December 2026
Three planets change direction in four days. The Sun turns the year at the solstice, a Cancer Full Moon follows two nights later, and 2026 closes on a pair of earth trines.
Winter Solstice
Sun enters Capricorn - The longest night
The Sun enters Capricorn just before 4 in the afternoon, Eastern time, and the year turns. From here the light comes back a minute or two a day. Capricorn season is the season of structure: the goal, the ladder, the long project that outlasts the mood you started it in. After a Sagittarius season spent widening the frame, this is where the frame gets built. Saturn, Capricorn's ruler, has been direct for eleven days. The Sun will square it on the 29th. The last week of the year is about what you are actually willing to carry into the next one.
All Events
The Big Picture
December 2026 is built around a hinge in its second week. Saturn turns direct on the 10th, Neptune on the 12th, and Jupiter turns retrograde on the 13th. Three outer planets changing direction in four days is the kind of week that feels like nothing is moving and then, afterward, like everything has shifted. Before it, Venus and Mercury both change signs and Mercury runs a gauntlet of aspects from the 7th to the 9th. A Sagittarius New Moon on the 8th sets a direction inside that noise.
The back half of the month is the solstice and its echoes. The Sun enters Capricorn on the 21st, a Cancer Full Moon follows on the 23rd with Neptune fogging the morning, and Mercury joins the Sun in Capricorn on the 25th. The year closes on two contrasts: Sun and Mercury square Saturn on the 29th and 30th, then trine Mars on the 31st. Pressure, then traction. Whatever you are carrying into 2027, the last three days of December tell you whether it is a burden or a plan.
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Get Your ReadingDecember 2026 Astrological Events
Venus Enters Scorpio - December 4
Venus leaves Libra before dawn, finally clear of the sign where she spent her retrograde, and enters Scorpio. The register changes from fairness to intensity. Venus in Scorpio does not want a balanced arrangement, it wants the truth about what someone feels, and it is willing to wait in silence until it gets one. Two other aspects crowd the same day: Mercury squares Jupiter from 26° Scorpio to Leo in the small hours, and Mars squares Uranus from 3° Virgo to Gemini in the afternoon. A promise sounds bigger than it is, a plan gets knocked sideways. Venus arrives into that noise and asks the quieter question underneath it.
Mercury Enters Sagittarius - December 6
Mercury crosses into Sagittarius early on the 6th and immediately starts talking to everyone. Over the next four days it trines Neptune (7th), opposes Uranus and sextiles Pluto (8th), and squares Mars (9th). That is a lot of contact for a planet that spent November retrograde in Scorpio. The theme is range: ideas that got worked out privately now want an audience, and the audience talks back. Expect bluntness, both received and delivered. Mercury stays in Sagittarius until Christmas Day.
New Moon in Sagittarius - December 8
The New Moon lands at 16° Sagittarius in the early evening, with Mercury opposing Uranus that morning and sextiling Pluto a few hours before the lunation. Sagittarius New Moons are the ones that begin with a direction rather than a plan. Something you have been circling becomes a destination. The Mercury-Uranus opposition on the same day means the idea arrives sideways, often through a conversation that was about something else, and the Pluto sextile gives it weight. This is the last New Moon of the year. What it starts will still be unfolding when the year turns.
Venus Square Pluto - December 9
Mercury squares Mars in the morning and Venus squares Pluto in the early afternoon. Two hard aspects in one day, both involving personal planets that just changed signs. Venus-Pluto squares bring the undercurrent to the surface: jealousy, power, who holds the leverage in a relationship or a negotiation. Venus is barely into Scorpio, so the feelings are new and raw rather than settled. The Mercury-Mars square earlier adds a sharp tongue. Conversations on the 9th tend to go further than either person intended.
Saturn Stations Direct - December 10
Saturn stops at 7° Aries and ends its retrograde. A station is a hinge, and Saturn's hinges are about responsibility: what you committed to, what you delayed, what has been waiting on a decision through the whole retrograde. Forward motion from here means the delays start to clear, slowly, in Saturn's way. Aries is the sign of starting, and Saturn in Aries direct is the discipline to start the thing you have been planning instead of planning it further. This is the first of three stations in four days. Neptune follows on the 12th and Jupiter on the 13th.
