Rahu Ketu Transit 2026–2028: Capricorn and Cancer Dates

The Whole Stay in Two Rows (राहु and केतु)

The site’s sign-ingress table holds exactly two sign changes for the nodes between 2026 and 2028, and each is a single instant shared by both of them, because Rahu and Ketu are the two ends of one axis. On 5 December 2026 Rahu moves back from Aquarius into Capricorn (मकर) and Ketu from Leo into Cancer (कर्क). On 24 June 2028 Rahu moves on into Sagittarius and Ketu into Gemini. Both rows record the same backward speed, 0.0529° a day.

Counted from the first date to the second, the stay is 567 days, which is 18 months and 19 days on the calendar. The site’s table of average pace gives the nodes about 18 months per sign and a full cycle of 18.6 years, or 6,794 days; a twelfth of that is 566.2 days, within a day of this stay.

The 2026 side of the story, with Rahu in Aquarius and Ketu in Leo until December, is told in Rahu Ketu transit 2026. This page starts where that one ends and follows the Capricorn–Cancer axis through to its exit, without readings for any sign.

Why Almanacs Give Different Dates for Rahu

Every node row in the site’s tables carries a flag marking it as the mean node. The ingress table’s own notes explain the flag: the mean node is an analytic formula rather than a measured position, so the DE421 ephemeris behind the other planets corrects nothing about it. The conjunction notes add that the node in the site’s panchang tables is the mean node, and that it can stand up to 1.7° from the true node. That one figure accounts for most of the disagreement between published Rahu dates:

• Mean against true node: 1.7° ÷ 0.0529° a day = 32.1 days. An almanac that follows the true node can therefore put a sign change up to about a month away from the mean-node day, in the worst case. Both dates on this page are mean-node days, the convention the site’s tables follow.
• Why no clock time: at 0.0529° a day, one arcminute of longitude takes about 7.6 hours to cover. A difference of a single arcminute between two calculations, far smaller than the mean–true gap, already moves the crossing by most of a working day. The site prints no minute for a node row for that reason.
• Time zone: converted to UTC, the December 2026 row stays on 5 December 2026, but the June 2028 row falls on 23 June 2028. A table kept in UTC prints the exit a day earlier than an IST almanac for the same mean-node instant.

The site’s second node table, the span list in its retrograde data, agrees with the ingress rows to the day: it runs the Capricorn–Cancer span from 5 December 2026 to 23 June 2028. If you see a date for this transit that differs by a few weeks, check first whether it was computed from the true node before assuming either source is wrong.

Three Stays of Nearly Equal Length

The same span list gives the neighbouring axes. Aquarius–Leo began on 18 May 2025, so it runs 566 days up to the December change. Sagittarius–Gemini begins on 24 June 2028 and gives way to Scorpio–Taurus on 11 January 2030, another 566 days. Three consecutive stays of 566, 567 and 566 days are what a constant speed produces: the mean node covers each thirty degrees in the same time, and 30° ÷ 0.0529° a day is 567.1 days. The regularity is a property of the formula, so it says nothing about the true node.

“Rahu in Capricorn last time” is a common question, and these tables cannot answer it. The span list begins in 2024 and the ingress table in 2026, so neither holds an earlier Capricorn–Cancer stay, and this page gives no date for one. What the tables do give is the cycle: 18.6 years for the nodes to go once round the zodiac, after which Rahu is back in Capricorn and Ketu in Cancer.

Backwards Through the Nakshatras (नक्षत्र)

In the site’s nakshatra table Capricorn holds parts of three nakshatras, in zodiac order Uttara Ashadha, Shravana and Dhanishta, and Cancer holds parts of Punarvasu, Pushya and Ashlesha. A planet moving forward meets them in that order. The nodes move backwards, so each meets its sign’s nakshatras last to first: Rahu meets Dhanishta, then Shravana, then Uttara Ashadha, and Ketu meets Ashlesha, then Pushya, then Punarvasu.

The two signs differ at the start. Ashlesha ends exactly where Cancer ends, so Ketu’s entry into Cancer is also its entry into Ashlesha, in the same row. Dhanishta straddles Capricorn and Aquarius, so Rahu is already in it when it reaches Capricorn: the table has Rahu entering Dhanishta in August 2026, while still in Aquarius. At the exit neither node changes nakshatra, because Uttara Ashadha and Punarvasu both straddle the sign line; Rahu carries Uttara Ashadha into Sagittarius and Ketu carries Punarvasu into Gemini.

These are given by month only. Each crossing carries the same uncertainty as the sign changes, up to about 32 days, so a day would claim more than the row can support. The rhythm is regular for the same reason the stays are: a nakshatra is 13°20′, which at 0.0529° a day takes about 252 days, roughly eight and a third months. Because the nakshatra lines in Cancer sit 6°40′ away from those in Capricorn, the two nodes take turns, and after the entry the table shows a crossing by one node or the other roughly every four months.

