When the sun changes sign in 2026 and 2027

The sun enters a sign at an instant, not on a date, and the instant falls about six hours later each year until a leap day pulls it back. The March equinox, when the sun enters Aries, shows it plainly: 14:46 UTC on 20 March in 2026; 20:25 UTC on 20 March in 2027, 5 hours 39 minutes later than the year before; and 02:17 UTC on 20 March in 2028, 18 hours 8 minutes earlier than the year before.

That is why a table of fixed dates is only a guide. In 2026, in UTC, Pisces begins on 18 February rather than 19 February, Aries on 20 March rather than 21 March, Leo on 22 July rather than 23 July and Capricorn on 21 December rather than 22 December, against the dates such tables usually print. Between 1920 and 2026 the sun changed sign on 32 different calendar dates in UTC, and on each of them a birthday belongs to one sign or the next depending on the year and, in the year of the crossing, on the hour; every one of those dates has a page of its own, linked from the table above and from every date of the year.

The times come from VSOP87, the theory of the planets' motion published by the Bureau des Longitudes in Paris, and agree with published equinox and solstice times to within a minute. The same table gives the sign for any birth date from 1900 to 2100 in the birthday calculator, and why zodiac dates shift explains the drift and the leap day in full. Each of the twelve signs has a page of its own, listed on the zodiac page.