Venus Retrograde Dates

What is happening in the sky

Venus orbits inside Earth’s orbit, lapping the Sun in about 225 days. Every so often it overtakes us and passes between Earth and the Sun, an alignment called inferior conjunction. Seen from our own moving planet, Venus seems to slide backward against the stars for about six weeks around that pass. Nothing actually reverses; it is a matter of viewpoint.

The retrograde begins and ends at stations, when Venus appears to stand still before changing direction. The table’s start and end times are those two stations, usually 40 to 43 days apart, and astrologers treat the slow days around each as the most concentrated part of the cycle.

In the weeks before a retrograde, Venus blazes in the western sky after sunset near its brightest. Midway through, it vanishes into the Sun’s glare, then reappears before dawn: the evening star becomes the morning star. Very rarely it crosses the face of the Sun, in transits that come in pairs more than a century apart.

How often it happens: the 19-month and 8-year rhythms

Venus laps Earth about every 584 days, a little over 19 months, so some calendar years have no Venus retrograde at all. Each one backs up roughly 15 to 16 degrees, sometimes within a single sign and sometimes across two. Normally Venus spends four or five weeks in a sign, but a retrograde can keep it in one sign for about four months.

Five of those cycles add up to almost exactly eight years, so each Venus retrograde returns to nearly the same stretch of the zodiac eight years later, slipping back by only a couple of degrees. Join the five inferior conjunctions in sequence and they trace a five-pointed star, often called the pentagram of Venus.

The pre-shadow and post-shadow

The degrees where Venus stations retrograde and direct mark out a stretch it covers three times. The pre-shadow runs from Venus first reaching the degree where the retrograde will end until it stations retrograde; the post-shadow runs from the direct station until Venus clears the degree where it began.

Because Venus moves so slowly near its stations, each shadow lasts about a month, and a full cycle takes around three and a half months. Astrologers read the pre-shadow as the time when questions about love, money or taste surface, and the post-shadow as the time to act on what the retrograde clarified.

Reading the table, and why dates can differ by a day

Each row is one Venus retrograde: its start and end, the signs involved, and the span of each shadow. Times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to the minute, found by tracking Venus through the ephemeris and locating the instant its motion reverses.

A station is a single moment, so it lands on different dates in different time zones: 2:00 UTC is still the previous evening in New York. To convert, subtract four or five hours for New York, add zero or one for London, and add ten or eleven for Sydney.

How astrologers read Venus retrograde

Venus is the planet of attraction, beauty and value: who draws you in, what you find lovely, what you think is worth your money and time. Astrologers read its retrograde as a season for reassessing those things rather than chasing more of them.

Popular lore says old flames resurface, unspoken tensions come to the surface and tastes in style or spending wobble. Some astrologers warn against weddings, new romances, cosmetic procedures or big purchases during these weeks. This site doesn’t make those warnings; real decisions belong to your circumstances and, where relevant, professional advice.

The sign adds color. In a fire sign, a retrograde is often read as a review of passion and initiative; in an earth sign, of money, comfort and commitment; in an air sign, of how you talk, socialize and keep boundaries; in a water sign, of attachment and emotional depth. These are symbolic themes, not forecasts.

Finding it in your own chart

Look up which house of your birth chart holds the retrograde’s sign: the fifth for romance and pleasure, the seventh for partnership, the second for money and values, the tenth for reputation. If it crosses within a few degrees of your natal Venus, Sun, Moon or rising sign, its themes may feel more personal.

About one person in fourteen is born with Venus retrograde, usually read as a love style that takes its own time, not as a sign of romantic trouble. Any retrograde is a good moment to ask whether the way you love and spend still reflects what you care about.