Jupiter transit 2025-2028: exact sidereal dates and how to read them
Jupiter is the year-grain hand of the Vedic clock. It spends close to twelve months in each sign, so a Jupiter ingress renames the supported theme of roughly a year at a time, and its annual retrograde loop means most sign changes happen twice before they stick. This hub carries every Jupiter sign change from May 2025 to December 2028, dated under sidereal True Pushya Paksha, and shows how to rotate those dates through the houses of a birth chart.
Jupiter as the year-grain timekeeper
The slow planets divide Vedic timing into grains. Saturn moves at roughly two and a half years per sign and sets the multi-year structural tone. The nodes hold an axis for about eighteen months. Jupiter sits between them at close to one sign per year, which makes it the natural marker for the year-scale question: which life area carries support this year, and when does that support move on. Classical practice treats Jupiter as the significator of growth, counsel, teachers, children and wealth, and reads its transit through a house as a period when that house's affairs receive expansion rather than pressure.
One sign per year is an average, not a schedule. Jupiter's orbit is close to 11.9 years, and its apparent motion from Earth reverses for roughly four months annually as Earth overtakes it on the inside track. When that reversal happens mid-sign, the stay simply stretches. When it straddles a sign boundary, the calendar gets interesting: the planet enters the new sign, retreats back into the old one and enters again months later. The 2025 to 2028 stretch contains three of those boundary-straddling loops in a row, which is why the table below has eleven rows instead of four.
The transit layer is deliberately coarse. It says nothing about the chart owner's dasha, nothing about degree-level contacts to natal planets and nothing about the other slow movers loading the chart at the same time. Those refinements are what separate a calendar from a reading, and they are covered in the how-to-read section further down.
Jupiter transit dates 2025 to 2028
Every date below is sidereal under True Pushya Paksha, computed with Swiss Ephemeris. The same astronomical moments carry slightly different dates under Lahiri and different sign labels under tropical reckonings; the why-dates-differ section explains the offsets.
| Movement | Date | Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Taurus → Gemini | 9 May 2025 | Single pass |
| Gemini → Cancer | 6 Oct 2025 | First pass |
| Retreats into Gemini (retrograde) | 18 Dec 2025 | Retreat |
| Gemini → Cancer | 27 May 2026 | Final pass |
| Cancer → Leo | 23 Oct 2026 | First pass |
| Retreats into Cancer (retrograde) | 3 Feb 2027 | Retreat |
| Cancer → Leo | 19 Jun 2027 | Final pass |
| Leo → Virgo | 18 Nov 2027 | First pass |
| Retreats into Leo (retrograde) | 9 Mar 2028 | Retreat |
| Leo → Virgo | 17 Jul 2028 | Final pass |
| Virgo → Libra | 18 Dec 2028 | First pass of the next loop |
Read as chapters rather than rows: Gemini runs from May 2025 (with a retrograde encore from December 2025 to May 2026), Cancer holds from May 2026 to October 2026 and again from February to June 2027, Leo holds from June to November 2027 and again from March to July 2028, and Virgo owns the second half of 2028 before the Libra edge appears in December. This page stays at this URL and the table extends as the engine is run forward each year.
The retrograde loop: first pass, retreat, final pass
The mechanism is worth understanding once because it repeats forever. Jupiter never actually reverses; Earth, on a faster inner orbit, laps it roughly every thirteen months, and during the overtaking window Jupiter appears to slide backward against the stars for about four months. Each year the whole loop shifts roughly one sign forward. When the loop lands mid-sign, nothing dramatic happens to the calendar. When it lands on a boundary, one ingress becomes three dated events: the first forward pass into the new sign, the retrograde retreat into the old sign and the final forward pass that begins the full stay.
From 2025 to 2028 the loop lands on a boundary three years running, and the shape is nearly identical each time. Cancer gets a first taste from 6 October to 18 December 2025, then the full stay from 27 May 2026. Leo gets a first taste from 23 October 2026 to 3 February 2027, then the full stay from 19 June 2027. Virgo gets a first taste from 18 November 2027 to 9 March 2028, then the full stay from 17 July 2028. Same figure, drawn one sign further along each year.
