Rahu and Ketu sign change, December 2026: the date and how it was computed

What Rahu and Ketu are

Rahu and Ketu are the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the path of the Sun across the sky, called the lunar nodes. They are always exactly opposite each other, 180 degrees apart. Eclipses happen only when the Sun and Moon are near them. Vedic astrology counts both as grahas, though neither is a body.

The nodes move backward through the zodiac, about 19.3 degrees a year, and make one full circle in about 18.6 years. That gives each sign pair about a year and a half before they step back to the next. The Sun returns to the same node every 346.6 days, the eclipse year, about 18.6 days short of a calendar year, so eclipse seasons slide earlier each year.

The date in December 2026, computed

Rahu leaves Aquarius for Capricorn on 5 December 2026, in the evening Indian time. Panchangs differ by a few hours on that day because of the node and the ayanamsa they use. The engine's value is 10:32 pm IST, which is 5 December 2026, 5:02 pm in UTC. At the same instant Ketu leaves Leo for Cancer, since the two are opposite.

A count that follows the true node instead of the mean node gives about 25 November 2026, computed here as 25 November 2026, 5:46 pm IST, under the same Lahiri ayanamsa. The true node swings around the mean node, so it reaches the boundary about ten days earlier.

This was found with the engine's node-crossing solver, not read from a table. It walks forward a day at a time until the node's sidereal longitude passes 300 degrees, the boundary between Capricorn and Aquarius, then halves the interval until the instant is fixed to under a millisecond. The settings are the Swiss Ephemeris, the Lahiri ayanamsa and the mean node.

Why published dates differ

The date of a sign change depends on two choices, the ayanamsa and whether the mean or the true node is used. The mean node moves smoothly. The true node wobbles around it. The same boundary gives these dates:

The spread runs from late November to early January, so a panchang that shows a different date from this page is not necessarily wrong. Look for which ayanamsa and node it uses. This site uses Lahiri and the mean node, as listed on the method page.

The change before and after

Under the same settings, Rahu moved from Pisces to Aquarius on 18 May 2025, 7:34 pm Indian time, in 2025. The next change after this one, from Capricorn to Sagittarius, is on 24 June 2028, 1:29 am, in 2028. Ketu makes the matching move each time.

What changes in a chart

The nodes are points, not bodies, so nothing visible happens in the sky when they change sign. In a chart, a planet's house is counted from the rising sign or the moon sign, so when the nodes pass into a new sign the house they occupy in a given chart moves by one. To see which signs and houses the nodes sit in for a birth, use the free kundli. The sign pages for Aquarius, Capricorn, Leo and Cancer list the nakshatras inside each.