Kate Bush Wins First Film Award as Jupiter Nears Leo
Kate Bush won her first film award on May 21, 2026 — forty days before Jupiter ingresses Leo and begins its approach to her natal Sun at 6° Leo.
Photo: Distributed by EMI America · Stock
By Sera Vane·May 21, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
On May 21, 2026, Kate Bush won her first film award — the animation prize at the BAFTA-qualifying Carmarthen Bay Film Festival for Little Shrew, her anti-war animated short built from her own sketches. Forty days from that moment, Jupiter crosses into the sign of her birth and begins its direct path toward her natal Sun: the planet of expansion arriving in the sign of creative sovereignty, precisely when a six-decade artist claims first recognition in a second medium. The first exact conjunction lands in mid-August. The award lands now.
Jupiter's late-June ingress to Leo (June 30, 2026); first exact conjunction to natal Sun around mid-August 2026
Birth time
Noon fallback (no verified time)
What's Happening
The award is concrete. On May 21, 2026, Variety reported that Bush had taken home the Animation Award at the Carmarthen Bay Film Festival in Wales — a BAFTA-qualifying event — for her directorial debut Little Shrew. It's a short film, set to her own 'Snowflake' from Fifty Words for Snow, that follows a small mammal threading through a bombed-out city in search of hope. Bush storyboarded it from her own sketches; the artist Jim Kay illustrated. Inspired by the war in Ukraine, the film exists to raise funds for War Child, a charity that supports children in conflict zones. The Carmarthen Bay festival's BAFTA-qualifying status matters here: animation prizes from qualifying festivals are eligible for British Academy Film Award consideration, which means this is not a vanity citation but a credential with industry weight.
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How wonderful! 'Little Shrew' is incredibly excited that she's been awarded such a huge honour. Thank you so very much from her, myself and all the team. We are over the moon!
— Kate Bush, via Variety (May 21, 2026)
The Natal Chart
Kate Bush's chart pivots on a tight Leo center. Her Sun sits at 6° Leo just shy of her Uranus at 11° Leo — a conjunction, the same-sign alignment that fuses two planetary energies into one expression. Read it without the jargon and you get the most coherent piece of her artistic identity: a Leo's appetite for sovereign creative expression wired directly to Uranus's instinct to invent outside any convention. It's the placement of the artist who turned a Brontë novel into a vocal contortion and made it her first single, who built The Dreaming like an audio mosaic, who released two albums in 2011 and refused the version of fame she could have had. The work is Leo. The way she makes it is Uranian. Inventiveness, here, is not a side dish — it is the meal.
But the chart undercuts itself across the Leo–Aquarius axis. Her Moon at 3° Aquarius sits in opposition to her Sun — the 180° face-off that forces a confrontation between two planets' instincts. The Sun wants to be witnessed; the Moon wants distance and abstraction. That's why a singular voice can spend decades declining tours, declining interviews, declining the apparatus that usually amplifies a Leo-Sun career. The Moon's pull is private. Her Mars at 5° Taurus then squares that Sun — the 90° tension angle where two planets demand contradictory things — and the square sits tight, pinning the creative drive to a slow, exacting, won't-release-it-until-it-feels-right work tempo. The Leo wants to be seen; the Taurus Mars insists the work be finished first, on its own clock.
The Transit Picture
The astronomical event is precise. On June 30, 2026, around 10:02 UTC, Jupiter — the planet of expansion, opportunity, and recognition — completes an ingress out of Cancer and crosses into Leo. Ingress here just means the planet moves from one sign into the next; the energy shifts because the planet's expression takes on the flavor of its new sign. Jupiter's Leo transit is a thirteen-month chapter, its first return to that sign since the 2014–2015 cycle. For Kate Bush, this ingress matters because the sign Jupiter enters is the sign her own Sun occupies. At Jupiter's direct-motion pace through early-degree Leo, the first exact conjunction to her natal Sun at 6° Leo lands roughly mid-August 2026 — six to seven weeks after the ingress. That is the headline contact, but the approach is already underway.
Layered underneath that approach is a heavier, currently active picture. Transiting Pluto at 5° Aquarius, retrograde, sits in opposition to her natal Sun — the tightest aspect in her current transit picture, and the first Pluto–Sun opposition of her life. Pluto on a personal planet asks for a reckoning with what's been built and what's being kept. Where Jupiter approaches with offer and amplification, Pluto across the axis asks what gets shed to receive it. At the same time, transiting Neptune at 3° Aries forms a soft trine — the easy-flow 120° angle where two planets cooperate without effort — to that same Sun, dissolving some of the resistance Pluto pressures from the other side. The geometry of this award is unusual: it lands inside that exact three-planet dialogue, with each planet pulling on her natal Leo Sun from a different angle.
