Chinese Zodiac Elements Chart: Find the Right Year Row

Recent years at a glance

Each date is the first day of the indicated Chinese lunar year. The row remains in effect until the day before the next row starts. For dates in 2030, the site's supported lookup ends December 31, 2030.

Example: a person born on February 16, 2026 is still in the Wood Snake year; February 17 starts the Fire Horse year. The next boundary, February 6, 2027, changes the animal to Goat while the element stays Fire.

Check a date near the boundary

1. February 16, 2026: the 2026 row has not started. Read the 2025 row: Wood Snake.
2. February 17, 2026: the 2026 row begins: Fire Horse.
3. February 5, 2027: still in the 2026 row: Fire Horse.
4. February 6, 2027: the 2027 row begins: Fire Goat.

The date calculator accepts complete Gregorian dates from January 1, 1902 through December 31, 2030. It does not ask for birth time, location, time zone or daylight saving time; those inputs are outside this year-level lookup.

Complete chart: 1902–2030

Use the year label as a way to locate a row, then compare the start date with the birthday. For dates before a given year's start, use the previous row. This long chart and the calculator use the same local calendar rows, so they can be checked against one another.

For an early 1902 date, the preceding year is shown in our calculator rather than in this 1902–2030 chart.

Download the year-boundary table

Download the 1902–2030 year starts as CSV. Each row gives the first Gregorian date of a lunar zodiac year, its year-stem element, animal, and heavenly stem. The CSV is a machine-readable copy of the table above; it is not an additional calendar source.

To check a birthday, use the latest start date on or before it. For example, January 31, 2026 falls before the February 17, 2026 start, so the applicable row is January 29, 2025: Wood Snake. February 17, 2026 starts Fire Horse. The 2025 and 2026 Hong Kong Observatory tables show those boundaries. The element labels use the year stem and do not describe a full Four Pillars chart.

When referencing this table, link to this section and state that its boundary rule is Chinese New Year. The Observatory tables remain the primary date sources.

Why the animal and element repeat at different speeds

The ten heavenly stems cycle in order; adjacent pairs share an element: Jia/Yi Wood, Bing/Ding Fire, Wu/Ji Earth, Geng/Xin Metal, Ren/Gui Water. The twelve earthly branches cycle through the animals. Both stem and branch return to the same combination after 60 years. You can check that 2024 is Wood Dragon and 1964 is also Wood Dragon in the full table.

A year-stem element is not the same claim as an animal's fixed branch association, a person's day master, or a full Four Pillars reading. This page labels only the year stem and animal. It makes no personality or fate prediction.

How we made and checked this chart

We matched the site's calendar rows to the Hong Kong Observatory's Gregorian–Lunar Conversion Table for lunar-year boundaries. The stem–element mapping follows the Harvard Asia Center's table of the Five Processes and Ten Heavenly Stems. The animal and stem values are the same data used by our public calculator. We generated each year row from that one data set and hand-checked the 2026 and 2027 transitions shown above.

Some astrology systems switch the year at Lìchūn (Start of Spring) instead. That is a different convention. The row starts printed here are Chinese New Year dates; do not combine a Lìchūn result with this table without stating the rule.

Watch the chart explained

Watch this explanation on YouTube

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