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Mercury retrograde calendar
Every Mercury retrograde period through 2030, with station-retrograde and station-direct dates, the zodiac sign, and the pre- and post-shadow weeks. The dates here are astronomical: they describe when Mercury, viewed from Earth, appears to reverse direction against the background stars. Whether that means anything for your inbox is a separate question — see “the mythology” section below.
Right now
Mercury is direct
Next retrograde begins Jun 29, 2026 in Cancer — 62 days from today. Pre-shadow has not started yet (begins Jun 13, 2026).
Next retrograde
Pre-shadow window: Jun 13, 2026 → Jun 29, 2026. Post-shadow window: Jul 23, 2026 → Aug 8, 2026.
Three periods this year — the typical count. Dates are UTC; in local time the station may fall on the day before or after depending on your timezone.
| Period | Sign | Starts | Ends | Duration | Pre-shadow | Post-shadow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Pisces | Feb 26 | Mar 20 | 23 days | Feb 11 | Apr 4 |
| #2 | Cancer | Jun 29 | Jul 23 | 25 days | Jun 13 | Aug 8 |
| #3 | Scorpio | Oct 24 | Nov 13 | 21 days | Oct 4 | Dec 1 |
Every period in our seven-year window. Mercury averages three retrogrades per year; some years (like 2029) get four because of how the synodic cycle interlocks with the calendar.
| Year | Sign | Station retrograde | Station direct | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Aries | Apr 1, 2024 | Apr 25, 2024 | 25 |
| 2024 | Virgo / Leo | Aug 5, 2024 | Aug 28, 2024 | 24 |
| 2024 | Sagittarius | Nov 25, 2024 | Dec 15, 2024 | 21 |
| 2025 | Aries / Pisces | Mar 15, 2025 | Apr 7, 2025 | 24 |
| 2025 | Leo | Jul 18, 2025 | Aug 11, 2025 | 25 |
| 2025 | Sagittarius / Scorpio | Nov 9, 2025 | Nov 29, 2025 | 21 |
| 2026 | Pisces | Feb 26, 2026 | Mar 20, 2026 | 23 |
| 2026 | Cancer | Jun 29, 2026 | Jul 23, 2026 | 25 |
| 2026 | Scorpio | Oct 24, 2026 | Nov 13, 2026 | 21 |
| 2027 | Pisces / Aquarius | Feb 9, 2027 | Mar 3, 2027 | 23 |
| 2027 | Cancer / Gemini | Jun 10, 2027 | Jul 4, 2027 | 25 |
| 2027 | Scorpio / Libra | Oct 7, 2027 | Oct 28, 2027 | 22 |
| 2028 | Aquarius | Jan 24, 2028 | Feb 14, 2028 | 22 |
| 2028 | Gemini | May 21, 2028 | Jun 13, 2028 | 24 |
| 2028 | Libra | Sep 19, 2028 | Oct 11, 2028 | 23 |
| 2029 | Capricorn | Jan 7, 2029 | Jan 27, 2029 | 21 |
| 2029 | Gemini / Taurus | May 2, 2029 | May 25, 2029 | 24 |
| 2029 | Virgo | Aug 30, 2029 | Sep 22, 2029 | 24 |
| 2029 | Capricorn | Dec 22, 2029 | Jan 10, 2030 | 20 |
| 2030 | Taurus | Apr 13, 2030 | May 7, 2030 | 25 |
| 2030 | Virgo / Leo | Aug 13, 2030 | Sep 5, 2030 | 24 |
| 2030 | Capricorn / Sagittarius | Dec 5, 2030 | Dec 25, 2030 | 21 |
The astronomy
Mercury doesn’t actually reverse direction — it can’t, any more than Earth can. What changes is our viewing angle. Mercury orbits the Sun in 88 days at an average distance of about 58 million kilometres. Earth takes 365 days at about 150 million. That makes Mercury the fastest-moving planet in the solar system, and it means Mercury laps Earth on the inside roughly every 116 days — a number called the synodic period.
For most of those 116 days, Mercury is visibly drifting eastward against the background stars in the same direction as the Sun and the other planets. But in the few weeks each cycle when Mercury is sweeping past Earth on the inside of its orbit, the geometry inverts: from Earth’s vantage Mercury appears to slow, stop, reverse, slow again, stop, and resume forward motion. The two stop points are called stations: the station-retrograde marks the start of the apparent backward motion, and the station-direct marks its end. Those are the dates in our table.
The same effect happens with the other planets — Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune all retrograde — but Mercury does it most often (about three times a year) because of how short its orbit is. Astronomers have understood the geometry since Copernicus; before heliocentrism, the apparent reversals were one of the central puzzles of Ptolemaic astronomy and gave us the elaborate system of epicycles needed to keep an Earth-centred model fitting the data.
The shadow periods in our calendar bracket each retrograde. They’re not a separate astronomical event so much as a marker: Mercury occupies the same range of ecliptic longitude three times during a retrograde cycle — once on the way in, once during the retrograde itself, and once on the way out. The pre-shadow is the first pass; the post-shadow is the third. Astrology communities track these weeks because they treat them as “retrograde-adjacent.” From a purely astronomical standpoint they’re just bookkeeping.
The dates shift across years for the same reason eclipse dates shift: the synodic period (about 116 days) doesn’t divide evenly into a calendar year (365.25 days). So each year’s retrogrades land roughly three weeks earlier than the year before, eventually wrapping around and slowly precessing through different signs of the zodiac. Over a long enough window (decades), the same calendar dates will host retrogrades in very different signs.
The mythology, briefly
Astrology associates Mercury retrograde periods with miscommunication, tech failures, lost luggage, missed flights, contract regret, ex-partners reappearing, and a general sense that nothing is quite landing. The framing is old — Mercury is the messenger god in Roman mythology, the patron of trade, travel, and language — so the symbolism cleanly maps onto whichever modern equivalent (your inbox, your phone, your shipping notification) happens to misbehave during the period.
No peer-reviewed evidence supports a causal effect. Studies that have looked at metrics like internet outages, flight delays, or communication errors during retrograde periods find no signal above what you’d expect from random noise. What you may notice is the cultural meme reflected in your social feed: every retrograde generates a fresh wave of memes, listicles, and half-joking “don’t sign anything!” warnings, which makes the period feel consequential whether or not it is.
We publish the dates because the dates are real and people want them. What you do with them is up to you. If you find it useful to delay big purchases for three weeks every quarter, the calendar will tell you when. If you prefer to ignore it, the calendar still tells you when so you can roll your eyes knowingly.
Mercury retrograde is one event in a much wider sky. Here’s the rest of the calendar.
Eclipse calendar
Solar & lunar eclipses through 2030, NASA-sourced.
OpenSolstice & equinox
Seasonal markers with exact UTC times.
OpenMoon phases
Full, new, and quarter moons — calendar view.
OpenToday
Everything happening right now around the world.
OpenYear progress
How much of the year has already passed.
Open2026 calendar
Month-by-month overview of the year.
OpenTrending events
Live and upcoming, ranked by interest.
OpenSunrise & sunset
Daylight curves for any city.
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