Welcome to 2026! The year has already brought some major geopolitical events only three days in, making good on the promises of this year’s astrology.
Before we get into it, I want to give a brief personal update. 2025 was a jam-packed year of major life events for me. I’m currently on an extended leave of absence from work (both my day job and my astrology work). I am well but I just can’t keep up with things as I usually do.
My plan is to re-open astrology consultations in the next couple of months. I also want to do more astrology writing this year. However, I can’t commit to a firm timeline at this point. Thanks for your patience, especially those of you who are waiting for a reading and/or for me to post this forecast.
2026 is very much 2025, Part Two. Together, 2025 and 2026 form the most astrologically active years of the decade, after 2020 itself.
Before you panic, remember what I said last year in my 2025 forecast: active is not the same as bad (or good, for that matter). There are a lot of different major astrological changes and configurations over these two years, marking a radical shift in energies from the first part of the decade.
Change is scary. It’s true that these periods of major astrological change tend to bring lots of major geopolitical upheaval. However, many people can and will thrive during these periods; it all comes back to your own life, your own outlook and ultimately, your own natal chart.
Change is inevitable and unstoppable. The best we can do is try to ride the waves in our own way and not get swept up in endless doom narratives that will swallow you whole.
Before you dive into the rest of this post, you may want to refresh yourself on my overview of the astrology of the 2020s, as many of the major shifts this decade occur in 2026.
Here are the major astrological transits in 2026:
| Neptune -> Aries | Jan 26 |
| Saturn -> Aries | Feb 13 |
| Eclipse (solar) 28 Aquarius | Feb 17 |
| Saturn-Neptune conjunct 0 Aries | Feb 20 |
| Eclipse (lunar) 12 Virgo | Mar 3 |
| Uranus -> Gemini | Apr 25 |
| Jupiter -> Leo | June 29 |
| Mars conjunct Uranus | July 4 |
| Uranus trine Pluto | July 18 |
| Jupiter opposite Pluto | July 20 |
| Lunar Nodes -> Leo-Aquarius | July 27 |
| Eclipse (solar) 20 Leo | Aug 12 |
| Eclipse (lunar) 4 Pisces | Aug 28 |
| Venus Rx 8 Scorpio – 22 Libra | Oct 3 – Nov 13 |
| Uranus trine Pluto | Nov 29 |
2025 brought us a sample of what will be centre stage in 2026. We got a sneak peak at the ingresses of Saturn and Neptune in Aries, the ingress of Uranus into Gemini and the trine between Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius.
When working on this forecast, I couldn’t help but think of a bunch of cliches to describe this quality of time: The Future is Here; There’s No Going Back; It’s a Brave New World (dystopic connotations fully intended).
The point of these hackneyed expressions is to convey the magnitude of change. It’s hard to overstate just how major these outer planet shifts are. They are ushering in a new chapter in world history. This is a momentous turning point and we are going to experience a lot of history in a short time.
Saturn and Neptune in Aries; Saturn-Neptune conjunction
Neptune has been in Pisces since 2011. Saturn joined Neptune there in March 2023. The two planets got oh-so-close to a conjunction when they ingressed Aries nearly simultaneously in early 2025, but the exact conjunction won’t perfect until February 20, 2026. This conjunction will feel like an exhalation after an extended held breath and will reverberate throughout history for decades to come. The exact conjunction should bring some major historical events in 2026, but the impact and after-effects will continue for much longer.
The fact that this conjunction is at 0 Aries, the start of the zodiac, puts even more emphasis on this transit.
Saturn-Neptune conjunctions coincide with major world events. Broadly, they are events in which fantasies, hopes and dreams are turned into reality, and/or there is widespread disillusionment over the failure to manifest these aspirations. New social, governmental, economic and/or national structures are formed while others are destroyed. Regimes change, national borders are redrawn, ideologies clash.
