The answer today
No. Mercury is moving direct today. The next retrograde begins on October 24, 2026 at 20°59' Scorpio and runs to November 13, 2026 — 30 days from now.
Every upcoming period
| Stations retrograde | Turns direct | In | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 24, 2026 | November 13, 2026 | Scorpio | 20 days |
| February 9, 2027 | March 3, 2027 | Pisces | 22 days |
| June 10, 2027 | July 4, 2027 | Cancer | 24 days |
| October 7, 2027 | October 28, 2027 | Scorpio | 21 days |
| January 24, 2028 | February 14, 2028 | Aquarius | 21 days |
| May 21, 2028 | June 14, 2028 | Gemini | 24 days |
| September 19, 2028 | October 11, 2028 | Libra | 22 days |
| January 7, 2029 | January 27, 2029 | Aquarius | 20 days |
| May 1, 2029 | May 25, 2029 | Taurus | 24 days |
| September 2, 2029 | September 25, 2029 | Libra | 23 days |
| December 22, 2029 | January 11, 2030 | Capricorn | 20 days |
| April 13, 2030 | May 6, 2030 | Taurus | 24 days |
| August 16, 2030 | September 8, 2030 | Virgo | 23 days |
| December 6, 2030 | December 25, 2030 | Capricorn | 20 days |
| March 26, 2031 | April 18, 2031 | Aries | 23 days |
| July 29, 2031 | August 22, 2031 | Leo | 24 days |
| November 19, 2031 | December 9, 2031 | Sagittarius | 20 days |
| March 7, 2032 | March 30, 2032 | Aries | 23 days |
| July 10, 2032 | August 3, 2032 | Leo | 24 days |
| November 2, 2032 | November 22, 2032 | Sagittarius | 20 days |
What retrograde motion actually is
Mercury does not reverse. Earth and Mercury orbit the Sun at different speeds, and when the geometry between them changes in a particular way, Mercury 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 Mercury is retrograde for 644 days out of 3267, which is 20% of the time. The periods last 22 days on average, and there are 29 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 Mercury 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 Mercury retrograde today?
No — next on October 24, 2026
How often does Mercury 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 Mercury 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.