Retrograde Planets 2027: Every Station Date and Time

Each row is one retrograde period. A period that starts in 2026 or ends in 2028 is listed when part of it falls inside 2027, with the year shown. UTC uses the 24-hour clock. US Eastern is New York time, on standard time (EST) until March 14 and again from November 7, and on daylight time (EDT) in between. Times are rounded to the minute, and the last column gives the days from station to station, rounded to the nearest day.

The same stations, with the pre-shadow and post-shadow dates for every planet, are in a CSV file listed in the sources below, free to reuse with credit under CC BY 4.0.

Mercury turns retrograde three times: February 9 to March 3, June 10 to July 4, and October 7 to October 28. Each window begins in one sign and ends in the sign before it, Pisces into Aquarius, Cancer into Gemini and Scorpio into Libra. The shadow periods around each window are in Mercury retrograde 2027.

Mars stations retrograde on January 10 at Virgo 10°25' and turns direct on April 1 at Leo 20°55'. Besides Mercury, it is the only planet that changes sign while retrograde in 2027, and all 81 days of its retrograde fall inside the year.

Jupiter opens the year already retrograde in Leo. It stationed on December 12, 2026, US Eastern, and turns direct on April 12 at Leo 16°59'.

Saturn and Neptune both spend their 2027 retrogrades in Aries. Saturn stations retrograde on August 9 at 27°52' and direct on December 23 at 21°01'. Neptune stations retrograde on July 9 at 6°39' and direct on December 15 at 3°51'.

Uranus has two retrograde periods in Gemini that touch 2027. The first began on September 10, 2026, and ends on February 8. The second begins on September 15 and runs until February 12, 2028.

Pluto stations retrograde on May 8 at Aquarius 7°10' and turns direct on October 17, US Eastern, at Aquarius 4°44'.

Counted by calendar day within 2027, Pluto is retrograde for about 162 days, Neptune 158, Uranus 147, Saturn 136, Jupiter 102, Mars 81 and Mercury 67.

The count peaks at five. From Mercury's station on October 7 until Pluto turns direct late on October 17, US Eastern, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are all retrograde. No day in 2027 has six.

The opposite stretch comes in spring. Between Jupiter's station direct on the night of April 12 and Pluto's station retrograde on May 8, no planet from Mercury to Pluto is retrograde. It is the only such gap of the year and lasts about 25 days.

A station is a single instant, so its calendar date depends on the clock you read it on. Four stations in the table land on different dates in UTC and in New York: Jupiter's station retrograde (December 13, 2026, in UTC and December 12 in New York), Jupiter's station direct (April 13 and April 12), Pluto's station direct (October 18 and October 17) and Saturn's station direct (December 24 and December 23). For any other time zone, start from the UTC column and add or subtract your offset. The Mercury retrograde tracker converts Mercury's stations to your own clock.

A planet stations when its apparent motion along the zodiac, seen from Earth, falls to zero and reverses. Our engine computes each planet's apparent position from planetary theory, VSOP87 for Mercury to Neptune and Meeus for Pluto, and finds the instant that motion changes direction. The stations agree with NASA JPL Horizons to within a few minutes, and to within the hour for Pluto, which barely moves around a station. Degrees are truncated to the arcminute, the way a printed ephemeris lists them, so a position is never rounded up into the next degree.

In astrology a retrograde is read as a phase of review for whatever the planet stands for: Mercury for messages and plans, Mars for effort, Saturn for structure and commitments, and the outer planets for slow, generational themes. The dates above are astronomy, and the reading belongs to the astrological tradition. To see which part of your own chart a station touches, find its sign and degree in your birth chart. The same layout for the current year is in Saturn retrograde 2026 and every retrograde planet.