Jupiter retrograde 2026 to 2028: the three periods, their stations, and the return into Cancer

Jupiter retrograde dates, 2026 to 2028

India is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of UTC. One station falls late in the UTC evening: Jupiter turns direct at 20:09 UTC on 13 May 2028, which is 01:39 on 14 May 2028 in India. No other station and none of the three sign crossings falls within an hour of midnight in India, so every other date in the table is the same by Indian clocks.

Each retrograde begins about a month later in the calendar than the one before, and about a sign further on: Cancer 0.94 in November 2025, Leo 2.82 in December 2026, Virgo 3.31 in January 2028. Each turns direct in the sign before the one where it started, so Jupiter goes back into a sign it had already left (Gemini, then Cancer, then Leo) and stays there after the direct station until it moves forward out of it again. The transit pages for Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Virgo show those returns as separate rows. The other retrograde pages: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn.

How the engine marks Jupiter retrograde

The test is the one the vakri page defines: Jupiter is retrograde when its longitude is lower half a day after an instant than half a day before, and the station tool narrows each turn to the minute and checks it against the engine's own transit flag. The Sun and Moon are never marked retrograde and Rahu and Ketu always are, which BPHS Ch. 47 Sl. 3-4 also says of the nodes.

What BPHS and Saravali say about a retrograde Jupiter

The general rules, that retrograde motion counts as strength (BPHS Ch. 27 Sl. 21-23, Saravali Ch. 4 Sl. 36), are on the vakri page. What decides how they apply to Jupiter is that both books count it a natural benefic. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 11 lists the malefics (the Sun, Saturn, Mars, a waning Moon, Rahu and Ketu) and calls the rest benefic, and Saravali Ch. 4 Sl. 9 names Jupiter with Mercury and Venus as benefics. So the favourable half of each split applies. Saravali Ch. 5 Sl. 39 reads a retrograde benefic as strong and able to confer a kingdom, and keeps grief and purposeless wandering for a retrograde malefic. Its Moola Dasa chapter, Ch. 41 Sl. 66-68, says the dasha of a retrograde planet brings wandering, evils and enmity, and then limits that to malefics, not benefics.

BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 and Saravali Ch. 3 Sl. 35-36 agree that Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, deepest at 5 degrees, and debilitated in the seventh sign from it, Capricorn, which no period in the window reaches. Cancer is where the books leave a question open. Saravali Ch. 5 Sl. 14 reports a view held by some: a planet retrograde while exalted produces no effect, and the same holds when it becomes exalted by entering the sign in retrograde motion from the sign after it, because it takes unduly long over such a path. The example the translation gives is Jupiter entering Cancer from Leo, which is the 2026-27 period exactly. The 2025-26 period meets the first half of the view, since it turns retrograde inside Cancer. Neither comes near the 5-degree deep point: the 2026-27 period goes no lower than Cancer 22.79, and the earlier one is in Cancer only between 0.94 and the start of the sign. The verse that follows, Sl. 15, calls a planet in exaltation highly strong. This app's dignity label does not read the retrograde flag, so Jupiter in Cancer is labelled Exalted whether it is direct or retrograde.

All three periods cross back into the previous sign, the motion BPHS Ch. 27 Sl. 21-23 calls Anuvakr, with a strength of 30 against 60 for Vakr. The app's simplified Shad Bala does not draw that line: a retrograde Jupiter gets the full Chesta (motional) point either way, as a retrograde Mars, Mercury or Venus does, but not Saturn. The engine's comment cites a handbook for this (Kannan p. 23), not BPHS, and the same rule gives Jupiter the point in Gemini or Virgo whatever its motion. Jupiter's combustion limit is 11 degrees from the Sun, retrograde or not; only Mercury and Venus get a tighter limit when retrograde. Saravali Ch. 36 Sl. 7-9 doubles the rays of a planet that has just turned retrograde and takes an eighth from one just turned direct; this app computes only the base figure of Sl. 1-6, so the stations change nothing there.

Jupiter's matters, in the books' own lists, are knowledge and happiness (BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 12-13); nourishment of the body, learning, children, wealth and property (BPHS Ch. 70 Sl. 1-6, in its Ashtakavarga chapter); and auspiciousness, virtue, preceptorship, position, residence and sons, among others (Saravali Ch. 7 Sl. 7-13). None of the three books gives a general rule tying a retrograde Jupiter in transit to any of these. Advanced Predictive Astrology names a retrograde Jupiter only inside individual case studies, which are not rules, and this page does not draw on them.

Advanced Predictive Astrology Vol. II reads retrograde planets the other way, and says so of benefics in particular. On p. 325, under "Behaviour of retrograde planets in transit", it reads a planet retrograde at birth as generally adverse for health during its own dasha, and adds that in the author's experience a retrograde benefic cannot do what Parasara's rule credits to benefics in the angles, which is to promote sound health. Its one transit example depends on a birth chart: a native with a retrograde 6th lord in the ascendant meets repeated trouble at work, with promotions or transfers stayed, while that planet is retrograde in transit, and the matter moves once it turns direct. Rule 18 of its list on p. 124 calls the dasha and antardasha of retrograde planets never good, and on p. 259 it quotes The Times of Astrology: a retrograde planet usually creates a deficiency in one aspect of its house. On p. 308 it says events are set moving when certain planets, which it names as the ascendant lord, the 10th lord and the running dasha and sub-period lords, combust, rise, retrograde or change sign. For Jupiter, then, Saravali calls the retrograde benefic strong and this modern book reads the same planet as a source of difficulty.

A retrograde Jupiter at birth and in transit, in this app

At birth, the birth chart calculator applies the engine's test to the birth moment. Of 3,000 sampled birth moments from 1985 to 2060, Jupiter is flagged retrograde in 903, or 30.1 percent: a sample of birth moments, not of people. BPHS Ch. 47 Sl. 3-4 gives a dasha rule for such a planet: a graha's effects arrive at the start, middle or end of its dasha according to its decanate, and in reverse order if it is retrograde. The Jupiter Mahadasha page works through that, and the Shad Bala calculator shows the motional point.

In transit, the Gochar calculator shows the same flag beside Jupiter's sign and degree. Its verdict for Jupiter does not use the flag: the verdict comes from the house Jupiter occupies counted from your Moon, so a direct and a retrograde Jupiter in the same house read the same. The Daily reading does use it, taking one point off a retrograde graha's score for the day.