Zodiac Decan Dates 2026 and 2027: All 36 Decans

A decan is one third of a zodiac sign: a 10° stretch, so the twelve signs hold 36 of them. The Sun moves through roughly one degree a day, which means it spends about ten days in each decan, and “which decan was I born in” comes down to a date lookup. The catch is that there are two zodiacs. Western astrology counts its signs from the March equinox (the tropical zodiac). Vedic astrology counts them from a point fixed against the stars, usually with the Lahiri ayanamsa, and calls the same 10° thirds drekkanas. The two sets of dates are more than three weeks apart.

Both tables below come from one calculation: the Sun’s apparent longitude from NASA JPL’s DE421 ephemeris, with every 10° crossing found to the second and converted to Indian Standard Time. The sidereal crossings that open a sign reproduce all 36 Sun sign entries already published in the site’s ingress table for 2026 to 2028. Only dates are printed.

Western (Tropical) Decan Dates, 2026 and 2027

Each cell gives the date the Sun enters the decan and the date it moves on to the next one, both in IST. The Sun crosses the boundary at some hour of each of those two dates, so a birth on either date needs the time of birth to settle it (see the worked example further down). The Capricorn 2nd decan straddles New Year, so its 2026 cell lists both runs that touch that year. A date with an asterisk falls within 20 minutes of midnight IST, close enough that another ephemeris or software could put the change on the neighbouring date: in this table that is only 8 February 2026. In 2027 the Sun begins only 35 tropical decans inside the calendar year, because Capricorn 2nd begins on 31 December 2026 and next on 1 January 2028.

Vedic (Sidereal) Drekkana Dates of the Sun, 2026 and 2027

The same layout for the sidereal zodiac, with the Lahiri ayanamsa taken off the Sun’s longitude. Here the year-end run is Dhanu (Sagittarius) 2nd, and the asterisked dates are 26 June 2026 and 25 December 2025. Every entry into a 1st drekkana is also the Sun entering a new sign, a Sankranti, and the site gives those by date only.

How Far Apart the Two Zodiacs Are

The gap is the ayanamsa. Taken from the same formula the site’s panchang uses, it is 24.2° in mid-2027, which is 2.42 decans. In days, each sidereal drekkana in 2027 begins between 23.8 and 25.4 days after the tropical decan of the same name; the spread comes from the Sun’s changing speed, explained below. The Lahiri ayanamsa page sets out the value year by year and everything else it moves.

Because the offset is a little under two and a half decans, the western decan on any given day is never one ahead of the Vedic one and never four. Checking the Sun at noon IST on each of the 365 days of 2027, the tropical decan is two ahead on 210 days and three ahead on the other 155. The two zodiacs also never change on the same date: in 2026–2027 the nearest a tropical change comes to a sidereal one is 4.1 days. So, for one birth date, at most one of the two answers can depend on the hour. The same comparison sign by sign, rather than decan by decan, is on the Vedic Sun sign dates page.

What Decan Am I? One Birth Worked Through

Take a birth at noon IST on 15 August 2026. In the tropical table the Sun entered the Leo 3rd decan on 12 August and left it on 23 August, so in western terms this is a Leo 3rd-decan birth: the Sun was between 20° and 30° of Leo. In the sidereal table the Sun was in Karka (Cancer), 3rd drekkana, from 6 August to 17 August. The same person has a different Sun sign as well as a different third in the two systems, three decans apart, one of the two offsets the noon count above found.

Now take 23 September 2026. The Sun left Virgo 3rd and entered Libra 1st during that day, so the tropical answer depends on the hour of birth, and this page does not print the hour. The sidereal answer that day is not in doubt: Kanya (Virgo) 1st from midnight to midnight. For a birth on a change date, find the Sun’s longitude at the birth time. The free kundli (it asks you to sign in) prints the Sun’s sidereal longitude from 0° to 360° together with the ayanamsa it used. Divide the sidereal longitude by 10 and drop the fraction: 0 is Aries 1st, 35 is Pisces 3rd, counting down the rows of the sidereal table from 0. Add the ayanamsa first, subtracting 360 if the sum passes 360, and the same division counts down the tropical table.

