Retrograde Shadow Dates 2026–2028: Pre- and Post-Shadow

On 28 October 2026, the day this page went up, Saturn, Venus and Mercury are all retrograde, and Jupiter, which turns retrograde on 13 December 2026, has been in its pre-shadow since 17 September 2026. Mercury’s post-shadow runs to 30 November 2026 and Venus’s to the night of 15/16 December 2026. Mars enters its pre-shadow on 5 November 2026, more than two months before it turns retrograde.

Below is every shadow edge of the five planets that touches 2026, 2027 or 2028: when each planet first reaches the degree where its retrograde will end, and when it gets back to the degree where the retrograde began. All of it is computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsa, the same source and method as the site’s station table. Every station here from 26 February 2026 to 11 October 2028, 34 in all, matches that table to the minute, and the rest carry the same dates as the site’s retrograde tables. Dates are in IST.

What the Shadow Period Is

A retrograde begins when a planet stations retrograde at one degree and ends when it stations direct at a lower one. The stretch of zodiac between those two degrees is the shadow zone, and the planet crosses it three times. The first crossing goes forward, before the retrograde: that is the pre-shadow, from the day the planet reaches the degree where it will later turn direct. The second goes backwards, during the retrograde. The third goes forward again: the post-shadow, which ends on the day the planet is back at the degree where it turned retrograde. Once past that point it is on ground it has not covered in this cycle.

The shadow is an idea used in modern western retrograde guides; the site’s page on vakri grahas in the kundli deals with the retrograde itself. Here the shadow is used only as geometry: three passes over one band of degrees.

Mercury Shadow Dates 2026–2028

Mercury (Budh) goes retrograde three times a year in every year from 2024 to 2031 except 2029, which has four. These are the ten of its cycles whose shadow touches 2026 to 2028; the last one begins in December 2028 and ends in 2029.

In the table each Mercury pre-shadow lasts 14 to 20 days, each retrograde 20 to 25 and each post-shadow 14 to 20, so a whole cycle from the first edge to the last runs 53 to 57 days. The shadow zone is 8.6° to 16.1° wide. It is under 10° for the three retrogrades that begin in May or June, and over 14° for all the others. In 2027 alone, Mercury spends 170 days, about 47 percent of the year, somewhere between a pre-shadow start and a post-shadow end, and 71 of those days retrograde. The gap between one cycle’s end and the next one’s start is only 57 to 65 days. The Mercury retrograde 2027 page has the signs it crosses in each retrograde.

Venus and Mars Shadow Dates

Venus (Shukra) and Mars (Mangal) go retrograde far less often, about every 19 months for Venus and every 25 for Mars, so only two cycles of each touch these three years.

Venus’s pre-shadow and post-shadow each last 32 to 34 days around a retrograde of 42 to 43, for a cycle of 107 to 111 days. Mars’s cycle is about twice as long, 211 to 215 days, with a shadow zone of about 19°. The 2026 to 2027 one starts in Cancer: Mars reaches Cancer 26°41′ on 5 November 2026, a week before it enters Leo on 12 November 2026. Its retrograde then takes it back into Cancer on 10 March 2027, and it only clears the zone, at Leo 16°11′, on 8 June 2027.

Jupiter and Saturn: Shadows Measured in Months

The slow planets turn round about once a year, Saturn every twelve and a half months and Jupiter every thirteen, and their shadows are long. Jupiter’s pre-shadow lasts 86 to 87 days and its post-shadow 87 to 89, about three months each, around a retrograde of 120 to 124 days. Saturn’s pre-shadow lasts 97 to 98 days and its post-shadow 94 to 95, around a retrograde of 135 to 138. A whole Saturn cycle takes 326 to 331 days, and the next one starts only 48 to 52 days after the last one ends. For Jupiter the free stretch is 96 to 103 days. Saturn’s zone is the narrowest of the five, under 7°, and it still takes the longest to cross three times, because Saturn is the slowest. Jupiter’s cycle from 17 September 2026 to 11 July 2027 takes it from Cancer into Leo, back into Cancer during the retrograde and into Leo again, the stretch the atichari Guru page follows sign by sign.