Classical practice reads the three passes as preview, replay and confirmation: the first pass introduces the new house's theme, the retreat re-opens the previous house's business for a few months, and the final pass settles the year-long chapter. That is a reading convention, not a measured claim. What the geometry does establish mechanically is that anyone tracking a Jupiter theme in 2025-2028 should expect the theme to arrive, withdraw and return, and that a date-stamped event near a first pass will sit inside a window that re-opens months later.
The Cancer chapter: exaltation, 2026 to 2027
One sign in this run carries more weight in the classical literature than the other three combined. Cancer is Jupiter's exaltation sign, the placement the texts rank as its strongest by sign dignity, and a Cancer transit comes around only once per twelve-year circuit. The current window is split by the retrograde loop: 27 May to 23 October 2026 direct, then 3 February to 19 June 2027 after the retreat, with the short 2025 first taste ahead of both. As of this page's publication, Jupiter is inside this window.
Because the window is rare and classically loaded, it is the most-covered single transit in this library. Jupiter exalted in Cancer 2026-27 reads the window against India's national chart. Jupiter exits Cancer on 19 June 2027 treats the closing date as the hinge and is the market-facing companion piece. The sector studies hang off the same dates: gold into the 2027 exit, silver across 2027-28, the 2026 monsoon and telecom and AI infrastructure through 2026-27. Where those pieces make dated calls they carry falsifiers and tracker entries; this hub only fixes the calendar they share.
A limitation worth stating plainly: exaltation is a dignity ranking inside the classical system, not an established empirical effect. Whether an exalted Jupiter transit correlates with measurably different outcomes than an ordinary one is exactly the kind of question Tempora's case sets exist to test, and the honest current answer is that the sample of twelve-year windows is small. Treat the Cancer chapter as classically emphasised, not as guaranteed to outperform.
Why these dates differ from most published listings
Two separate choices move Jupiter dates between sources. The first is the zodiac itself: tropical systems, standard in Western astrology, anchor the zodiac to the equinox, while sidereal systems anchor it to the stars. The two now differ by roughly 24 degrees, close to a full sign, so a tropical listing can place Jupiter a sign ahead of every date on this page. That layer is unpacked in sidereal vs tropical.
The second choice is finer: which star anchor. Most Vedic almanacs and software default to the Lahiri ayanamsa. Tempora computes with True Pushya Paksha, an anchor set to the centre of the Pushya nakshatra, which sits roughly a tenth of a degree from Lahiri in the current era. Jupiter in direct motion covers a tenth of a degree in under a day, so mid-sign the two systems barely disagree. Near a station or a boundary crossing, where apparent motion slows toward zero, the same offset can move an ingress date by several days. The full argument for the anchor is in True Pushya Paksha vs Lahiri, with the KP comparison in True Pushya Paksha vs KP. Neither anchor is wrong; they are different commitments about where the sidereal zodiac starts, and a date mismatch with your panchanga is expected rather than an error.
How to read a Jupiter transit against your chart
The calendar above is the same for everyone. What personalises it is the house count. With whole sign houses, the rising sign is the first house and each following sign is the next house, so a single ingress lands in a different house for each ascendant: Jupiter's move into Cancer is a first house event for a Cancer rising, a twelfth house event for a Leo rising and a tenth house event for a Libra rising. The classical reading then attaches Jupiter's expansive signification to that house's affairs for roughly a year.
Because Jupiter advances one sign per year, it works like a one-house-a-year escalator: whatever house it supported last year, it supports the next house this year, and it returns to any given house roughly every twelve years. That cadence is the practical appeal of Jupiter work. A twelve-year lookback at what happened the last time Jupiter crossed your first, tenth or eleventh house is a cheap personal base rate, and it is a better calibration than any generic sign forecast. The convention is to run the count twice, once from the ascendant and once from the Moon sign, and to weight windows where both counts flag the same house family.
