The answer today
No. Jupiter is moving direct today. The next retrograde begins on December 13, 2026 at 27°01' Leo and runs to April 13, 2027 — 80 days from now.
Every upcoming period
| Stations retrograde | Turns direct | In | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 13, 2026 | April 13, 2027 | Leo | 121 days |
| January 12, 2028 | May 13, 2028 | Virgo | 122 days |
| February 10, 2029 | June 13, 2029 | Libra | 123 days |
| March 13, 2030 | July 15, 2030 | Scorpio | 123 days |
| April 15, 2031 | August 16, 2031 | Sagittarius | 123 days |
| May 19, 2032 | September 17, 2032 | Aquarius | 121 days |
What retrograde motion actually is
Jupiter does not reverse. Earth and Jupiter orbit the Sun at different speeds, and when the geometry between them changes in a particular way, Jupiter appears from here to move backward against the background stars for a stretch of weeks. Its actual motion never changes.
The effect is entirely a matter of viewing angle, which is why every planet does it and why the periods are perfectly predictable centuries in advance.
How much of the time it is retrograde
Over the published range Jupiter is retrograde for 970 days out of 2900, which is 33% of the time. The periods last 121 days on average, and there are 8 of them in the range.
That proportion is worth knowing before treating a retrograde as an unusual condition. For the outer planets it is close to half the year, every year, which makes it the normal state of affairs rather than an event — and any reading that treats it as an interruption is describing something that is true more often than not.
What the tradition makes of it
The convention is that a retrograde planet's significations turn inward and backward, so the period suits review rather than launch. For Jupiter that means the areas it governs are better revisited than committed to.
Stated that narrowly it is a useful prompt. Stated as a general curse on the weeks concerned it stops being a reading and becomes a superstition, and the difference is worth keeping.
The one genuinely practical observation is about the station rather than the period. A planet at a station is moving almost not at all in longitude, so it sits on the same degree for days at a time — and if that degree happens to touch something in your own chart, the contact is unusually long. That is a real feature of the geometry rather than a piece of lore, and it applies equally to the direct station at the far end.
Questions people ask about this
Is Jupiter retrograde today?
No — next on December 13, 2026
How often does Jupiter go retrograde?
The table above lists every upcoming period with its length. Inner planets do it a few times a year at most; the outer ones spend months of every year retrograde.
Does Jupiter retrograde cause problems?
No. It is a line-of-sight effect produced by Earth's own motion. The traditional reading treats it as a period better suited to review than to launch, which is a rule of thumb, not a mechanism.