Solar return: the chart of your year
Your personal year, from one birthday to the next, is read as a climate: the mood and the areas put forward.
- Sun return
- birthday
- year
By Thomas Guilhot · updated
Your birth, the chosen year
The calculation is done on your device: nothing is sent, nothing is put in the address.
Your birth
The year
Chart calculated at the place of birth (Paris).
Example shown: Camille, born in Paris on March 14, 1987 at 2:30 PM; enter your birth details for your own year.
Your year 2026
The solar return at a glance
The chart of the Sun’s return: the exact moment, the rising sign, and the houses of the year that opens.
A yearly appointment to take stock: what the year that opens would put forward.
The chart of a year foresees nothing: it is a traditional reading, to be taken with some distance.
- The period
- From one birthday to the next
- What it shows
- The mood of your year
- With the time
- The rising sign and the areas of the year
- Today’s sky
- Current positions
What tradition says
Tradition reads the solar return as the chart of a year: the rising sign of the year, then the solar, lunar, and planetary positions would compose a mood. Each indication remains a lead to check against your own experience, in the conditional.
A conditional reading of the real sky, with no prediction: read it with some distance. Why?
How the solar return is calculated
We look for the moment when the Sun returns to exactly its birth longitude, around your birthday.
We look for the moment when the Sun returns to exactly its birth longitude, around your birthday. That moment can fall the day before or the day after the calendar date, because the solar year is not a whole number of days. The chart of the sky at that moment is then calculated at the birthplace: the rising sign and the houses of the year are given when your birth time is provided. The calculation runs in your browser.
- Moment
- The Sun’s return to its natal longitude
- Place
- Place of birth
- Houses
- Placidus
- Time unknown
- No rising sign, no houses
Other readings of the sky
The horoscope by sign
The real sky read in each sign’s solar houses.Today’s sky
Positions, Moon phase, retrogrades, and current aspects.Transits
The sky on a given date compared with your birth chart.
Share the tool: the link leads to the page, without anything you entered.
Frequently asked questions about the solar return
What is a solar return?
It is the precise moment when the Sun returns, each year, to the longitude it had at your birth. The sky of that moment is read as the chart of the year that begins. It is not a recent idea: it is ancient and varied in its methods, with no consensus on its scope.
Why does the date change from one year to the next?
Because the solar year lasts about 365 and a quarter days, not a whole number. The Sun’s return therefore slides by a few hours each year, and catches up with the calendar in leap years. It can thus fall the day before or the day after your birthday.
Should the return be calculated at the birthplace?
Astrologers debate this: some calculate at the birthplace, others at the place where the person is at the moment of the return. The tool uses the birthplace, which is simpler and more stable. This choice shifts the rising sign of the year, not the date or the moment of the return.
Does the solar return say what the year holds?
No. It is one more chart, read by tradition as the mood of the year: the areas put forward, the themes that return. It does not say what will come, and its conclusions would deserve to be checked against other readings, and against reality.
Is my data saved?
The calculation runs in your browser, and the birth date does not appear in the address. What you enter stays on your device until you close the tab, and will be reused by the other astrology tools.