Here is a very brief list of events that occurred under the three previous Saturn-Neptune conjunctions. I focused on the major events where national borders changed and various social/economic ideologies clashed, but obviously there were many more things that occurred during these periods:
- 1989 in Capricorn:
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Collapse of communism throughout the Soviet Union
- Tiananmen Square
- U.S. invasion of Panama
- Denmark is first nation to legalize same-sex marriage
- 1952-53 in Libra:
- Korean War
- Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
- Cuban revolution starts
- Iranian coup
- Red Scare/McCarthyism
- 1917 in Leo:
- US enters WWI in April; war ends in November
- Russian revolution
We are almost certain to see some major changes in geopolitical borders very soon – if not in 2026, then shortly after. The obvious spots for this are:
- Russia-Ukraine and the broader area of the former Soviet Union
- Israel-Palestine and the broader area of the Middle East
- China-Taiwan
- The Far North and Greenland
I’m typing this out on they day that the U.S. did a military strike on Venezuela and detained Nicolás Maduro, the nation’s leader. Needless to say, this is a major geopolitical move and very much a Saturn-Neptune signature. The U.S. has not taken direct military action in Latin American since the invasion of Panama in 1989, when it captured the Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega – an event that’s shockingly similar to what just happened with Venezuela’s Maduro, and which was perfectly timed to the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction.
The sign of Aries is very different than Pisces, and this landscape will inform Saturn and Neptune’s actions here. The watery potentials of Pisces evaporate into the fiery conflicts of Aries.
Pisces is a vast, fathomless ocean of possibility. In these depths you can pick any side, all sides, no sides. The Piscean dreams of dissolved boundaries, divine merging of body and mind, psychedelic transcendence, peak escapism, collectivist urgings – all of this disappears.
Instead, we get the stark, militant battlefield of Aries. Here, everyone is forced to pick a side. If you try to abstain, you’ll get dumped onto one side whether you like it or not. Aries demands a winner and a loser.
Saturn is in its fall in Aries, as it is opposite Libra, the sign of Saturn’s exaltation. Saturn in Aries promises that the winners and losers in any conflict are not determined through fairness or justice. These winners aren’t the strongest or most heroic; the cleverest or the most noble. Instead, those who come out ahead during this period are the ones who successfully lie, cheat, steal, fluke and/or stumble their way to victory.
Neptune conjures up dreams and hopes, illusions and disillusions. In Aries, the Neptunian dreams shift to visions of glorious combat: the victorious soldier triumphing over his enemies. It’s the hope of the pioneer, fast-paced progress and the illusion that if you just move fast and hard, you’ll be triumphant.
The warrior dreams will continue for the next decade, and we will see wars continued and new. Some will be physical, literal expression of war – flavoured with radical new technological breakthroughs courtesy of the Uranus-Pluto trine (more on that below).
Other wars will be metaphorical, fought in the realms of the mind and the heart. The weaponization of your attention and your empathy, which have already been a bloody battlefield for years at this point, will take on new forms.
While in Aries, Saturn is extremely ill-equipped to turn any of Neptune’s visions into a stable reality. If there’s any optimism on the horizon, it’s this knowledge that the changes wrought over the next couple of years are not likely to have staying power. Aries moves fast and hard, but doesn’t last. It will be when Saturn moves into Taurus (in 2028) where the rebuilding will occur and we’ll start to form some longer-term structures after they all get blown apart in 2026.
Aside from the major geopolitical shifts that are coming, the movement of these two planets into Aries means that many Pisces-related industries will be gutted. Astrology and occult/magic spaces are one of them, and I think this will extend further into the entire sphere of mind/body/wellness.
The Neptune in Pisces era brought about widespread, mainstream acceptance of spiritual and metaphysical pursuits. Yoga and meditation, as just two examples, have become so mainstream they are now huge commercialized industries. This opened the door for more esoteric fields to enter the marketplace and it’s now easier than ever to find a reiki practitioner, an astrologer, a psychic medium, a tarot card reader.
