Venus Retrograde in Scorpio 2026

Venus Retrograde: Myth and Symbolism

Venus goes retrograde roughly once every 18 months, and spends about 40 days in apparent backward motion. This is the inner planet that spends the least amount of time retrograde, which makes it a rare cosmic event. The brightest celestial body in the sky, Venus alternates between appearing before sunrise, as a Morning Star, and after sunset, as an Evening Star. This depends on her relationship with the Sun and the Earth, and her retrogrades mark a shift in her cycle.

Venus’s dance in the skies was carefully observed by the ancients and carried profound symbolic meaning. In ancient Mesopotamia, Venus was associated with the Goddess Inanna, and Venus’s retrograde is connected to the story of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld, one of the oldest myths known to humanity. 

The Goddess of fertility, love, and war, Inanna descended to the world of the dead to visit her sister Ereshkigal, who ruled over the world of the dead. As she passed through seven gates, Inanna had to leave behind one of her royal garments and jewelry, symbolizing her identity, power, and status. Eventually, she was killed by her sister and hung on a hook for three days and three nights. Thanks to the intervention of her helpers, she was brought back to life. However, in order to leave, she had to choose someone to take her place in the Underworld.

Venus’s disappearance and reappearance in the sky echoes Inanna’s descent, her transformation, and her eventual death, rebirth, and reemergence into the world of the living. The cycle of Venus is an invitation to descend into the unconscious, surrender the identities and attachments that once defined us, and eventually emerge into the world transformed and renewed.

Venus Retrograde: Meaning in Astrology

Astrologically, Venus’s retrograde periods are an opportunity for us to go inward and deeply examine our relationship with love, pleasure, abundance, beauty, and self-worth. These are times to reflect on and reconsider the values we are orienting toward, the way we are investing our resources, and the nature of our connections with the people in our lives. Venus retrograde also asks us to turn our attention toward our relationship with ourselves, as it represents the foundation for all the relationships we form and many of the decisions we make.

While the Goddess of Love is in apparent backward motion, unresolved feelings, unfinished business with people from the past, and old relationship patterns tend to resurface in order to be cleared out. This period is an invitation to understand these dynamics from a deeper perspective and make more conscious choices moving forward.

However, while Venus is retrograde, we may have more questions than answers. We may start questioning feelings or decisions we felt certain about, or pay closer attention to something we previously overlooked. Nevertheless, uncertainty should not be seen as a signal that something is wrong, but rather as an invitation to slow down in order to discover what we truly feel, desire, and value, and deepen our understanding of the real motivations and intentions that move us.

Venus retrograde in Scorpio 2026: Into the Depths of Our Hearts

In the Fixed Water sign of Scorpio, Venus retrograde invites us on a journey into the depths of our hearts: this is a time to explore the unconscious patterns that influence our experience of love, intimacy, pleasure, and desire. This transit has the potential to bring old attachments, fears, and wounds to the surface, offering us the opportunity to meet ourselves and others with greater honesty, vulnerability, and compassion. What was hidden beneath the surface becomes impossible to ignore, and we have chances to finally recognize the deeper emotional and psychological dynamics impacting our attractions, repulsions, desires, and attachment system.

This transit sets in motion an intense evolutionary process that will change us and our relationships from the inside out: Venus retrograde in Scorpio will remind us that awareness is the first step toward transformation. It may ask us to confront old fears of loss, betrayal, or abandonment, challenging us to acknowledge in what ways we are drawn to overpower or control others, or notice whether we give our power away too easily, and reflect on what we may gain with that.

The Venus Star Point at 0º Scorpio & the 8-Year Venus Cycle

As retrograde Venus gets closer to the Sun, she disappears from our view, embarking on her descent. Her last day of visibility as an Evening Star will be on October 19. Just like Inanna returning from the Underworld, Venus will start becoming visible again as a Morning Star on October 29, and as the days go by, she will become brighter and easier to spot in the sky.

On October 23, shortly before her return into Libra, retrograde Venus and the Sun meet at 0º45’ of Scorpio for their inferior conjunction, also popularly known as Venus Star Point. This event, energetically similar to a New Moon, marks the beginning of a New Venus Cycle, lasting 584 days, as well as the midpoint of the current retrograde. The inferior Venus-Sun conjunction is an opportunity for us to envision the kind of relationships we aspire to create and how we want to feel within them, and start implementing changes that allow us to move in that direction.

It’s also important to mention that, over the course of the years, Venus’s conjunctions with the Sun trace a clear, precise geometric pattern in the sky: a beautiful five-pointed star or rose. With this retrograde, Venus begins to create the final petal of this rose, bringing us into the last phase of a cycle that started on June 3, 2020, and will reach its completion on June 1, 2028. This 8-year Venus cycle is connected to a longer evolutionary process impacting how we experience love, relationships, and desire. The journey we began in 2020 is now coming full circle, and we have an opportunity to access a deeper understanding of the purpose and meaning of everything we have experienced since then.

The three Venus-Pluto squares

Before, during, and after her retrograde, Venus in Scorpio squares Pluto in Aquarius three times, emphasizing the depth of the transformation journey we are undergoing and the fact that the entire collective is going through an evolutionary process focused on shifting how we relate to ourselves and one another. The Venus-Pluto square asks us to recognize and confront those fears that prevent us from allowing relationships and intimacy to transform us from the inside out. It asks us to become more willing to surrender control and notice how we unconsciously protect ourselves, subtly hide, manipulate, or hold something back to avoid being hurt by others.

The first Venus-Pluto square occurred on September 15, with Pluto in retrograde motion. Around that time, we started to get a glimpse of the themes that will emerge again throughout the upcoming weeks. As Venus goes retrograde, she squares Pluto, now direct, for the second time on October 20, asking us to review and reassess our approach to relational and financial issues, and see them through a different lens.

The final Venus-Pluto square will happen with both planets direct, on December 9. These days, we will experience the culmination of the process that has been unfolding since September: we will be able to access greater clarity around the deeper meaning of our experiences and the kind of transformation they are asking of us.

Venus retrograde in Scorpio & Libra: Transforming How We Love

We are entering a period deeply focused on transforming the way we attach and relate to both ourselves and other people. This retrograde and the start of the New Venus Cycle on the potent 0º of Scorpio are a powerful initiation, an opportunity to deepen our bonds to a whole new level, and break free from cycles of suffering and repeating patterns that seem to be haunting us.

Venus’s retrograde through Scorpio is an invitation to create more profound intimacy with others by becoming more vulnerable and honest: this is a time to reconsider what we truly value and desire, and become more aware of the unconscious undercurrents that shape our relationships. This transit asks us to look beneath the surface of our attachments, recognize the deeper, older issues at play, and become more willing to surrender control where intimacy requires it.

Ultimately, this retrograde in both Scorpio and Libra, two signs profoundly connected with relationships and partnerships, is an opportunity to transform how we love and relate, and dare to allow ourselves to be fully, wholly seen and loved, both by ourselves and by others.

Continue deeper into the mysteries of this Venus Retrograde journey with Nina, as she connects its story with the New Moon in Libra and illuminates what these cosmic currents may be awakening within us. Watch Nina’s New Moon in Libra Forecast below. 🌑✨