Venus Williams Birth Chart: The Mars–Saturn Endurance Behind Her Madrid Clay Comeback
At 45, Venus Williams takes a Madrid Open wildcard onto clay for the first time in five years. Her Gemini Sun, Mars–Saturn endurance signature, and Jupiter-on-the-Midheaven transit explain why.
Photo: The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas · CC BY-SA 2.0
By Sera Vane·April 21, 2026·Updated May 18, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
On April 21, 2026, a 45-year-old Venus Williams walked onto Madrid's red clay for the first time in five years — wildcard in hand, draw open, seven Grand Slam singles titles already on her résumé and absolutely nothing left to prove. The scheduled first-round match against Spain's Kaitlin Quevedo didn't hinge on rankings or prize money. It hinged on something harder to measure: whether a body that has carried Sjögren's syndrome since 2011 could still do the thing it was built to do. Her chart says something interesting about why she even bothered showing up.
Venus Williams — Natal Chart & 2026 Madrid Context
Full name
Venus Ebony Starr Williams
Born
June 17, 1980, 2:12 PM
Birthplace
Lynwood, California, United States
Birth time source
Rodden Rating AA — birth certificate via AstroDatabank
Sun
Gemini 26°47′ (9th house)
Moon
Leo 27°40′ (11th house)
Rising
Libra 13°32′
Midheaven
Cancer 14°47′
Mars
Virgo 17°56′ (12th house)
Saturn
Virgo 20°46′ (12th house)
The Madrid Moment
The WTA granted Venus a main-draw wildcard into the Mutua Madrid Open, a WTA 1000 event that sits just below a Grand Slam in stakes. She's entered in both singles and doubles — a doubles partnership alongside an American teammate that's drawn almost as much pre-tournament coverage as the singles draw itself. Her WTA profile still lists a career record that would take most players two lifetimes to assemble: seven majors, four Olympic golds, 49 singles titles, former world No. 1.
None of that is at stake here. What is at stake — quietly — is the question of whether a late-career clay comeback is a sentimental cameo or a real competitive return. Venus's own answer has been blunt: she keeps playing because she still loves it. The chart doesn't override that stated motive. What it does is explain why "still loves it" keeps surviving contact with reality when most of her peer group retired eight years ago. Naomi Osaka's parallel Madrid 2026 return is the closest current echo of this same late-career arc back to clay.
A Gemini Sun Built for Reinvention
Venus's Sun sits at 26° Gemini — the last third of the sign, the part of Gemini that's tired of being cute and wants to know things for real. Gemini is the sign of range, not depth — but by late Gemini, the cleverness has had time to sharpen into something like expertise. Her Sun also sits in the 9th house, traditionally associated with long journeys, publishing, and the kind of public philosophy you build by repeatedly leaving home and returning wiser. For a tennis player, 9th-house Sun reads almost too on-the-nose: a life defined by airports, translated press conferences, and building a platform that extends well past the court.
Mercury — the planet that rules Gemini and therefore doubles down on the Sun's influence — is in Cancer at 20°57′, up at the top of the chart in the 10th house. That's a career voice shaped by family and feeling, not just facts. It's why Venus's interviews about her sister Serena never feel like boilerplate. Iga Świątek's Gemini stellium produces a different dialect of the same sign — precise, analytical, ice-cold in a match. Venus's version is warmer, more scattered on purpose, and built around a home base that happens to be one of the most famous families in American sport.
The trade-off with Gemini Sun in the 9th is that mastery tends to happen sideways rather than head-on. Her public résumé off-court includes the interior design firm V Starr, the EleVen by Venus activewear line, and both a business degree from Indiana University East and an MBA — the kind of portfolio Gemini builds when it gets bored. Tennis is not the only thing she does, and the chart never suggested it would be. The cost of that breadth is that every comeback gets framed as a distraction from "real" retirement. Her chart answers that framing by simply ignoring it.