Droves of people flocked to these industries, as both practitioners and consumers. This is going to change.
I wonder if we’ll see a resurgence of hard materialism under Neptune in Aries. I certainly think part of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction will be a rejection of the esoteric arts. I hope it doesn’t go full Satanic Panic (which occurred the previous conjunction), but it could. This will be highly context-dependent, however.
I’m not overly concerned about getting arrested for practicing astrology in Canada, but there will be areas of the world where this type of persecution will occur. If I were in the American south, for example, I’d be taking extra precautions to safeguard myself and my practice over the coming years. Moral panics are coming; it’s just a matter of when and what form they take.
At the very least, a lot of the work is likely to dry up. The need will still be there but the dollars won’t be. There’s a big Neptunian bubble in the economy and when it pops – whether dramatically in a day, or slowly released over months – many people will find themselves in a very different economic context.
There will be a big reckoning for all the people who jumped on the Pisces bandwagon. Those who lack any sound structure won’t last. Similarly, clients will have to make hard choices and many won’t be able to engage with these services even if they want to. If it comes down to paying rent or getting an astrology reading, the choice has already been made.
Uranus in Gemini; Uranus-Pluto trine; Mars-Uranus conjunction
2026 ushers in a radical reordering of daily technology, thanks to Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius. Uranus spends about 7 years in Gemini and Pluto is in Aquarius for the better part of two decades, until the mid-2040s.
These two planets will be in a trine relationship for the rest of the 2020s. The first instance of this trine occurred in mid-2025 and we get a few more exact hits over the next few years:
- July 18, 2026
- November 29, 2026
- June 15, 2027
- January 13, 2028
- May 9, 2028
The cycle of Uranus-trine-Pluto is erratic and occurs at irregular intervals. Here’s what I said about it in my 2020 decade forecast:
“These periods are very dynamic and full of rapid change. Because it’s a trine aspect, it tends to be more productive in the sense that these planets are cooperating and working together to manifest each of their agendas. They will collaborate on the invention of new exotic technology on the level of both human and non-human alike. They promise great innovation, disruption, destruction, revolution and evolution.
There are periods where you get revolutions and rebellions; power plays; radical social and political movements; technological advances and scientific breakthroughs.”
2026 firmly ushers in a radical reordering of daily technology. Thanks to the Uranus-Pluto trine, this year will be when we really start to get an idea of the new technology that will reshape our daily lives for the next century. The last time that we experienced this transit was the 1920s, where western society adopted electric lighting and other daily-used electric appliances, in just a few short years. Cars also became ubiquitous.
That same level of daily tech is being installed now. The exact specifications are still being determined, and yes it involves AI – but not in its current form. Chat GPT queries and other AI tools have already become a daily habit for many, but the full scale of this change will extend far beyond what we see at this moment.
I’m not going to predict any specific details because, quite frankly, I just don’t know. What I do know is that the technology we use on a daily basis is going to look quite different in 2030 than it does now.
I want to share another quote from my 2020s decade post as it continues to be relevant:
“I think we will also see a rejection of technology as well as laws put in place to protect technology and machine. This may be a time period when AI gains rights, which should be a very interesting development that challenges the very concept of “human” rights on a fundamental level.
There may also be a general social trend where people consciously choose to limit their engagement with technology, a sort of return to tradition that we’re already seeing. Overlaid with the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, we also may see some new religious movements or even cults form around both technology and the rejection of technology. Personally, I’m both excited and nervous to meet robot Jesus.”
Alongside the development and deployment of AI, the energy sector will be overhauled too. Electricity demands have skyrocketed due to the widespread use of AI.
