Mars sign calculator: what is my Mars sign?

Mars is the planet of action. In a birth chart its sign describes the way you start things and push them through, what you do when someone blocks your path, how you compete and how you handle anger, your own and other people's. It also colors desire and physical energy, which is why astrologers look at Mars for sport, sex and the kind of work that leaves you tired but satisfied.

Where Venus describes what you are drawn to, Mars describes how you go after it. The two are read together in love, and a Mars sign that sits uneasily with your Sun sign often explains why your temper surprises people who know you mainly through your Sun.

Mars in Leo puts the planet of action in the fixed fire sign ruled by the Sun. Tradition reads it as drive that is proud and theatrical: you compete to shine, you do your best work in front of an audience, and you defend the people and projects you love with loyalty and warmth. Leo is neither a sign Mars rules nor the one where it is exalted, so the sign's pride and its need for recognition set the tone. The shadow is stubbornness once pride is at stake, and a temper that flares when recognition is missing.

On a direct pass Mars spends about seven weeks in Leo, sometimes closer to ten. By our calculation it is in Leo from late September to late November 2026, then returns from late February to mid May 2027 after turning retrograde in Virgo, so a birthday in the spring of 2027 can carry Mars in Leo too. Enter your birth date above to check yours.

Mercury and Venus orbit inside Earth's path and always stay close to the Sun, so their signs sit next to your Sun sign. Mars orbits outside it. Seen from Earth it can stand in any sign relative to the Sun, even directly opposite it, so your Mars sign can be any of the twelve whatever your birthday.

Mars is also uneven in speed. Our engine finds it spending a median of about six and a half weeks in a sign between 1900 and 2099, but a retrograde loop can hold it in one sign for up to about seven and a half months. That is why the calculator shows the date Mars entered your sign and the date it left: for some people that span runs past half a year.

Roughly every twenty-six months Mars stops, turns back for about two and a half months and then resumes its course. Our engine finds Mars retrograde on about one day in ten, so about one person in ten is born with it. The calculator marks it beside the degree, and the retrograde planets calendar lists every Mars retrograde with its dates.

Astrologers read a natal Mars retrograde as drive that is worked out privately before it is shown: anger that is slow to surface and long to fade, effort that goes into rethinking and repairing rather than charging ahead, and a way of competing mostly with oneself. The retrograde glossary entry explains the geometry of the backward loop.

Mars enters a new sign on about one day in fifty, so a birth date usually settles the Mars sign without a time. When your birthday is one of those days and you leave the time out, the calculator shows both signs with the exact minute of the change in your birthplace's local time, including any daylight saving time in force. With a time, it names the sign directly and warns you if your birth was within half an hour of the change, since recorded birth times are often rounded.

A time also gives the house of Mars in the Placidus system by default, or in whole sign, Koch or equal houses on the switch. The sign tells you how you act; the house tells you where you spend that energy, whether on your career, your home, your body or your friendships.

Mars is half of the classic pairing of attraction. When one person's Mars touches the other's Venus, astrology reads a spark that is easy to feel and hard to explain; when two Mars signs clash, arguments tend to follow the same script. Find both Mars signs here, then run the two charts through the compatibility calculator to see the actual aspects between them.

Our Venus sign calculator works the same way, so you can look up both planets for yourself and for a partner in a couple of minutes.

The position of Mars comes from the VSOP87 planetary theory with light time, aberration and nutation applied, giving its apparent place in the tropical zodiac used in Western astrology. Checked against the Swiss Ephemeris for fifteen dates from 1901 to 2099, it agrees to within a third of an arcsecond, and the retrograde flag matches the daily motion in the ephemeris.

The calculation runs in your browser. To show the first line of today's reading, your birth details are sent once to our server, which does not store them; the place search sends only the place name you type.