The Mars–Saturn Spine
Here is the part of the chart that explains a 45-year-old wildcard. Venus has Mars at 17° Virgo, conjunct Saturn at 20° Virgo — both in the 12th house, within three degrees of each other. A conjunction is when two planets sit in the same sign close enough that they fuse into a single behavioral instruction. Mars is effort. Saturn is patience. In Virgo, both planets become obsessive about technique. In the 12th house — the private, unseen house — they become a grinder who trains when nobody's watching.
Mars–Saturn is one of the classic athlete signatures in traditional astrology, and Virgo sharpens it: the body as something you maintain, calibrate, repair, re-calibrate. Most people born with this conjunction never become professional athletes — it just as often produces surgeons, engineers, or anyone whose excellence depends on showing up for the same unglamorous drill ten thousand times. But when it lands in someone who gets handed a tennis racquet at four years old on Compton cement courts, it builds an athlete who still wants to work in her mid-40s because the work itself was never actually the price.
What this chart makes room for — and the reason the Mars–Saturn grinder reads differently than it would in another life — is a near-exact square between Saturn and Neptune. A square is the 90-degree angle that puts two planets in structural friction, forcing one to cope with the other. Saturn square Neptune is one of the chart signatures most consistently tied to chronic or autoimmune conditions in classical literature, because it names a tension between the body's boundaries (Saturn) and something that dissolves them (Neptune). Venus's 2011 Sjögren's diagnosis is a matter of public record and something she's discussed openly for over a decade. The chart doesn't cause the illness. It does suggest why Venus framed the diagnosis as something to build around rather than a reason to stop.
Libra Rising, Pluto on the Ascendant
Venus's rising sign — the sign on the eastern horizon at her birth, the mask the world sees first — is Libra at 13°32′. Libra rising is poise, proportion, and a built-in instinct for fairness under pressure. Add Pluto at 19° Libra, conjunct that Ascendant within six degrees, and the mask gains weight. Pluto is intensity, power, the thing in a room that changes the room just by entering it. On the Ascendant, it gives a person a physical presence that reads as unusual before they've said a word — not just height, though the 6'1" helps, but a gravity that forces people to reorganize themselves around you.
This combination also tends to produce a player whose identity gets rewritten every few years, whether they want the rewrite or not. Michael Jordan's chart carries its own version of this — reinvention as the default mode, not a crisis. For Venus, Pluto on the Ascendant explains why the comeback narrative keeps flattening under her: every time she re-enters the tour at a new age, she becomes a different public figure. The 2007 Wimbledon champion, the post-diagnosis Venus of 2012, the senior tour veteran of 2023, and the 2026 Madrid wildcard are not quite the same person.
What's Actually in the Sky Right Now
The transit chart on April 21, 2026 — the day of the first-round match — contains three things worth naming. The first is transit Jupiter at 17° Cancer, which has just crossed Venus's natal Midheaven at 14° Cancer — the degree right at the top of a birth chart that marks career visibility and public reputation — and is now moving toward her natal Mercury at 20° Cancer. Jupiter-on-the-Midheaven is the single most cliché "good press" transit in the book. It doesn't promise winning. It does promise visibility, media attention, and a disproportionately warm reception from the crowd and commentators. That part is already visible in the pre-tournament coverage.
The second is the one that makes a chart astrologer sit up. On April 21, 2026, transit Mars and transit Saturn are conjunct each other at 8° Aries — barely a degree apart — sitting in the 6th-house zone of Venus's natal chart (the house of daily work, training, health). In other words, the sky is literally running the same Mars-Saturn conjunction in Aries Venus was born with, just in a different sign and in the public-facing house rather than the private one. You could not script a more on-brand transit for a match-day return to work after a five-year clay absence. If the natal Mars–Saturn is the reason she still trains, the transit Mars–Saturn is the sky asking her to prove it.