Nuclear power is the obvious choice, and fits very well with the Uranus-Pluto trine. I think nuclear will become the energy-generation standard in many places that currently rely on fossil fuels, including my home country of Canada. Even though I’m from oil-rich Alberta, I just don’t buy into the hype around Canada’s supposed renewed interest in oil pipelines. It seems more likely that we’ll build a new nuclear power plant before a new pipeline.
However, it seems like the US and probably Canada will cling to fossil fuels for the time being, since new energy infrastructure will take decades to build out. In this respect, North America is already woefully behind. While the US has a decent-sized nuclear grid, that infrastructure is aging and needs to be updated or replaced.
Alternative forms of power generation may be developed in the next few years, and/or nuclear power will be modernized. In keeping with the fragmentary Age of Air, I could see small-scale nuclear power generation become the norm, as opposed to one giant reactor. Perhaps we’ll see other alternatives too.
Whatever it looks like, the energy sector is going to go through a massive transformation, and that will cause major impacts throughout financial markets and geopolitical affairs. There will be a scramble to control the world’s remaining oil reserves (which is certainly a big reason behind the U.S.’s recent actions in Venezuela), but eventually oil will need to be replaced. When we reach a point where the world no longer depends on fossil fuels to power things, what does that mean for the global balance of power?
When you overlay the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries with the Uranus-Pluto trine in Gemini-Aquarius, you get the application of radical new technology and scientific developments to various pioneering, battlefield dreams. This may give some indication of the forms this technology will take, but again I’m not going to predict any specifics at this point.
What I can say is that there will be several points of acceleration in these developments, particularly when Mars conjoins Uranus or Pluto. There will be several of these conjunctions over the next few years, for the entire duration of Uranus in Gemini:
- Jul 4, 2026 (Mars conjunct Uranus)
- Jan 11, 2028 (Mars conjunct Pluto)
- Jun 23, 2028 (Mars conjunct Uranus)
- Dec 24, 2029 (Mars conjunct Pluto)
The US has Mars and Uranus in Gemini in its natal chart. This is in the seventh house of open enemies and foreign affairs. Uranus in Gemini will bring major military developments for the US, and unfortunately that will mean new ways to wage war. This increases tenfold with Mars involved – and that first conjunction of Mars and Uranus is on US Independence Day which feels…significant.
We’ve already seen new forms of warfare that come with technological innovations, particularly drone technology used for both surveillance and attacks. Expect rapid new developments and deployments of battlefield technology over the next few years, particularly when Mars conjoins either Uranus or Pluto.
As I mentioned already, nuclear technology will be highlighted in the next few years. Sadly, I think there’s a real chance for a nuclear detonation of some sort. It could be an accident (like an aging nuclear plant having a catastrophic failure), but it might also be intentional. When I meditate on the Uranus-Pluto trine, and especially when I include Mars, the image I keep seeing is a battalion of AI-powered drones dropping mini nukes over a concentrated area.
That’s bleak, I admit. For now, circle July 4, 2026 in your calendar and let’s move on.
Jupiter in Leo; Jupiter-Pluto opposition
Say goodbye to the good times of Jupiter in Cancer, which was the biggest balm smoothing over the prickly astrology of 2025. Jupiter ingresses the sign of Leo on June 29, 2026, leaving his sign of exaltation and thereby removing a big source of good energy in the skies. As someone with a stellium in Cancer, I will miss the big guy being there – especially because Jupiter departs from the crab’s sign just a week before my solar return. No fair.
Jupiter doesn’t have much essential dignity in Leo, save for some by triplicity, bound (in the first six degrees) and in the second decan. Even worse, upon entering Leo, Jupiter directly opposes Pluto in Aquarius. This adds an underworld jolt to the jovial sphere, and is likely to dredge up some less than savoury elements. This will be a rude awakening for Jupiter-ruled people and those with strong Cancer placements, though it might give a slight boost to folks with Leo placements.
Jupiter in Leo also forms a trine with Saturn and Neptune in Aries. Jupiter will make an exact trine with Neptune on July 20, and with Saturn on August 31 (with a couple more exact hits of the latter in 2027, on April 3 and July 11).