The site’s Sun sign calculator is quicker but coarser: it looks the date up in a fixed table of approximate Vedic sign ranges and shows the western sign of the same name beside it as a label. It does not compute a tropical sign or any decan, and it cannot see the year or the hour. How the Sun sign sits beside the Moon sign in a Vedic chart is on Sun sign vs Moon sign.

Why the Dates Move From Year to Year

A year of 365 days is about a quarter of a day shorter than the Sun’s trip round the zodiac. Comparing the 2026, 2027 and 2028 runs, every decan in either zodiac begins between 5.5 and 6.3 hours later by the clock than it did a year before, after allowing for 365 days. Those hours pile up until a leap day pulls the calendar back. The March equinox, the start of Aries 1st, shows it: 20 March in 2026, 21 March in 2027, then 20 March again in 2028, once 29 February has been inserted.

The result is that a start date never moves by more than a day between neighbouring years, but it often moves. Only 13 of the 36 tropical decans and 13 of the 36 sidereal drekkanas begin on the same calendar date in all three years. One tropical decan, Pisces 2nd, begins on three different dates: 28 February 2026, 1 March 2027, 29 February 2028. A fixed list of decan dates, the kind printed without a year, is therefore right for most birthdays and a day out for some, and on a change date it cannot be relied on at all.

Why No Decan Is Exactly Ten Days

If the Sun moved evenly, each decan would last 10.15 days. It does not. The Earth’s orbit is an ellipse; it is nearest the Sun in early January and farthest in early July, and it moves fastest when nearest. Seen from the Earth, the Sun then crosses the sky against the stars fastest in January and slowest in July. Across 2026 to 2028 the decan runs in the data range from 9.81 to 10.49 days, which is the Sun covering about 1.02° a day at its fastest and 0.95° at its slowest.

The shortest tropical decan is Capricorn 2nd, averaging 9.81 days, and the longest is Cancer 2nd, averaging 10.49. In the sidereal zodiac the shortest is Dhanu (Sagittarius) 2nd at 9.81 days and the longest Mithuna (Gemini) 2nd at 10.49. Both shortest runs contain 3 January and both longest runs begin in June or July; the names differ only because the two zodiacs label that part of the sky differently.

The Three Signs Inside Each Sign

In the Parashari drekkana of Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, the 1st third of a sign goes to the sign itself, the 2nd to the 5th sign from it and the 3rd to the 9th. Those are the three signs of one element, so a sign’s drekkanas never leave its element. In the triplicity scheme of modern Western astrology, a sign’s decans run through the same three signs in the same order; that scheme then gives the decans planetary rulers, which this page does not list. Other Western schemes, such as the Chaldean faces, assign decans differently and are not set out here. The lord in brackets is the lord of the drekkana sign in the seven-graha rulership table, as the D3 drekkana chart page gives it.

For the birth worked above, the tropical Leo 3rd decan is the Aries third of Leo, and the sidereal Karka 3rd drekkana is the Pisces third of Cancer. The D3 page applies the same rule to the lagna and every graha, which is how a Vedic drekkana chart is built.

What This Page Does Not Give

There is no description here of what a decan or drekkana is supposed to say about the person born in it. A date table can show where the Sun was; whether a third of a sign shapes anyone is not something a list of dates can check, so the page leaves the question alone. It prints no clock time for any crossing and uses only the Lahiri ayanamsa; an almanac on another ayanamsa can move a sidereal date by a day. For when the Sun changes whole signs, and the related question of the thirteenth constellation on its path, see Ophiuchus and the 13 constellations.

In Brief

• A decan: 10° of a sign, three per sign, 36 in the zodiac; the Vedic name is drekkana
• Two zodiacs: sidereal drekkanas begin 23.8 to 25.4 days after the tropical decans of the same name in 2027; the western decan is two or three ahead
• Change dates: 35 tropical and 36 sidereal in 2027, never on the same date; a birth on one needs the hour
• Year to year: each start comes about 6 hours later until a leap day resets it; only 13 tropical decans keep one date through 2026–2028
• Length: 9.81 to 10.49 days, shortest around 3 January, longest around the turn of June and July
• Signs of the thirds: the sign, its 5th and its 9th, in the Parashari drekkana and in the Western triplicity scheme alike