The site’s planet data lists Ardra, Swati and Shatabhisha as Rahu’s nakshatras and Ashwini, Magha and Mula as Ketu’s. None of them comes up during this stay. After the exit the table has Rahu entering Purva Ashadha in August 2028 and Ketu entering Ardra in December 2028.

What the Planet Data Says About the Nodes in These Signs

The nodes are where the site’s classical tables hedge most, and the hedges are the content. In the site’s planet data:

• Own sign: neither node has one. The table records that Rahu co-lords Aquarius and Ketu co-lords Scorpio, and it records the view that each acts as that sign’s dispositor.
• Exaltation and debilitation: for Rahu, exaltation in Taurus and debilitation in Scorpio “by the most common reckoning”, with Gemini and Sagittarius “in others”. For Ketu the pairs are reversed: exaltation in Scorpio and debilitation in Taurus by the common reckoning, Sagittarius and Gemini in others. Neither Capricorn nor Cancer appears in either list, so this stay carries no listed dignity for either node. The next axis is different: Sagittarius for Rahu and Gemini for Ketu are each node’s debilitation sign in the minority reckoning, and nothing at all in the common one.
• Aspects: the table says traditions differ. For Rahu many follow Jupiter’s 5th, 7th and 9th, while classical texts give it no aspect at all; for Ketu, classical texts give it no aspect of its own. This page therefore draws no aspect from either node.

The sign rulers are not in doubt: the site’s sign table gives Saturn as the ruler of Capricorn and the Moon as the ruler of Cancer. Rahu’s row in the planet data lists Saturn among its friends and the Moon among its enemies, and Ketu’s row does the same, so Rahu sits in a sign whose lord its row calls a friend, and Ketu in a sign whose lord its row calls an enemy. The relation runs one way only: Saturn’s and the Moon’s rows do not list the nodes at all. Saturn itself changes sign during the stay: it enters Aries on 3 June 2027, moves back into Pisces in October 2027 and re-enters Aries in February 2028. Its own story is in Saturn transit 2027.

The reference pages Rahu in Capricorn and Ketu in Cancer set out the placements as they stand in a birth chart, which is a different question from the transit.

Meetings the Tables Hold and This Page Does Not Print

The conjunction table has 12 rows inside this stay in which another graha reaches the same longitude as Rahu or Ketu: with Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter, including two Jupiter–Ketu rows in Cancer. None involves Saturn. Every one of those rows carries the mean-node flag, and this page prints none of them as a dated event. The reason is the same 1.7°: a meeting is the moment two longitudes coincide, and if one of them can be off by that much, the moment moves by a day or more for the fast grahas and by longer for the slow ones.

A Sun–Rahu or Sun–Ketu row in that table is not an eclipse, and this page names no eclipse date. The pair pages, for example Jupiter–Ketu and Mars–Rahu, set out each pair with the caveat that, where a node is involved, even the day is approximate.

Which Houses the Axis Falls In From Your Moon Sign

Gochara counts from the janma rashi, the Moon’s sign at birth, as the 1st house. The grid does that count for Capricorn and Cancer; each number links to the site’s page for that house. It is arithmetic. A house names a field of life, and no cell says what happens in it. Because the two signs are opposite, the Ketu house is always the 7th counted from the Rahu house, and the Rahu house the 7th from the Ketu house. Compared with the Aquarius–Leo axis, each house is one step earlier in the count (a 1st becomes a 12th), because both nodes have stepped back one sign. If you do not know your Moon sign, the Moon sign calculator works it out from birth details.

A Moon-sign count is one input to reading a transit, and a thin one. The birth chart supplies the rest: the lagna and the houses these signs occupy from it, any natal graha in Capricorn or Cancer, and the dasha running. A transit of the nodes is not a Rahu or Ketu period either; those are reckoned in the Vimshottari sequence and covered in Rahu mahadasha and Ketu mahadasha. The observances the tradition attaches to the nodes are collected in Rahu–Ketu remedies and Rahu Ketu upay, and the rest of the data on each is on the Rahu and Ketu hubs.

The Stay in One Paragraph

By the mean node, Rahu is in Capricorn and Ketu in Cancer from 5 December 2026 to 24 June 2028, 567 days in all, moving backwards at 0.0529° a day. Rahu meets Dhanishta, Shravana and Uttara Ashadha in that order, and Ketu meets Ashlesha, Pushya and Punarvasu. An almanac that follows the true node can differ from these dates by up to about a month, and one kept in UTC prints the exit as 23 June 2028. In Hindi: राहु केतु गोचर 2026–2028: मकर और कर्क राशि की तारीखें.