Zodiac Sign Dates: Every Sun Sign, Cusp Birthdays and When the Sun Changes Sign

Zodiac Sign Dates at a Glance

These are the conventional ranges, the ones used by common charts such as Astrostyle’s. Treat each start date as “the Sun usually arrives on or just before this day”. If your birthday is the first or last day of a sign, keep reading: the exact times are two sections down.

Why the Dates Shift by a Day Each Year

The calendar and the Sun are not quite in step. A tropical year, the time from one March equinox to the next, is close to 365.2422 days, or 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes. The calendar year is 365 days. So every year the Sun reaches each sign boundary about 5 hours 49 minutes later than it did the year before (0.2422 days times 24 hours is 5.81 hours).

You can see it in our table. In 2026 the Sun enters Scorpio on October 23 at 9:38 AM Universal Time. In 2027 it enters Scorpio on October 23 at 3:33 PM, 5 hours 55 minutes later. Three years of that adds up to about 17 and a half hours, enough to push a boundary onto the next calendar date, which is where February 29 comes in. The leap day resets the clock: the March equinox falls on March 20, 2027 at 8:25 PM Universal Time, and in 2028, a leap year, on March 20 at 2:17 AM, about 18 hours earlier. So each boundary creeps later for three years, snaps back, and creeps again.

The second shift is your time zone. A crossing at 1:45 AM in Universal Time is still the previous day everywhere in the United States. Put the two together and a sign can begin on the 19th in one year and the 20th in the next, and on a different date in New York than in London.

So the standard chart is a rounding. In 2026, in Eastern time, 9 of the 12 signs begin a day earlier than the chart above says. In 2027 it is 4 of 12. The chart is right most of the time, which is exactly why edge birthdays get argued about.

When the Sun Changes Sign in 2026 and 2027

Here is the minute the Sun enters each sign, worked out from NASA’s JPL Horizons ephemeris and checked against the US Naval Observatory for the equinoxes and solstices. Central time is one hour earlier than Eastern and Mountain is two hours earlier. In every row of both years, Central and Mountain share the Eastern date. Daylight saving is already built in (March 8 to November 1 in 2026, March 14 to November 7 in 2027).

2026

2027

Where the years disagree with the standard chart, in Eastern time:

• 2026: Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Leo, Virgo, Libra and Capricorn all begin one day earlier than the chart says. Only Cancer, Scorpio and Sagittarius land on the chart date.
• 2027: Pisces, Aries, Leo and Capricorn begin a day early. The other eight land on the chart date.
• Pacific time moves three more rows a day earlier in 2027 (Aquarius, Gemini and Libra) and one in 2026 (Sagittarius), because a crossing in the small hours in New York is still the night before in Los Angeles.

In 2026 and 2027 the chart leans late: on the chart’s first day of a sign you are usually that sign, but a birth in the small hours can still belong to the sign before. If you were born on the chart’s last day of a sign, you might already be the next one. From 3:13 PM Eastern on July 22, 2026 the Sun is in Leo, not Cancer.

Born on a Cusp? How to Settle It

Nobody is two signs. “Cusp” just means you were born within a day of the Sun changing sign, and the Sun was on one side of the line or the other when you arrived. A cusp birthday is not a blend. It is a question with a single answer, and the answer is in your birth time.

Here is how close it gets. The Sun enters Scorpio on October 23, 2026 at 5:38 AM Eastern, which is 2:38 AM Pacific. A baby born at 4:00 AM that morning in Los Angeles is a Scorpio: the Sun had been in Scorpio for 82 minutes (4:00 minus 2:38). A baby born at 4:00 AM the same morning in New York is a Libra, with 98 minutes still to go (5:38 minus 4:00). Same date, same clock time, different sign, because the Sun does not care what your clock says.

This affects more people than you would think. Every sign change can land a day either side of the chart date, depending on the year and the time zone. On those boundary days, the year and the hour decide the sign.

To settle yours:

1. Find your birth time. It is on your birth certificate, or in the hospital record.
2. Find the crossing for your year. For 2026 and 2027 it is in the tables above. For any other year from 1900 to 2049, the free birth chart calculator does the arithmetic from your date, time and place of birth, in the time zone of the place you were born.
3. Compare. Born before the crossing, you are the earlier sign. Born after, the later one. There is no third option, and that is a relief, not a loss.

If you have no birth time at all and you were born on a boundary day, read both signs honestly. One of them will sound like your Sun. The other may well be your Moon or rising sign doing the talking.

Zodiac Sign Dates vs the Constellations

Every few years a story goes around saying your sign is wrong because the stars have moved, and sometimes that there is a 13th sign. Here is what is actually going on.

Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac. It starts the zodiac at the exact point where the Sun stands at the March equinox, calls that 0 degrees Aries, and cuts the Sun’s yearly path into twelve equal slices of 30 degrees from there. That is why the dates above line up with the seasons: Aries begins at the March equinox, Cancer at the June solstice, Libra at the September equinox and Capricorn at the December solstice, to the minute. The US Naval Observatory’s equinox and solstice times for 2026 and 2027 are the same minutes as the four ingresses in our tables.

The constellations are a different thing. The equinox point drifts slowly against the background stars, about 50.3 arcseconds a year, a full lap in roughly 25,800 years. In the centuries since the signs were named for the star groups behind them, the two have slid apart by about 24 degrees. Sidereal astrology, used in India, keeps the zodiac tied to the stars and corrects for the drift with a value called the ayanamsa. The most used version, Lahiri, was set at 23 degrees 15 minutes on March 21, 1956, and the drift since then brings it to about 24 degrees 14 minutes in late 2026. The Sun moves close to one degree a day, so sidereal dates run about 24 to 25 days later than the ones on this page: sidereal Aries is roughly April 14 to May 14.

Then there are the constellations as astronomers draw them. The International Astronomical Union fixed the official boundaries in the 1930s, the shapes are wildly unequal, and the Sun’s path crosses 13 of them. Using Guy Ottewell’s Timetable of astronomical events for 2018, as published by EarthSky, the Sun entered Virgo on September 17 and did not leave until October 31, about 45 days. It entered Scorpius on November 23 and left on November 30, a week. Ophiuchus, the “13th sign”, had the Sun from November 30 to December 17. Those dates creep by about a day every 70 years, so they still hold.

NASA has said plainly that it did not change the zodiac. When the story resurfaced in July 2020, the agency posted: “No, we did not change the zodiac.” Its explainer notes that the Sun lines up with Ophiuchus for about 18 days each year, and that astrology is not astronomy.

So: the tropical signs measure where the Sun is in the year, which is the season you were born into. The constellations measure which distant stars happened to be behind it. Western astrology chose the first, on purpose, and it is the one this page, your horoscope and our calculator all use.

What Your Sun Sign Actually Covers

Your Sun sign is the one thing in your chart you can find from a date alone (apart from birthdays on a boundary). Find your birthday in the first table, and if it is not within a day of an edge, that is your Sun sign. If it is, use the ingress tables and your birth time as above.

That is also the Sun sign’s limit. It changes about once a month, so everyone born in the same four weeks shares it. The Moon moves much faster: it circles the zodiac in 27.32 days, so it changes sign about every two and a quarter days (27.32 divided by 12 is 2.28). Your Moon sign is the part of you that shows up at home, at 2 AM, and in how you need to be cared for.

The rising sign moves faster still. It is the sign coming up over the eastern horizon at the minute you were born, and at 38 degrees north, about the middle of the continental United States, it changes somewhere between every 1 hour 15 minutes and every 2 hours 29 minutes, depending on the sign. It sets your first impression and the whole layout of your chart. Leo rising is a good example of how much one placement can change about how you come across.

Sun, Moon and rising together are the “big three”. The Sun is the core: what you are here to become. The dates on this page get you the first of the three for free.

Each Sun Sign in One Line

• ♈︎AriesMarch 21 to April 19. First in, first to act, first to wonder why everyone else is still thinking about it.
• ♉︎TaurusApril 20 to May 20. Slow to start, impossible to move, and right about the restaurant.
• ♊︎GeminiMay 21 to June 20. Two opinions, both held with conviction, often in the same sentence.
• ♋︎CancerJune 21 to July 22. Remembers what you said in 2019. Will still feed you.
• ♌︎LeoJuly 23 to August 22. Lights up the room and would like that noted.
• ♍︎VirgoAugust 23 to September 22. Saw the typo. Fixed the typo. Was not asked about the typo.
• ♎︎LibraSeptember 23 to October 22. Sees every side, makes the peace, then takes forty minutes to choose a brunch place.
• ♏︎ScorpioOctober 23 to November 21. Reads you in one glance and gives you nothing back.
• ♐︎SagittariusNovember 22 to December 21. Already booked the flight. Will explain the plan on the way.
• ♑︎CapricornDecember 22 to January 19. Has a five year plan and a backup for the backup.
• ♒︎AquariusJanuary 20 to February 18. Loves humanity. Needs a minute before loving people.
• ♓︎PiscesFebruary 19 to March 20. Feels the room before walking into it, then stays an hour too long.

These are tendencies, not rules. Your Moon, rising and the rest of your chart bend every one of them.

Zodiac Sign Dates FAQ