Zodiac sign dates: when each sign starts and what to do if you’re on the cusp

Your Sun sign is the zodiac sign the Sun was in on the day you were born. It is the sign most people mean when they ask what their zodiac sign is. This guide lists the dates for all twelve signs, explains why they shift from year to year, what it means to be born on the cusp, how Vedic dates differ, and how to find your exact Sun sign.

Zodiac sign dates (tropical zodiac)

• Aries: 21 March to 19 April (Fire, Cardinal)
• Taurus: 20 April to 20 May (Earth, Fixed)
• Gemini: 21 May to 20 June (Air, Mutable)
• Cancer: 21 June to 22 July (Water, Cardinal)
• Leo: 23 July to 22 August (Fire, Fixed)
• Virgo: 23 August to 22 September (Earth, Mutable)
• Libra: 23 September to 22 October (Air, Cardinal)
• Scorpio: 23 October to 21 November (Water, Fixed)
• Sagittarius: 22 November to 21 December (Fire, Mutable)
• Capricorn: 22 December to 19 January (Earth, Cardinal)
• Aquarius: 20 January to 18 February (Air, Fixed)
• Pisces: 19 February to 20 March (Water, Mutable)

These are the dates most commonly published. In the United States the format is usually written month first (for example, March 21 to April 19).

Why the dates are only approximate

The Sun does not enter each sign at midnight on the same date each year. A year is about 365.24 days, not a whole number, so the exact moment the Sun enters a sign moves by several hours from one year to the next, and resets with each leap year. That is why most sources give a range, and why the boundary can be a day earlier or later. The Sun’s entry into Aries, the spring equinox, falls on March 19, 20 or 21 depending on the year.

A second point: the time zone matters. The Sun enters a sign at one precise instant, which falls on different calendar dates in different time zones. Someone born in London at 11pm and someone born in Sydney at 9am the next day can share the same Sun sign, but the dates look different.

What “on the cusp” means

If you were born on the first or last day of a sign, people say you are on the cusp. Some say cusp babies blend the traits of both signs. Astrologically, you have one Sun sign, and which one depends on the exact time and place of birth. Someone born at 2am on a boundary day can have a different Sun sign from someone born at 10pm on the same date.

If you feel like a blend of two signs, it is also common to find that your Moon sign, Rising sign or other planets cover the other side. The Sun is only one of ten planets in your chart.

How to find your exact Sun sign

The reliable way is to calculate a birth chart from your date, time and place of birth. The chart shows the exact degree of your Sun, along with your Moon and Rising signs. Our birth chart calculator does this in seconds and shows which planets were retrograde when you were born. If you do not know your birth time, the Sun sign is still accurate unless you were born on a boundary day.

Tropical and sidereal zodiacs

These dates apply to the tropical zodiac used in Western astrology, which is fixed to the seasons. Vedic (sidereal) astrology uses a zodiac anchored to the stars, which today sits about 24 degrees behind the tropical one. A Vedic Sun sign is usually the sign before the Western one: someone who is a Leo in Western astrology is typically a Cancer in Vedic. Both systems are internally consistent. They answer slightly different questions.

Ruling planets and elements

Each sign has a ruling planet, an element and a modality. The elements are fire, earth, air and water, and the modalities are cardinal (initiating), fixed (stabilizing) and mutable (adapting). The three modalities repeat across the four elements to give twelve combinations, one for each sign. Our zodiac sign pages cover each sign’s personality, strengths, challenges, love and career in depth.

Zodiac dates and the thirteenth sign

You may have seen headlines about a thirteenth sign, Ophiuchus. The Sun does pass through the constellation Ophiuchus for about 18 days each year, but the astrological zodiac is divided into twelve equal 30-degree signs measured from the spring equinox, not by the irregular sizes of the constellations. The signs and the constellations have drifted apart over two thousand years because of the precession of the equinoxes. Western astrology does not use Ophiuchus.