Zodiac Sign Dates: Every Sign and Why They Shift

Zodiac sign dates are the date ranges you see in every horoscope column: Aries from 21 March, Taurus from 20 April, and so on. They are handy, but they are also an average. The Sun does not change sign at midnight on a fixed date; it crosses from one sign into the next at a precise moment that moves around by several hours every year. This article gives you the usual dates for all twelve signs, explains why the edges shift, shows the real 2027 crossing times, and tells you how to be certain of your own sign if your birthday sits on a boundary.

What are the dates of the 12 zodiac signs?

These are the usual date ranges. Most years, the Sun is in the sign shown on every date within the range. Click a sign to read more about it.

Each sign covers exactly 30 degrees of the zodiac, and the Sun travels about one degree a day, so it spends roughly 30 days in each. Because the Sun moves a little faster in January and a little slower in July, the signs are not all the same length in days: Cancer and Leo last longer than Capricorn and Aquarius.

If your birthday falls well inside a range, such as 5 May or 10 October, you can stop here. Your Sun sign is the one in the table. If it falls on the first or last day of a range, read on.

Why do zodiac sign dates change from year to year?

The calendar and the sky do not line up perfectly. A year in the Gregorian calendar is 365 days, but the Earth takes about 365.24 days to go once around the Sun. The Sun therefore arrives at each zodiac boundary roughly six hours later than it did the year before. Over four years that adds up to a full day, and the leap day on 29 February pulls it back. So the crossing time creeps later for three years, then jumps back about 18 hours in a leap year.

The moment the Sun crosses into a new sign is called its ingress. Astrologers (and astronomers) can calculate it to the second. The sign dates in newspapers are simply the most common calendar dates on which those crossings fall.

Two more things add to the confusion:

• Time zones. An ingress at 01:04 UTC on 23 July is still the evening of 22 July in New York, and 11:04 in the morning on 23 July in Sydney. The same moment lands on different calendar dates depending on where you were born.
• Birth time. On the day of the ingress, whether you are a Cancer or a Leo depends on whether you were born before or after the crossing, not on the date alone.

The Sun's sign changes in 2027: exact times in UTC

To show how the moment moves, here are the twelve ingresses of 2027, calculated with the astronomy-engine library (the same type of ephemeris maths we use for our charts) and given in UTC to the minute. They use the tropical zodiac, which starts at the March equinox.

Compare this with the usual dates above and you can see where 2027 differs from the textbook table.

• Aries begins on 20 March in 2027, a day earlier than the 21 March in most horoscopes. Someone born on 20 March 2027 after 20:24 UTC is an Aries, while someone born earlier that day is still a Pisces. (That crossing is also the March equinox.)
• Leo begins at 01:04 UTC on 23 July. In London that is 02:04 on 23 July, but for anyone born in North or South America on the evening of 22 July it is still Cancer.
• Capricorn begins on 22 December at 02:42 UTC, so a baby born at 01:00 UTC that day is a Sagittarius and one born at 03:00 UTC is a Capricorn. The Capricorn dates in the table (22 December) hold, but only just.

Notice too that the gaps between ingresses are not equal. Aquarius to Pisces takes under 30 days, Cancer to Leo more than 31. That is because the Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical and the Sun's apparent speed changes through the year.

How can I be sure of my zodiac sign?

If your birthday is within a day of a boundary, do this:

1. Find your exact birth time and place. A birth certificate, hospital record or family memory will usually give you this. If you only know it roughly, that can still be enough, as the crossing happens at a specific hour.
2. Convert to UTC, or use a chart calculator. The ingress times above are in UTC, so a local birth time needs converting, including daylight saving time in force at the time. A chart calculator does this for you.
3. Compare the Sun's position. If the Sun was at 29 degrees of one sign at your birth, you belong to that sign; if it had already reached 0 degrees of the next, you belong to the next one.

Our Natal Chart Report uses your date, time and place to place the Sun to the arcminute, so there is no guessing, and you can see your Sun sign for free before you buy. If you do not know your birth time, the sign is still certain on all but the crossing day. For those few cases, read Born on the Cusp and how to read a birth chart without a birth time.

Tropical versus sidereal dates

You may also have seen a different set of dates, with Aries starting around 14 April. That is the sidereal zodiac, used in Vedic astrology, which measures signs against the fixed stars. The tropical zodiac, used by most Western astrologers and by every report on this site, measures from the March equinox, so the signs follow the seasons. The two systems are about 24 degrees apart today, which is why a sidereal chart often gives a different Sun sign. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions. Western horoscopes and the dates in this article are tropical.

Does your sign change if the dates move?

No. Nothing about you changes when the calendar shifts by a day. Your Sun sign is fixed by where the Sun was at the moment you were born, and that does not change. What moves is only the label we print on the calendar. For a bigger picture of who you are, your Sun sign is just one of the Big Three, alongside the Moon and the Rising sign.