What This Means
Read in plain language: Pluto is asking the hardest version of the question — what's the work for, now, decades in — and Jupiter is preparing to answer with recognition in a medium she never trained in. The Carmarthen Bay win arrives forty days before Jupiter's Leo ingress, which is to say, it arrives at the precise edge of a transit that spends the rest of the year pointing at her natal Sun. The timing is striking, but it's not destiny. Plenty of artists with similar geometry never picked up a camera. What the chart pattern fits is the story she's actually living: a Leo with a Uranian streak, recognized first in music for forty-eight years, finally collecting an award in a second medium just as the slow planets line up.
There's a tension to name. A Leo Sun usually wants the room, the stage, the carpet. Bush's chart bends that instinct through the Aquarius Moon — the placement that prefers the work to speak instead of the artist — and through the Taurus Mars that won't release work it doesn't feel ready to release. The first film award is therefore also a directorial debut, not a late-career retrospective. The film exists because she made it on her own terms, from her own sketches, around her own song, to raise money for a children's charity. Hayden Panettiere's memoir surfaced under a rhyming pattern — a public artist resurfacing in a new medium at a transit window that fit. On a Leo Sun this wired to Uranus, the cost of being seen has always been baked in.
It's worth saying the obvious. Awards are not predictions, and charts don't cause anything. The pattern that fits — Jupiter approaching her natal Sun, Pluto opposing it, Neptune trining it, all while she steps into a new medium — is the kind of astrological convergence astrologers describe as a transition signature. Jupiter's Leo transit lands differently on each sign, and the late-June ingress itself is something a million Leos will share. What makes Bush's version specific is the degree: her Sun at 6° Leo means she catches the conjunction early, while many later-degree Leos won't feel the exact contact until 2027. The thirteen-month chapter Jupiter opens is, for her, a chapter that begins by walking onto a stage built for a film she made.
What this looks like in practice is hard to script in advance. Jupiter-on-natal-Sun transits can mean a peak public moment, a major opportunity, a creative project landing, an unexpected expansion of reach. They can also mean none of those if the person doesn't reach. What's striking about Bush's version is that she already reached: she made the film, released it, submitted it. The transit is meeting work she put in motion before Jupiter started its approach. That sequence — work first, recognition later — is exactly how a Taurus Mars wired to a Leo Sun tends to operate, and it's the version of this transit that ages well. Whatever else lands between the June ingress and the August conjunction, she's already done the unrepeatable part.
For entertainment and self-reflection purposes. Not predictive and not a substitute for professional advice.
What is Kate Bush's zodiac sign?
Kate Bush was born on July 30, 1958, making her a Leo Sun at 6° Leo. Her chart also carries Uranus in Leo within five degrees of her Sun — a creative-identity conjunction — and an Aquarius Moon opposite the Sun. Birth time is unverified, so this analysis covers sign placements and aspects only.
When does Jupiter enter Leo in 2026?
Jupiter ingresses Leo on June 30, 2026, at approximately 10:02 UTC. It's the planet's first Leo transit since 2014–2015, a roughly thirteen-month chapter through the sign. For Kate Bush, whose natal Sun sits at 6° Leo, the first exact Jupiter–Sun conjunction lands around mid-August 2026.
Why did Kate Bush make a film instead of an album?
Bush built Little Shrew around an existing song from Fifty Words for Snow, then storyboarded the visuals herself; the film raises funds for War Child. The medium shift fits a Leo–Uranus chart that has always invented its own form. The chart doesn't explain the choice, but the pattern fits an artist who treats every project as a fresh medium.
How long does Jupiter's transit through Leo last in 2026?
Jupiter spends roughly thirteen months crossing Leo, from its June 30, 2026 ingress until late July 2027. During that period it stations retrograde once and direct once, sweeping back across early-degree placements like Kate Bush's 6° Sun for a second and third pass. The full conjunction window is wider than the single exact date suggests.
What does the Leo–Aquarius opposition mean in a birth chart?
A Leo–Aquarius opposition pulls a chart between the Leo instinct toward self-expression and the Aquarius instinct toward distance, abstraction, and group identity. People with this axis tend to oscillate between wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear into the work itself. The opposition is felt as an internal negotiation, not a contradiction.
