave Pisces until mid 2027.

This matters most to three moon signs. Sade Sati, the roughly seven and a half year passage of Saturn across the twelfth, first and second from your moon sign, is running for Aquarius, Pisces and Aries through 2026. Aquarius is in its closing stretch, Pisces in the middle, Aries in the opening.

Sade Sati has a bad name it does not entirely deserve. In practice it reads as a long period of reduced slack: fewer easy options, more maintenance, work that is not glamorous but has to be done anyway. Tradition treats it as pruning, not as punishment. The retrograde stretch from late July to mid December is not a separate event: Saturn covers ground it has already covered, which usually shows up as matters returning for a second look rather than as fresh trouble.

Jupiter: Gemini, then Cancer, then Leo

Jupiter spends the first five months of 2026 finishing its passage of Gemini, turning direct on 11 March.

On 2 June it enters Cancer, where classical texts place it at its strongest. It stays there until 31 October. That is a shorter first pass than the roughly one year Jupiter usually spends in a sign, because it moves on to Leo and then returns to Cancer from late January to late June 2027 on its next backward loop, which is where the rest of the passage happens.

A word on what a Jupiter transit is generally taken to indicate: room. Where Jupiter sits and where it looks, the classical reading is expansion, permission, teachers and openings. It indicates that the door is unlocked, not that anyone has walked through it. Jupiter also looks ahead from wherever it stands, to the fifth, seventh and ninth places from itself, and that reach is often more useful than the sign it is standing in.

Jupiter, Gemini and Cancer, and what it does at work

This is the question people ask most about 2026, so here it is directly. Read it from your moon sign, not from your Western sun sign.

If your moon is in Gemini. Jupiter is on your moon sign until 2 June, then moves to the second from it. From June onwards, Jupiter's forward look falls on Pisces, which is the tenth from Gemini, the house tradition associates with work, standing and public role. That is the specific reason 2026 gets talked about as a work year for Gemini. Saturn is also sitting in that same tenth house all year. The pairing is a fair description of what a lot of Gemini natives are already living: more responsibility than reward, arriving alongside more scope.

The honest reading of a Jupiter look at the tenth is that recognition and openings become available. The honest reading of Saturn in the same house is that they arrive attached to work, and slowly. Both are true at once, and if you are weighing a move, the second half of 2026 is the more forgiving window.

If your moon is in Cancer. Jupiter comes on to your moon sign on 2 June and stays there to the end of October. Jupiter on the moon sign is traditionally read as a lift in confidence, health and appetite for risk, and as a period when people are more inclined to say yes to you. Career specifically is not the theme of that stretch. From 31 October, with Jupiter in Leo, its forward look falls on Aries, the tenth from Cancer, and the work themes come in then and run into 2027.

So for Cancer the useful shape of the year is: the middle of 2026 for building position and asking, and from November onwards for the visible move.

And the caveat that matters more than any of it. Everything above is a moon sign reading, which is one twelfth of the population at a time. A transit does what the birth chart lets it do, and the same Jupiter passage lands very differently on a chart that already has strength in the tenth house and on one that does not. It also depends on which planet's period is running. If a decision actually turns on this, have the chart read rather than the sign. That is what a reading is for.

Rahu and Ketu change axis on 5 December

Rahu has been in Aquarius and Ketu in Leo since May 2025. On 5 December 2026 they move to Capricorn and Cancer.

The nodes are read as an axis of appetite and disinterest: Rahu where you overreach, Ketu where you are already done. A node change takes weeks to settle, and the sign it enters is less informative than the house it falls in for your chart. Treat 5 December as the start of a shift, not as a day when something happens.

The eclipses of 2026

There are four: an annular solar eclipse on 17 February, a total lunar eclipse on 3 March, a total solar eclipse on 12 August and a partial lunar eclipse on 28 August.

Only one of them is visible from India. The lunar eclipse of 3 March 2026 can be seen from Nagpur and much of the country, low in the east as the moon rises around 18:20 IST, in its closing phase. The other three are not visible here at all.

That distinction is the practical one. The traditional restrictions around an eclipse, sutak and the pause on eating and on new work, are kept for an eclipse visible where you are. An eclipse over Antarctica is an astronomical event, and tradition does not ask you to keep sutak for it.

Where transit reading stops

A transit is the sky as it is today, the same sky for everybody. Your chart is the sky at the moment you were born, and it is yours alone. Transit reading is the first laid over the second, and it is genuinely useful for timing and for knowing which season you are in. What it cannot do is tell you what will happen: it indicates pressure, opening, delay and support, and decides nothing. Any page saying Jupiter entering Cancer will bring you money in June is selling you something, and the tradition it claims to quote says no such thing.

If you want to see where these transits are falling in your own chart, the daily rashifal on this site tracks the moon day by day, there is a note on how to read a daily horoscope without being misled by it, and a full reading takes the slow planets against your own placements.

Questions people ask

Is 2026 a good year or a bad year?

Neither, as a year. Jupiter reaches its strongest sign in June, and Saturn is mid way through a long passage that is easing for some moon signs and heaviest for others. A calendar year is not a unit astrology reads. Your own periods are.

Which is right, the sidereal dates here or the tropical dates I read elsewhere?

Both are correct within their own system, and they will not agree on a date. Indian astrology, panchang, muhurat and everything on this site is sidereal. If you are following a Western astrologer, follow their dates in their system. Do not take a sign from one and a date from the other.

Should I make a big decision on the day Jupiter changes sign?

There is no tradition that recommends it. A sign change is a boundary on a slow planet and its effect builds over weeks. If you want a date chosen for a specific act, that is muhurat, worked out from your chart and the panchang for the day, not from an ingress.