How Long Each Shadow Lasts

The rule of thumb in western retrograde guides, a shadow of about two weeks on either side, comes close for Mercury, whose shadows run 14 to 20 days. It fits no other planet: even Venus’s shadows are a month long, and Saturn’s are over three months. What does hold for all five is the proportion. The pre-shadow and post-shadow of a cycle are close to each other in length, and the whole cycle comes to between a little over twice and under three times the retrograde itself.

Vedic and Western Shadow Dates Fall on the Same Days

A station falls at very nearly the same instant in every zodiac, because it is the moment the planet’s apparent motion reverses, not a position; the ayanamsa’s slow growth moves it only slightly. The shadow edges are positions, but the planet is measured against its own station degree in the same zodiac, so the ayanamsa almost cancels. It does not cancel completely, because the ayanamsa grows by about 50 seconds of arc a year while the planet travels. The tropical edges come out up to 2 minutes away from the Lahiri ones for Mercury, 5 for Venus, 17 for Mars, 62 for Jupiter and 111 for Saturn, the slowest. In this span only one edge changes date: Saturn’s post-shadow ends on 3 March 2026 in the Lahiri zodiac and on 2 March 2026 in the tropical one.

What differs is the sign. The zone sits about 24° further on in the tropical zodiac, so Mercury’s October 2026 zone, Libra 10°48′ to Libra 26°44′ in the table, is Scorpio 5°01′ to Scorpio 20°58′ in western software. Of the 22 zones here, none has the same sign or signs in both. The Lahiri ayanamsa page explains the 24°.

Shadow Edges and Stations to the End of March 2027

• 5 November 2026: Mars, pre-shadow begins
• 13 November 2026: Mercury, station direct
• 14 November 2026: Venus, station direct
• 30 November 2026: Mercury, post-shadow ends
• 11 December 2026: Saturn, station direct
• 13 December 2026: Jupiter, station retrograde
• night of 15/16 December 2026: Venus, post-shadow ends
• 10 January 2027: Mars, station retrograde
• night of 25/26 January 2027: Mercury, pre-shadow begins
• 9 February 2027: Mercury, station retrograde
• 3 March 2027: Mercury, station direct
• 15 March 2027: Saturn, post-shadow ends
• 23 March 2027: Mercury, post-shadow ends

Put the five planets together and the sky is rarely clear of all of them. In 2027 there is not a single day on which none of the five is in a pre-shadow, a retrograde or a post-shadow, because Jupiter’s and Saturn’s cycles between them cover every day of it. The retrograde checker shows which planets are retrograde on the day you open it, and each planet’s retrograde page lists its windows to 2031: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

What This Page Does Not Give

It gives no reading of a shadow, and no advice to start, sign, buy or wait on anything because of one; no rule in the site’s data turns on a shadow. The edges are printed as dates without clock times. Where a shadow edge falls within an hour of midnight, as four of these do, it is printed as the night of two dates, because a slightly different ephemeris or ayanamsa could put it on either side. Stations inside the site’s station table carry its dates; the two outside it that fall near midnight are also printed as the night of two dates. A station given as a single date by another source may differ from these by a day for the same reason.

In Brief

• Pre-shadow: from the day a planet reaches the degree where its retrograde will end, to the station retrograde
• Post-shadow: from the station direct to the day it is back at the degree where the retrograde began
• Mercury: 14 to 20 days each side, 53 to 57 days in all; 170 days of 2027
• Venus and Mars: about a month and about two months each side
• Jupiter and Saturn: about three months each side, cycles of 293 to 300 and 326 to 331 days
• Vedic or western: the same dates except one Saturn edge, minutes apart for the fast planets and under two hours for Saturn; the signs differ