For worked examples, the 2027 by ascendant series rotates the full 2027 skeleton, Jupiter included, through all twelve rising signs. The Jupiter-specific highlights of this run: Leo ascendant takes the 19 June 2027 ingress on the lagna itself, Virgo ascendant receives Jupiter on the lagna from 18 November 2027, and Cancer ascendant holds the exalted transit in the first house through June 2027. If you do not know your rising sign, Kaal computes it from birth data with the same ephemeris and ayanamsa this table uses, and maps the transit windows onto your own houses.
Two refinements keep the reading honest. First, transits sit on top of the dasha layer, and the running period usually matters more than any single transit; a supported Jupiter window lands differently inside Jupiter's mahadasha than inside an unrelated period. Second, sign-level reading has a resolution limit, and classical technique refines it with point systems such as Jupiter's ashtakavarga and with the nakshatra grain covered in Jupiter-ruled nakshatras. A house transit is a window, not an event: the escalator tells you which floor the doors open on, not what walks out.
Jupiter is also only half of the slow-moving story in this stretch. The nodes shift their axis on 27 December 2026, and eclipse seasons cluster around wherever they sit; the companion hub, Rahu Ketu transit, carries that calendar.
Frequently asked
How long does Jupiter stay in one sign?
Jupiter's orbital period is close to twelve years, so it averages about twelve months per sidereal sign. The retrograde loop stretches or compresses individual stays: when the loop straddles a sign boundary the planet enters a sign, retreats out of it and re-enters months later, so a single chapter can be split into a short first pass and a longer final pass. Across 2025 to 2028 that split shape repeats for Cancer, Leo and Virgo in turn.
Where is Jupiter right now?
As of this page's publication in July 2026, Jupiter is in sidereal Cancer under the True Pushya Paksha ayanamsa, its exaltation sign. It re-entered Cancer on 27 May 2026 after the retrograde retreat into Gemini, moves into Leo on 23 October 2026, retreats back into Cancer on 3 February 2027 and leaves Cancer for good on 19 June 2027. Lahiri-based listings can show a different sign near these boundary dates.
What does Jupiter's retrograde double pass mean?
Earth overtakes Jupiter once a year, which makes Jupiter appear to move backward for roughly four months. When that apparent reversal straddles a sign boundary, the ingress effectively happens three times: a first forward pass into the new sign, a retrograde retreat into the old sign and a final forward pass that sticks. Classical practice reads the first pass as a preview, the retreat as a replay of the prior chapter and the final pass as the start of the full stay. This is geometry, not an event forecast.
Why does Jupiter in Cancer matter more than other signs?
Cancer is Jupiter's exaltation sign, the placement classical texts rank as its strongest by sign dignity. A Cancer transit happens roughly once every twelve years, and the 2026-27 window is the one the current cycle offers. Whether exaltation translates into measurable outcomes is an open research question; Tempora's market-facing studies on this window are linked from this page, each with its own stated limitations.
Why do these dates differ from other published Jupiter transit dates?
Most published Vedic dates use the Lahiri ayanamsa. Tempora computes with True Pushya Paksha, a sidereal anchor that sits roughly a tenth of a degree away from Lahiri in the current era. Jupiter covers about a tenth of a degree in half a day to a day of direct motion, but near stations and boundaries the offset can move an ingress date by days. Neither anchor is wrong; they are different commitments about where the sidereal zodiac starts.
Is a Jupiter transit alone enough to time an event?
No. Sign-level transit reading is the coarsest layer of Vedic timing. The dasha period running underneath the chart usually matters more than any single transit, degree-level contacts to natal planets refine the sign-level picture, and Jupiter is one of several slow movers loading the chart at once. These pages describe structural windows, periods of added support in specific life areas, not guaranteed events on named dates.
Read next
This page presents conventional Vedic transit teaching applied to the 2025-2028 calendar, computed sidereally with the True Pushya Paksha ayanamsa via Swiss Ephemeris. Structural windows are context, not guarantees; classical dignity rankings such as exaltation are reading conventions, not established empirical effects, and individual charts vary in ways a shared calendar cannot capture. This page does not constitute financial, medical, legal or personal advice. First published 10 July 2026 by Tempora Research.