For weeks, Mars has been sprinting. On May 18, 2026, it crosses into Taurus and the tempo of drive shifts to slow build. Here's what the six-week transit unlocks, what the Mars-Pluto square exposes, and how it lands by sign.
Photo: Zelch Csaba / Pexels · Stock
By Sera Vane·May 14, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
For weeks, Mars has been sprinting. Cardinal fire, fast moves, an Aries pile-up at the front of the chart that turned drive into pure reactive thrust. On May 18, 2026 at 22:26 UTC, the red planet crosses into Taurus, and the entire tempo of desire — money, body, projects, want — shifts gear from sprint to slow build. The next six weeks reward the people who can wait for it. Sprinters hit a wall by week two.
Venus 29°52' Gemini sextile Mars 0°00' Taurus, 0°13' orb applying
Affects most
Fixed signs (Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, Aquarius); resource and intimacy themes
The Transit: From Sprint to Slow Build
Mars ingresses Taurus — moves from one sign into the next, a clean handoff that changes how the planet's drive expresses itself. In Aries, its home sign, Mars runs on instinct: pick a target, charge it, ask questions later. In Taurus, the same engine has to operate inside a body that refuses to be rushed. The signal slows. The patience required triples. The reward, when it eventually arrives, is something built rather than spent. Six weeks is the right length for that kind of work — long enough to compound, short enough to stay in view. The trade-off is real: enormous endurance, glacial start times, and very little tolerance for plans that demand pivoting twice a week.
This particular ingress carries one unusually clean feature at the moment of crossing: Venus sits at 29° Gemini, less than a quarter-degree from a sextile — a 60° angle that opens an opportunity if the person reaches for it — with Mars at 0° Taurus. Venus rules Taurus traditionally, meaning she owns the territory Mars is walking into. That nearly-exact handshake gives the first days of the transit an unusual quality: money, sensory pleasure, and physical desire all wake up the moment Mars steps in the door. Things that felt stalled around resources, attraction, or bodily wants find a green light. But Venus sits at the anaretic degree — the last, urgent placement of a sign — meaning the sweetness arrives already on its way out. Move fast on the soft openings; they don't repeat. By mid-June, Venus shifts again into Leo's public-facing register.
There's a counter-current though. Mars also separates from a conjunction with Chiron in late Aries — the same-sign alignment that fuses two planetary energies, here tied to old hurts around action, anger, and pushing back. Whatever was being processed in that pairing hasn't fully closed by the ingress moment. Mars in Taurus carries that tail into the slower work ahead, and Taurus doesn't process wounds the way Aries does. Aries burns; Taurus sits with. Expect the unfinished business from late April and early May to resurface in body-based ways — through sleep, appetite, stamina, lingering tension.
Who Feels It Most
Mars in Taurus lights up the fixed cross hardest. Taurus carries the transit directly through the body and the bank account. Scorpio, sitting opposite, receives it across the partnership axis — somebody is coming at them with a slow, persistent want, and patience is required on both sides. Leo and Aquarius take the transit through the second of its major angles, the Mars-Pluto square that builds across the first week. For Leo, that pressure lands as career visibility versus personal stamina; for Aquarius, it lands as network demands versus the inner authority that's been quietly consolidating since Pluto entered the sign. Earth signs (Virgo, Capricorn) pick up the steady current through cooperative angles and feel the build without the friction.
At the level of themes rather than signs, Mars in Taurus rules a specific quadrant of the chart — what astrologers call the 2nd house, the region tied to tangible resources, what you own, what you can earn through physical effort, and what your body actually wants. The 8th-house counterpart — joint resources, shared money, debt, intimacy — also picks up the charge because the Taurus-Scorpio axis cannot be split. Income negotiations and intimacy negotiations move at the same tempo for six weeks: slow, considered, hard to walk back from once set. If you've been waiting to raise rates, ask for a raise, renegotiate a mortgage, restructure a joint financial arrangement, or have the sex-life conversation you've been postponing — this is the season for it. The catch is that Taurus doesn't reward fast pressure. The slower the approach, the better the outcome.
The first major stress test of the transit arrives within roughly a week of ingress. By around May 25–26, 2026, Mars at approximately 5° Taurus reaches a square — the 90° tension angle where two planets demand contradictory things from the same situation — with Pluto retrograde at 5° Aquarius. Pluto turned back through Aquarius weeks earlier, beginning its annual review of power, autonomy, and structural authority. Mars now hits that review head-on. Past comparable squares — the June 2024 Mars-Pluto angle across the same Taurus/Aquarius axis is the most recent — produced flared conflicts, sudden control battles, and contracts that revealed their hidden pressure points. Expect institutional pushback against personal stamina, control fights inside collaborations, or one sharp moment where the cost of holding ground becomes visible. Watch the days immediately before May 25; pressure builds ahead of exact, then releases.
Historical Parallels: The 2024 Pass
The most recent Mars in Taurus transit ran from July 12 through August 26, 2024 — a forty-five day pass that gave us the previous template for fixed-earth Mars energy. Two features defined it. First, Mars met Uranus in Taurus on July 15, 2024, in conjunction — producing the volatility burst that period was known for: sudden financial shocks, broken routines, and the kind of instability that arrives without warning. Second, a Mars-Pluto square across the Taurus-Aquarius axis on June 11, 2024 set up tense control dynamics that defined the early summer. The transit landed less as steady build and more as repeatedly-disrupted endurance. Anyone who tried to use it for slow compounding found the rhythm broken twice a week by the Uranus signal.