Neptune Stations Direct - December 12
Neptune turns direct at 1° Aries, two days after Saturn and the day before Jupiter turns the other way. Neptune stations are subtle in the moment and obvious in hindsight. A belief you have been holding loosely comes into focus, or a confusion that has lasted months simply dissolves. Neptune sits in the very first degrees of Aries, so what clarifies tends to be about identity and beginnings: who you are becoming, not who you were. Venus sextiles Mars that morning, a small warm aspect from Scorpio to Virgo that makes the day feel kinder than the week around it.
Jupiter Stations Retrograde - December 13
Jupiter stops at 27° Leo just after midnight on the East Coast and begins moving backward. The exact instant falls close to midnight Eastern, so depending on where you live this is late on the 12th or the first hours of the 13th. Either way the meaning is the same: the growth that has been running outward since Jupiter arrived in Leo now turns to review. Jupiter retrograde is not loss. It is the audit of what expanded too fast, and it spends the coming weeks backing through late Leo, revisiting the territory of November's Mars-Jupiter conjunction. The confidence of that week gets re-examined. What was real will still be real at the end of it.
Sun Trine Jupiter - December 18
The Sagittarius Sun trines freshly retrograde Jupiter at 26° of each sign in the late afternoon. Fire trines are the easy kind of luck: good mood, good timing, the invitation that arrives on the right day. With Jupiter retrograde the gift is less about something new and more about something recovered, a connection or an opportunity from earlier in the year that resurfaces with better terms. This is the warmest day of December's second half, and it lands one weekend before the solstice.
Winter Solstice - December 21
The Sun enters Capricorn just before 4 in the afternoon, Eastern time, and the year turns. From here the light comes back a minute or two a day. Capricorn season is the season of structure: the goal, the ladder, the long project that outlasts the mood you started it in. After a Sagittarius season spent widening the frame, this is where the frame gets built. Saturn, Capricorn's ruler, has been direct for eleven days. The Sun will square it on the 29th. The last week of the year is about what you are actually willing to carry into the next one.
Full Moon in Cancer - December 23
The Cold Moon at 2° Cancer rises two nights after the solstice, opposite a Sun that squared Neptune at dawn that same day. Cancer Full Moons are about home, family, and the feelings that surface when everyone is in the same room. The Sun-Neptune square in the morning adds a layer of fog: nostalgia, idealizing, the family story that does not quite match what happened. Mercury trines Jupiter at midday, which helps. The right words show up for a difficult conversation. This Moon is the emotional center of the holidays and it arrives with its guard down.
Mercury Enters Capricorn - December 25
Mercury moves into Capricorn on Christmas afternoon. Thinking tightens. The sprawling Sagittarius conversations of the past three weeks compress into lists, budgets, and the first drafts of what next year is supposed to look like. Mercury squares Neptune the following day, the 26th, so the first version of the plan has a blind spot in it. That is normal. Capricorn Mercury revises. By the 30th it squares Saturn, and the plan that survives that is the one worth keeping.
Sun Square Saturn - December 29
The Sun squares Saturn from 8° Capricorn to 8° Aries in the evening, and Mercury makes the same square the next evening. Sun-Saturn squares are the reality check at the end of the year: the goal that was never resourced, the commitment that has been quietly draining you, the thing you keep saying you will do. Saturn is newly direct and in Aries, so the pressure is specifically about action. Two heavy evenings, and then the year turns its last corner.
Sun and Mercury Trine Mars - December 31
The Sun trines Mars from 9° Capricorn to 9° Virgo in the morning, and Mercury repeats the trine that evening as the year runs out. After two days of Saturn squares, this is release in the most practical form: energy that knows what to do with itself. Earth trines favor work that shows, not ideas about work. New Year's Eve 2026 is less a party than a clear head and a to-do list that finally makes sense. Mars has been in Virgo since late November, and this is the first time the Sun has fully backed it.
Planet Positions - December 2026
Sun: Sagittarius → Capricorn (Dec 21)
Moon: New in Sagittarius (8th) · Full in Cancer (23rd)
Mercury: Scorpio → Sagittarius (Dec 6) → Capricorn (Dec 25)
Venus: Libra → Scorpio (Dec 4)
Mars: Virgo (2°-9°)
Jupiter: Leo (27°-26°, stations retrograde Dec 13)
Saturn: Aries (7°-8°, stations direct Dec 10)
Uranus: Gemini (3°-2° Rx)
Neptune: Aries (1°, stations direct Dec 12)
Pluto: Aquarius (3°-4°)