The exact dates of the 2025 lunar year
The Wood Snake year ran from January 29, 2025 to February 16, 2026. Those 384 days are longer than a Gregorian year because a leap sixth month was inserted: 2025 carried thirteen lunar months rather than twelve, the same month number falling twice.
The 2025 new year fell 12 days earlier in the Gregorian year than the 2024 one, January 29, 2025 against February 10, 2024. Why the 2025 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Wood Snake pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2025 is Yi and the branch is the Snake, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2025 that branch is taken to mean someone private and calculating, saying considerably less than it works out. Wood, the element attached to 2025, adds growth, flexibility and the willingness to keep extending.
2025 is a yin year, the inward half of the Wood pair: 2024 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2025 is described as the snake temperament working through growth.
Born in January or early February 2025
From 1 January 2025 to January 28, 2025 the animal in force was still the Dragon, not the Snake — 28 days of 2025 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2025 is a Dragon.
The first Snake of 2025 is anyone born on January 29, 2025 or later, and the last one anyone born on February 16, 2026. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, January 29, 2025 is at the early end.
Where 2025 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2025 is position 42 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Yi stem against the Snake branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Wood Snake year was 1965 and the next is 2085.
Someone born in 1965 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2025, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2025 meets the pairing again in 2085.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Snake of 2025 is grouped with the Ox and the Rooster, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2021 and 2029. Its opposition is the Pig, six years on from 2025 in 2031.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2025 was measured to produce them; 2025 stands four years from 2021 and six from 2031, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2025
Because the 2025 lunar year opened on January 29, 2025, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, February 16, 2026, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2025 stays the Snake.
Handbooks equate the Snake of 2025 with Taurus, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2025 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2025 Wood Snake as a year-long version of Taurus flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2025 Chinese new year start?
January 29, 2025, and the year ran on to February 16, 2026 — 384 days.
What animal is 2025?
The Snake, in its Wood form, from January 29, 2025 onward; a birth earlier in 2025 is a Dragon.
Was 2025 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
Yes — a leap sixth month made 2025 thirteen months and 384 days long.
I was born in January 2025 — which animal am I?
The Dragon, unless you were born on January 29, 2025 or later, which is when the 2025 year began.