The 2026 pass runs different geometry. Uranus has moved into Gemini (currently at 1° Gemini), so the disruptor is no longer sitting in Taurus waiting to break the routine Mars is trying to build. That changes the texture significantly: the transit runs cleaner, steadier, more recognisably Taurean. Endurance themes run pure — fewer surprise shocks, less volatility, more straight slow-build. The trade-off is that there's also less involuntary movement. In 2024, Uranus was forcing change whether anyone wanted it or not. In 2026, change has to be chosen. The transit hands you patience and stamina; it does not hand you a reason to use them. That's the reader's job. And the Aries pile-up Mars is leaving behind still casts a long enough shadow that what you choose to build matters.
How It Lands by Sign
Mars in Taurus 2026 — How It Lands by Sign
Aries
2nd house. Income, possessions, what you earn and own. Slow-build a revenue stream; resist quick-cash impulses.
Taurus
1st house. Body, identity, presence. Train physically and claim space, but watch for stubborn standoffs.
Gemini
12th house. Private projects, rest, hidden labor. Work on what nobody sees yet; defer the announcement.
Cancer
11th house. Networks, communities, future stakes. Build alliances around shared resources, not vibes alone.
Leo
10th house. Career visibility, public goals. Push for the promotion or contract — paperwork beats applause.
Virgo
9th house. Belief systems, long-distance plans, learning. Commit to a course or a real travel investment.
Libra
8th house. Joint finances, intimacy, debt. Renegotiate something tangled around shared money or sexual energy.
Scorpio
7th house. Partnerships, contracts. The opposite-sign mirror — expect slower negotiations and one big push.
What to Watch For
The yellow-light signals during this six-week window are textbook Taurus shadow: stubbornness mistaken for resolve, slow grinding to outright stuck, refusing to update a plan after the evidence has clearly changed, and the famous Taurus standoff where two parties dig in over something neither one actually values that much. The Mars-Pluto square in the last week of May amplifies all of these. If you find yourself unwilling to consider a piece of input simply because considering it would mean re-doing work — pause. That's the shadow side speaking, not the chart's gift. Stamina becomes obstinacy when it stops checking the map. Equally, somatic burnout creeps in unannounced: Taurus drives through the body, and the body doesn't send a memo before it crashes. Sleep and food are not negotiable inputs during a Mars in Taurus stretch.
The green lights are equally specific. This is a strong six weeks to mobilise around tangible projects with a multi-month payoff: launching a product whose value is physical or built, training for something that requires repetition, locking in a new health protocol, executing on a financial plan, having the contract conversation that's been waiting since spring. Mars in Taurus is also one of the better transits in the year for the simple human pleasures it rules — eating well, moving the body, redoing a room, spending money on something durable rather than disposable. If Jupiter's run through Leo later this year asks the chart for performance, Mars in Taurus asks it to build the body and the resources that the performance runs on.
Two-thirds of the way through the transit, around late June, Mars begins nearing the threshold into Gemini. Speed returns; the gear shifts back. But the window between May 18 and June 28 is the year's strongest stretch for any plan that needs steady physical effort across weeks rather than days. The Gemini new moon in mid-June falls inside this period and gives the slow build a verbal upgrade — what you've been quietly working on becomes nameable. Treat the six weeks as one continuous decision: where do you actually want to put your stamina?
When does Mars enter Taurus in May 2026?
Mars ingresses Taurus on May 18, 2026 at 22:26 UTC and stays in the sign until approximately June 28, 2026 — about a six-week transit. The first major stress test arrives around May 25–26, when Mars at roughly 5° Taurus forms a tense square with Pluto retrograde at 5° Aquarius.
Which signs feel Mars in Taurus 2026 most?
Fixed signs feel it most — Taurus carries Mars directly, while Scorpio sees it across the partnership axis, and Leo and Aquarius receive the late-May Mars-Pluto square as career-versus-network pressure. Earth signs (Virgo, Capricorn) and Cancer also pick up the slow-build current through cooperative aspects, just less intensely.
Is Mars in Taurus a good time to start a business?
Mars in Taurus favors ventures built around tangible product, real inventory, slow-compounding revenue, or physical infrastructure. The transit rewards founders who can wait six to twelve months for traction. Avoid quick-pivot or vibe-driven launches — the energy disfavors fast iteration. Sign incorporation paperwork during the smoother first week, before the May 25–26 Mars-Pluto square.
How is the 2026 Mars in Taurus different from 2024?
The 2024 transit (July 12 – August 26) had Uranus in Taurus, producing volatile disruption — including a Mars-Uranus conjunction on July 15 that broke routines. In 2026, Uranus has moved into Gemini, so Mars in Taurus runs cleaner and steadier. Expect endurance themes without the surprise-shock of the prior pass.
What does the late-May 2026 Mars-Pluto square mean?
Mars at roughly 5° Taurus squares Pluto retrograde at 5° Aquarius around May 25–26, 2026. The angle puts patient resource-building against systemic power dynamics — career or institutional pressure can flare against personal stamina. Past comparable squares produced sharp conflicts, so watch contracts, control battles, and overreach in the days before exact.
Sagittarius
6th house. Daily work, health, the body's wear. Lock in a sustainable rhythm; chase mastery, not noise.
Capricorn
5th house. Creative output, romance, play. Build a project that pleasures you to make; let attraction develop.
Aquarius
4th house. Home, family, foundation. Renovate, rearrange, or address an inherited tension at the root.
Pisces
3rd house. Communication, local errands, siblings. Write something that takes weeks; clean up a conversation that matters.