The third is quieter: the transiting Moon on match day is at 25° Gemini, about a degree from Venus's natal Sun. A lunar return to the natal Sun is a once-a-month occurrence, not a rare event. What makes this one unusual is the timing — the Moon is passing over her core identity on the same day the Mars-Saturn echo fires. Whether any of that shows up as a win is a different question. Transits don't predict scores. They describe the emotional and symbolic weight a day is carrying, and April 21 is carrying a lot.
What the Chart Doesn't Promise
Astrology is not a scouting report. A 45-year-old tennis player entering a WTA 1000 draw — even one built around Mars–Saturn discipline and a Jupiter-on-the-Midheaven transit — is still a 45-year-old tennis player. The Saturn square Neptune aspect that makes sense of her endurance also names the cost of it: a body that has been managing an autoimmune condition for fifteen years is not playing under the same physical terms as the 22-year-old Kaitlin Quevedo across the net. What the chart suggests is that Venus's reason for showing up is internally consistent, not that the match will go her way.
Her 12th-house stellium — Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all clustered in the same hidden sector, which is what astrologers mean by that word — is also the part of the chart that's most comfortable with losing privately. The 12th house is where effort happens without an audience and without a scoreboard. It's why her most convincing answer, repeatedly, to the question "why are you still playing?" has been some version of "because I still want to." The chart doesn't need the Madrid wildcard to validate anything. She's already Venus Williams. The match is just the latest place the Mars–Saturn grinder gets to do the thing she's been doing since she was four.
Rory McIlroy's Augusta chart ran a similar pattern — the win mattered less than the fact that he kept showing up for an eleven-year wait. A'ja Wilson's Leo-Mars-Jupiter engine is a different era of the same Black-female-athlete-with-a-fire-signature lineage Venus helped build. And the Jupiter-in-Cancer transit currently on her Midheaven is the same one moving through the sky for everyone else — what's specific to Venus is that her chart was already set up to use it.
For entertainment and self-reflection purposes. Not predictive and not a substitute for professional advice.
What is Venus Williams's zodiac sign?
Venus Williams is a Gemini Sun, born June 17, 1980. Her Sun sits at 26 degrees Gemini — the last third of the sign — in the 9th house of long journeys and public philosophy. Her Moon is in Leo and her rising sign is Libra, producing a Gemini-Leo-Libra air-and-fire personality built around charm and composed public presence.
What time was Venus Williams born, and is her birth time reliable?
Venus Williams was born at 2:12 PM on June 17, 1980, in Lynwood, California. Her birth time is classified Rodden Rating AA, the highest verification tier, sourced from her birth certificate via the AstroDatabank archive. That level of confirmation is what lets astrologers cite her Libra rising, her house placements, and her Cancer Midheaven with real precision.
Why does Venus Williams's Mars-Saturn conjunction matter for her tennis career?
Mars conjunct Saturn in Virgo is one of the classic endurance signatures in traditional astrology — Mars supplies the drive, Saturn supplies the patience, Virgo supplies the technical obsession. In Venus's 12th house it describes an athlete who trains in private, treats her body as a long-term project, and keeps working after the external reward has stopped being the point.
What transits are affecting Venus Williams around the Madrid Open 2026?
On April 21, 2026, transit Jupiter in Cancer sits on Venus's Midheaven and moves toward her Mercury — a classic public-visibility transit. Transit Mars and Saturn are conjunct in Aries in her 6th house, echoing her natal Mars-Saturn on match day. Transit Moon also crosses her natal Sun in Gemini, amplifying the day's weight.
Does Venus Williams have the same birth chart as Serena Williams?
No. Serena Williams was born on September 26, 1981, making her a Libra Sun with a Virgo stack, while Venus is a Gemini Sun with a Virgo 12th-house stellium. The sisters share slow-moving generational placements like Pluto in Libra, but their Suns, Moons, rising signs, and midheavens are all different.
Pluto
Libra 19°00′ (1st house, retrograde)
Match
Madrid Open 2026 R1 — vs Kaitlin Quevedo, April 21, 2026
