Neptune Retrograde Calendar
Every date Neptune turns retrograde, with how long each stretch lasts.
Retrograde now until
How often is Neptune retrograde? Once a year, without fail, and each stretch runs about 159 days, near enough to five and a half months. The station dates barely move: 4 July 2025, 7 July 2026, 9 July 2027. Roughly 368 days separate one from the next, so the calendar slides forward by two or three days each time.
Nothing out there actually reverses. Neptune sits about thirty times farther from the Sun than we do and takes some fourteen years to cross a single sign, so across a whole season it hardly moves at all. Earth passes it once a year, and in the weeks around that pass the planet appears to drift backward against the fixed stars. The two turning points, the day it seems to halt and slip back and the day it picks up forward motion again, are the dates listed below.
Neptune was only found in 1846, so the meaning it carries is modern rather than ancient: dissolving, imagination, intuition, edges going soft. It is an outer planet, slow enough that everyone born within the same decade shares its sign, which is why astrologers read this window on the scale of a generation instead of a personal life. Uranus is the one described as breaking something off in a moment. Neptune is described as loosening it over months, drawing back whatever had been projected outward. What you have here is an astronomical calendar of real station dates, not a forecast of trouble.
Retrograde periods
| Retrograde begins | Turns direct | In |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | ||
| Aries | ||
| Aries | ||
| Aries | ||
| Aries | ||
| Aries | ||
| Aries | ||
| Aries |
Dates are UTC-based; in your local zone a station can fall a day either side. Station times from the Swiss Ephemeris, given in UTC.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often does Neptune go retrograde?
Once every year. Each retrograde period lasts about 159 days, and the gap between one station and the next is around 368 days, which is why the starting date creeps a couple of days later each year.
Is Neptune retrograde in 2026?
Yes. Neptune turned retrograde on 7 July 2026 and stays that way for roughly 159 days, into the middle of December, before it resumes forward motion. The calendar on this page gives the exact dates.
What does Neptune retrograde mean?
In astrology Neptune stands for whatever blurs an outline: dreams, intuition, imagination, things that have no firm shape yet. Because it is slow and shared by an entire generation, the period is not read as a personal event but as a long stretch in which attention turns inward. Astronomically it is only a matter of viewing angle.