Being so challenged by all these malefics, Jupiter is no longer in a good place to help out with…much of anything, really.
Still, Jupiter will do his best where he can. I’m hoping that by forming that opposition with Pluto and trine with Saturn-Neptune, he’ll provide some measure of mitigating influence over the more extreme manifestations of those transits – and hopefully over the eclipse cycle too.
Eclipse Cycle in Leo-Aquarius
In 2026, the eclipse cycle moves into the Leo-Aquarius axis due to the lunar nodes shifting into these signs. That ingress occurs on July 27, 2026 but we get the first eclipse in this new cycle in early 2026.
There’s a solar eclipse at 28 Aquarius on February 17, bringing the first set of events that will be part of the Leo-Aquarius eclipse cycle. This eclipse is in the same sign as Pluto and occurs just a few days after Saturn ingresses Aries. Saturn rules Aquarius and therefore rules this eclipse, so this lunation will deliver some immediate events and information related to the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, underpinned by Plutonian intensity.
Indeed, the whole month of February is lit up astrologically, so brace yourself for what’s coming early in the year.
August delivers the year’s second set of eclipses. There’s a solar eclipse at 20 Leo on August 12, followed by a lunar eclipse at 4 Pisces on August 28. That lunar eclipse is the last eclipse to occur in the Virgo-Pisces axis, so it will mark a closure of the chain of events that started back in September 2024.
Meanwhile, August’s solar eclipse will continue the new set of events that began in February 2026, again providing another exclamation point for the Saturn-Neptune and Uranus-Pluto transits. Eclipses often mean the death of the king/leader. As well, in mundane astrology, the Sun signifies the leader and the Sun rules Leo, so when the Sun is eclipsed in its own sign that suggests some pretty stark developments for anyone in a leadership position.
Late summer, therefore, may bring some big challenges and/or changes in leaders around the world. Jupiter is conjunct this eclipse in Leo, and while Jupiter may provide a moderating influence over things, the skies are set for some big upsets nonetheless.
Aside from leadership challenges, another major theme of the eclipses in Leo-Aquarius will be the tension between the individual and the collective. This tension will overlap with the Saturn-Neptune and Uranus-Pluto themes in terms of the specifics: national identity, economic models, new technology, human rights vs. machine rights.
Venus retrograde in Scorpio and Libra
I’m not going to spend much time on the Venus retrograde in this post. You can refer back to my previous posts on Venus retrograde for a refresher on this transit, and I’ll do a post later this year that goes into this transit in more detail.
Briefly, Venus retrograde periods bring challenges to all Venusian ruled things, notably interpersonal relationships. They challenge harmony and balance and force us to contend with any excesses or issues with our natal Venus placements.
On a global scale, they can bring periods of strife and tension. This is likely to be exacerbated by the fact that Venus spends part of this retrograde period in Scorpio, where Venus is in detriment, and the other half in Libra, where Venus is in rulership.
2026’s Venus retrograde begins on October 3 at 8 Scorpio and concludes on November 13 at 22 Libra. It is likely to have two very different flavours. The first half will dredge up some icky, ugly things that were previously hidden. The second half seeks to balance, reconcile and integrate these things.
Venus will be opposite Saturn and Neptune (by sign) during her time in Libra, providing obstacles in that reconciliation process. Some ugliness will be exposed during this time period, particularly with regards to foreign affairs and diplomacy between nations, as well as major news headlines involving dark and negative things around women, and possibly children as well (Venus rules both of these).
This transit brings hope and the possibility for justice, but the opposition to Saturn-Neptune doesn’t give me a lot of optimism that justice will be served in any meaningful way.
I can’t overstate just how monumental 2026 is on an astrological level. This looks to be a year of major historical events. It will be one for the record books, literally.
I wish everyone all the best through these tumultuous times.