Mean Ketu Rashi & Nakshatra Peyarchi — 2026

Ketu Peyarchi — what this timeline shows

This page carries the complete Ketu calendar for the year: every sign change in the first section and every nakshatra change in the second, with pada-level timings.

Both sections show both ends of the axis on every card, because Ketu and Rahu move as one. The same calendar is known as Ketu Peyarchi (Tamil), Ketu Gochar (Hindi), or the nodal axis transit.

Mean Ketu, not True Ketu

Every date on this page follows the mean Ketu — taken exactly 180° from the mean Rahu, the smoothed average node position that most Indian panchangs publish. It is a uniform mathematical fiction rather than the node’s real location at that instant.

The true node oscillates around it by up to about 1.5°, and at the node’s crawl of ~19.35° per year that becomes a large gap in dates — measured at 32 days for the 2026 Dhanishtha ingress on the Rahu end of the axis. Neither is an error; they are two conventions. Use this page to reconcile against a printed panchang, and the True Ketu Peyarchi page for the node’s actual position, which is what the birth charts and Dashas on this site use.

Why both journeys share one page

Ketu takes about 18 months to cross a sign and roughly eight months to cross a nakshatra. A single year therefore holds at most one sign change and two or three nakshatra changes. Split across two pages, each would read as nearly empty — so both live here, as they do for Jupiter and Saturn.

The axis shift

The event most often searched for is the Rahu–Ketu axis shift — the moment the pair moves into a new sign pair. Because they are locked in opposition, both ends change at the same instant: a shift from Aquarius–Leo to Capricorn–Cancer relocates the whole karmic axis in one move. Each shift appears as a new card in the sign timeline with its exact time. Note that sign shifts happen together, but nakshatra changes do not — 27 is an odd number of nakshatras, so 180° spans 13.5 of them, and Ketu crosses its own nakshatra boundaries independently of Rahu.

What the cards do and do not show

Sign-level dignity still applies — Ketu is exalted in Scorpio and debilitated in Taurus, for the whole visit, with Rahu taking the mirror position. What these cards deliberately omit is the peak-dignity sub-event, the exact instant Ketu stands on 20°00'00". A peak is a to-the-second event, and the mean node is a smoothed average rather than the node’s real position, so quoting one here would imply a precision this model does not have. Peak moments are listed on the True Ketu Peyarchi page.

There are no retrograde or combust sub-events, and no dignity filter chips. The mean node is retrograde without exception and is never combust, so no such window exists; and with so few cards in a year, filtering would hide more than it reveals.

The three Ketu-owned Nakshatras

In the classical Vimshottari Dasha order, three Nakshatras have Ketu as their ruling planet — called “Ketu-owned Nakshatras” here:

• Ashwini (अश्विनी) —
  • 0°00′ to 13°20′ Aries.
  • Deity: the Ashwini Kumaras, twin physicians of the gods.
  • Associated with speed, healing and fresh starts. Ketu in Ashwini sharpens instinct and quick recovery.
  • Also one of the six Gand Mool Nakshatras.
• Magha (मघा) —
  • 0°00′ to 13°20′ Leo.
  • Deity: the Pitris, the ancestors.
  • Associated with lineage, inherited authority and the throne. Ketu in Magha turns attention to ancestry and what was handed down.
  • Also a Gand Mool Nakshatra.
• Moola (मूल) —
  • 0°00′ to 13°20′ Sagittarius.
  • Deity: Nirriti, goddess of dissolution.
  • Its name means “root”; associated with uprooting, investigation to the source, and endings that clear the ground.
  • Also a Gand Mool Nakshatra.

Because the Vimshottari lords repeat every ninth Nakshatra, a lord’s three sit exactly 120° apart — a trine. Ketu’s three all fall in fire signs, and each is the first Nakshatra of its sign. That is exactly what makes all three Gand Mool: each opens a fire sign immediately after a Mercury-owned Nakshatra has closed a water sign (Revati→Ashwini, Ashlesha→Magha, Jyeshtha→Moola), and those six junctions are the Gand Mool points. Note that the nodes own Nakshatras even though they rule no rashi — which is why these cards carry a Nakshatra-lord badge but never an own-sign or mooltrikona dignity. A lord owns only three of the 27, so many years contain no such visit at all; when one does fall in the year shown, the Nakshatra timeline below marks it with a ☋ Ketu-owned badge and a subtle stone card tint.

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