Mercury in Sagittarius 2026: Budh Gochar Dhanu Rashi Dates

When Budh Enters Dhanu (बुध का धनु राशि में गोचर)

Mercury crosses from Scorpio into Sagittarius at 07:36 IST on 22 December 2026 and moves on into Capricorn at 00:34 IST on 10 January 2027. Counted by calendar date that is 19 days; by the clock it is 18 days and about 17 hours. Mercury moves forwards the whole way. Its last station before the entry will be the direct station in Libra on 13 November 2026, and the next one, a retrograde station in Aquarius, is not until 9 February 2027.

Three features of this spell are taken in turn below, after the timeline: it is short, its exit falls just after midnight, and every day of it is spent with the Sun in the same sign.

A Spell Shorter Than Three Weeks

The site’s pace table gives Mercury roughly 3 weeks to 2 months in a sign. This visit falls below the bottom of that range: 19 days, two days short of three weeks. The range is wide because Mercury’s stays are uneven. Its Libra spell this autumn, from 26 September 2026 to 2 December 2026, holds the whole retrograde loop of 24 October to 13 November and lasts 67 days. The Scorpio spell that follows it takes 20 days, and Sagittarius takes about the same. The ingress table has Mercury moving 1.56° a day as it enters and 1.66° a day as it leaves, and thirty degrees at that rate is under three weeks of travel.

Nor is this year unusual for the sign. The tables hold two later complete passes of Mercury through Sagittarius, 15 December 2027 to 2 January 2028 (18 days) and 6 December 2028 to 26 December 2028 (20 days), and neither contains a station or reaches three weeks either.

How Firm the 10 January Date Is

Both crossings move well above the 0.1°-a-day floor below which the site prints a date and no clock time, so both get a minute here. Speed still sets what a minute is worth. At the entry, one arcminute of longitude corresponds to about 15 minutes of clock. The crossing at 07:36 sits roughly 30 arcminutes of travel after the previous midnight and much further from the next, so an almanac using an ayanamsa a little different from the Lahiri value used here will still give 22 December.

The exit is another matter. At the Capricorn crossing an arcminute costs about 14 minutes of clock, and 00:34 is only 34 minutes past midnight, which is about 2.3 arcminutes of Mercury’s motion. An ayanamsa smaller than the one used here by that much would put the crossing late on 9 January. So a panchang that gives 9 January for Budh entering Makar is not necessarily in error: the two dates rest on reckonings a few arcminutes apart. The entry date is firm; hold the exit date a little loosely.

Moola, Purva Ashadha and Uttara Ashadha (नक्षत्र)

Moola begins where Sagittarius begins, so the nakshatra table records Mercury entering Moola at the same instant it enters the sign. It moves into Purva Ashadha on 30 December 2026 and into Uttara Ashadha on 8 January 2027. Moola and Purva Ashadha lie wholly in Sagittarius; Uttara Ashadha runs across into Capricorn, so Mercury has only two days of it inside this sign and is still in it when the spell ends. The Uttara Ashadha crossing also falls close to midnight in the table, so an almanac may date it a day earlier. The nakshatra table gives the three lords as Ketu, Venus and the Sun. Crossings here are given by date, and no pada is named.

Inside the Sun’s Month in Sagittarius

The Sun enters Sagittarius on 16 December 2026, six days ahead of Mercury, and does not move on into Capricorn until 14 January 2027, four days after Mercury has gone. Mercury’s whole stay therefore falls inside the Sun’s month in the sign, the period of Kharmas, whose dates and customs are on the Kharmas December 2026 page and are not repeated here. The conjunction table dates the Sun–Mercury meeting to 1 January 2027, in Sagittarius, while Mercury is in Purva Ashadha; it is the only conjunction-table row involving Mercury during the spell. In the friendship scheme the pairing is one-sided: Mercury’s row lists the Sun as a friend, while the Sun’s row lists Mercury as neutral.

Jupiter’s Sign, With Jupiter Retrograde in Leo

The sign table gives Sagittarius to Jupiter, and records no exaltation and no debilitation in it for any graha. On the site’s planet table, Mercury’s own signs are Gemini and Virgo, its exaltation sign is Virgo and its debilitation sign is Pisces, so Sagittarius is none of these for it. The relationship with the sign’s lord is lopsided, as it is with the Sun: Mercury’s row lists Jupiter as neutral, and Jupiter’s row lists Mercury as an enemy. The reference page on Mercury in Sagittarius sets out the classical reading of the placement.

Jupiter itself is in Leo throughout. It stations retrograde there on 13 December 2026, before Mercury arrives, stays retrograde for every day of the spell, and backs into Cancer only on 25 January 2027, after Mercury has left Sagittarius. In the aspect scheme the site uses, Jupiter’s 5th aspect from Leo falls on Sagittarius, and so does Saturn’s 10th aspect from Pisces, where Saturn will be moving direct after its station on 11 December 2026. From Sagittarius, Mercury’s own single aspect, the 7th, lands on Gemini (Mithuna), one of the two signs it rules. These are positions in a table; the page draws no forecast from them.

Counting Sagittarius From Your Moon Sign (चंद्र राशि से भाव)

Gochara counts a transit from the janma rashi, the sign the Moon held at birth, taken as the 1st house. The table below does that count for Sagittarius, names the house as the site’s house tables do, and adds the house that Mercury’s 7th aspect reaches. A house names a field of life; the table does not say what a transit does in it.

A Moon-sign count leaves out most of what a chart reading weighs: the lagna and the house Sagittarius occupies from it, the houses Mercury rules in that chart, natal planets in Sagittarius or Gemini, and the dasha running. The Moon sign calculator finds your Moon sign from birth details. The significations the texts give Budh are gathered in Mercury Mahadasha, and the practices associated with Mercury in remedies for a weak Mercury.

Before and After Sagittarius

The spell before this one is covered on Mercury in Scorpio 2026, and the autumn loop that precedes it on Mercury retrograde 2026. What follows the 10 January crossing, including the retrograde that begins on 9 February 2027, is on Mercury in Capricorn 2027 and Mercury retrograde 2027.

The Dates, Briefly

Into Sagittarius 22 December 2026 at 07:36 IST; into Purva Ashadha 30 December 2026; Sun–Mercury conjunction 1 January 2027; into Uttara Ashadha 8 January 2027; into Capricorn 10 January 2027 at 00:34 IST, a time close enough to midnight that 9 January is also defensible. 19 days in all, with no station. In Hindi: बुध का धनु राशि में गोचर 2026: प्रवेश, निकास और नक्षत्र.