Graha Yuddha (Planetary War) Dates 2026–2028

Graha Yuddha Meaning (ग्रह युद्ध)

Graha yuddha, the war of the grahas, is the name Jyotish gives to a close meeting of two of the five star-planets: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Varahamihira gives it a chapter of its own in the Brihat Samhita, and the Surya Siddhanta takes it up in its chapter on conjunctions. Both keep the word for those five. A planet’s nearness to the Sun is treated in those texts as combustion (asta) rather than war, and a planet’s meeting with the Moon as samagama, so neither luminary is ever a party to one. Rahu and Ketu are not among the five, and this page leaves them out too.

The texts go on to name a victor, and they settle it from where the two planets stand north or south of each other and from how bright each one is. Astrologers who apply the idea to a birth chart count the defeated planet as weakened, which is why the site’s planets page lists defeat in planetary war among the marks of a weak graha. This page does the first half of the job, finding the days, and stops there.

How This Page Counts a Meeting

Each row below is a day on which two of the five reach the same sidereal longitude, taken from the site’s conjunction table, which is computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris. Authorities differ on how close two planets must come before the meeting counts as a war, so the page uses the one moment that every version includes: the day of the exact meeting. It does not say how many days either side of that the pair stays close, and it gives days, not minutes. It also names no winner. A planet’s latitude and its brightness are what the classical tests need, and the site’s tables hold neither.

Between 1 January 2026 and the end of 2028 the table holds 36 such meetings: 13 in 2026, 8 in 2027 and 15 in 2028. Of those, 24 fall on or after 26 October 2026.

Every Meeting, 2026 to 2028

Dates are IST. The degree is the whole degree of the sign; the pada is left off where the meeting lies within a quarter of a degree of a pada edge. Each pair links to its page in the conjunctions section, which has the same rows with more about each graha.

The Next One: Mars and Jupiter in Leo, 16 November

The first meeting from today is Mars with Jupiter on 16 November 2026, in Leo, in Magha. It is also the only Mars–Jupiter meeting anywhere in the three years. Both planets are direct that day and both are in a friend's sign, since the Sun, Leo’s lord, is listed as a friend of each. Jupiter turns retrograde a few weeks later, on 13 December 2026, and Mars on 10 January 2027, but the two do not meet again inside the table. Mars’s whole stay in the sign is on the Mars in Leo 2026 page, and the houses each of the two aspects are set out on the graha drishti page.

Which Pairs Meet, and How Often

Five planets make ten possible pairs, and nine of them meet at least once in the table. Mars–Mercury meets most often, eight times, followed by Mercury–Venus at seven. Mars–Jupiter meets just once. The missing pair is Jupiter and Saturn, the two slowest of the five; no row of the three years joins them. The counts in full:

• Mars–Mercury: 8
• Mercury–Venus: 7
• Mercury–Jupiter: 5
• Mars–Venus: 4
• Mercury–Saturn: 3
• Jupiter–Venus: 3
• Venus–Saturn: 3
• Mars–Saturn: 2
• Mars–Jupiter: 1

Mercury is in 23 of the 36. That follows from its speed and from its retrograde loops, which carry it back over a planet it has just passed. In nine rows at least one of the two is retrograde on the day, and five of those are Mercury–Venus meetings. The only row with both planets retrograde at once is Mercury–Venus too, on 25 May 2028.

Why One Pair Can Meet Three Times in Eight Weeks

Eight times in the table, a pair meets again within sixty days of its previous meeting, and seven of those gaps contain a station: one of the planets stops and reverses, and so crosses the other’s position again. The clearest case still ahead is Mercury and Jupiter in Virgo. They meet on 28 August 2028; Mercury turns retrograde on 19 September 2028 and slips back over Jupiter on 3 October 2028; it turns direct on 11 October 2028 and passes Jupiter a third time on 22 October 2028. Mercury is exalted in Virgo at all three. Less than three weeks after the last of them, on 10 November 2028, Venus reaches Jupiter in the same sign.

Mars and Mercury repeat twice in 2028. They meet in Capricorn on 9 January 2028; Mercury turns retrograde on 24 January 2028 and the two meet again on 27 January 2028, this time with Mercury moving backwards. In June the pattern runs without a station between the dates. Mercury turns direct on 14 June 2028 in Taurus, a little ahead of Mars, and sets off slowly. Mars, moving faster for now, reaches it on 21 June 2028; four days later, on 25 June 2028, Mercury has picked up enough speed to cross back past Mars. Taurus and Virgo each hold four meetings from today on, more than any other sign, and in both cases all of them come in 2028.

What This Page Does Not Do

It reports days on which two planets meet. It does not say what a meeting brings, and it does not read any of these days as a sign of conflict between countries or people; the word “war” is the texts’ name for a close approach of two planets, not a forecast. In a birth chart the question is whether the person was born near one of these days and, if so, how the two planets stand in the rest of the chart: the houses they rule, the houses they occupy and the dasha that is running. A free kundli gives each planet’s sign and degree, which shows whether two of the five sat close together at birth, and the atmakaraka page explains another reading that runs on the planets’ degrees. For the houses those planets rule, start with the guide to the twelve houses.