What Is My Mercury Sign? Vedic Dates by Year 1950–2050

Mercury is the graha that keeps closest to the Sun, and that makes your Mercury sign easy to narrow down: it is always your Sun sign or one of the two signs beside it. Over the 101 years from 1950 to 2050, Mercury shared the Sun’s Vedic sign on 51.0% of days, sat one sign ahead on 24.5%, and one sign behind on 24.5%. It was never two signs away. To get the exact answer for a birthday, use the year-by-year table below, which lists every sidereal sign Mercury entered, with the date in IST.

The signs here are the Vedic ones, Budh’s rashi under the Lahiri ayanamsa. To turn one into a western Mercury sign, add the ayanamsa (about 23.1° in 1950, 24.6° by 2050); since that is under 30°, the western sign is either this one or the following sign. On the day of publication Mercury is in Libra, where it has been since 26 September. Its retrograde of 24 October to 13 November 2026 lies wholly inside Libra, so it does not enter Scorpio until 2 December 2026.

Which of the Three Signs? It Depends on the Sun’s

The split is not even through the year. Counting the days of the century by the Sun’s sign at noon IST:

With the Sun in Cancer or Leo, Mercury is ahead of it on about 37% of days; with the Sun in Aquarius or Pisces it is behind on about 37%. The same sign is likeliest with the Sun in Scorpio, at 58.2%. These shares are counted, not derived from a rule, and they hold for the century as a whole rather than for any one year. Your Sun sign is on the Vedic Sun sign dates page, and the two grahas sharing a sign is the condition the Budhaditya yoga page discusses.

Three Weeks, or Ten

Mercury has two kinds of stay in a sign, with almost nothing in between. The ordinary stay lasts about 19 days at the median and never more than about six weeks. Mercury turns retrograde about three times a year, though, and when a whole retrograde loop falls inside one sign the stay jumps to between 65 and 69 days; each of the 13 long stays inside the years of the site’s retrograde table holds one. No stay in the century falls between the two bands. There are 173 of the long kind, and 15 August 1990 falls in one of them: Mercury entered Leo on 25 July that year and did not reach Virgo until 2 October, so a birth on any day between those two dates has a Leo Mercury.

When a loop straddles a boundary instead, Mercury steps back into the sign it has just left, which gives the very short stays. In the century, 13 stays last under five days, and the shortest is Scorpio from 3 January to 4 January 1991, 27 hours. Of Mercury’s 1,502 sign entries in the century, 146 are made moving backward. That is also why the number of entries in a year swings from 12 to 19: 19 in 1955, 1968, 1975, 1988, 1991, 2001, 2019, 2021 and 2034, and only 12 in 15 years, the last three of them 2033, 2035 and 2046.

Mercury’s Long Repeats

Because Mercury keeps near the Sun, the same calendar date tends to give the same Mercury sign even one year apart, on 56.3% of dates. Some intervals do much better, because they hold almost a whole number of Mercury’s cycles with the Sun: 80.8% after 7 years, 92.9% after 13, 95.0% after 33 and 97.5% after 46. The row for the year 46 years earlier gives the same sign on almost every date.

Mercury Sign by Year, 1950 to 2050

Each row opens with the sign Mercury held at midnight IST as the year began and then lists every sign it entered, in order. Read along to the last entry dated on or before the birthday. “(R)” is an entry Mercury makes while retrograde. A dash between two dates means the entry came close enough to midnight that either day is possible. The list was generated from the JPL DE421 ephemeris; it matches all 150 entries of the site’s 2026–2028 ingress table to the minute.

When the Date Is Not Enough

Mercury changes sign on 1,502 of the 36,890 days from 1950 to 2050, roughly one day in every 25. For a birth on one of those dates the sign turns on the hour, and for the 48 entries printed as two dates it can turn on the minute. An almanac on a different ayanamsa shifts every one of these boundaries, by hours or by a day. The sign and degree of Mercury at the birth time are in the Janam Kundli report, which places the Sun, the Moon and the five visible grahas (not Rahu and Ketu) for the date, time and place you enter. The free kundli does not show Mercury.

Mercury in Each Sign

Once you have the sign, the placement page gives Mercury’s dignity there, its aspect and the nakshatra padas the sign holds: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. The graha’s own page is Budh. The 2027 entries, with their times, are on the Mercury transit 2027 page, and the shadow periods around each retrograde of 2026 to 2028 are on retrograde shadow dates.

What This Page Leaves Out

Clock times for the entries, which the table deliberately leaves off. Western sign dates, beyond the rule that the western sign is this one or the next. Any statement about what a Mercury sign says about a person’s mind or speech. Every figure uses the Lahiri ayanamsa.

Summary

• Three candidates: your Sun sign (51.0% of days), the sign after it (24.5%) or the sign before it (24.5%)
• Stays: about 19 days at the median; 65 to 69 days when a retrograde loop sits inside the sign
• Entries a year: 12 to 19, 146 of the century’s 1,502 made while retrograde
• Repeats: 97.5% of dates give the same sign 46 years apart
• Needs a birth time: 1,502 change dates in the century