July Astrology Forecast 2026

The Astrology Podcast - Chris Brennan

July 2026 brings intense astrological shifts with Mars-Uranus volatility, Jupiter-Pluto tension, and rare outer planet alignments. Key themes include technological upheaval, power struggles, and fleeting opportunities am

Key takeaways

• Mars-Uranus conjunction triggers sudden disruptions

Transcript preview

Hey my name is Chris Brennan you're listening to the astrology podcast joining me today is astrologer Austin Copic and we're going to be looking at the astrological forecast for July of 2026. Hey Austin welcome back. Hey Chris nice to be here. Yeah it's very good to see you again you had a month off but I'm very glad that you came back because we've got a really big month of astrology to talk about one of the more important months of 2026. So in the first half of this episode we're going to talk about news and events that happens that happens that happens since our last and the astrology behind those news stories then in the second half of the episode we're gonna do a deep dive into the astrology of July as always there will be time stamps if you want to jump ahead to the forecast section but otherwise before we get into the news I want to do a quick overview of the the astrology of this month just to give you a preview of what we're gonna be talking about later in this episode. All right so I've been experimenting with writing out an overview of the month in order to give people an idea of the sequence in some of the key words that we're looking at for these alignments. So here's my overview for July. So the month opens on a highly unstable ground dominated by a volatile Mars Uranus conjunction that threatens sudden unpredictable shifts and explosive turns. This erratic energy is ruled by a newly stationary retrograde mercury, which is just backed away from a conjunction with Jupiter. This combination sets the stage for logistical snafus, technological difficulties, and widespread difficulties, delays right out of the gate. Then Jupiter, which has just entered Leo at the very end of June, begins to form a very tense opposition with Pluto, which goes exact around the middle of July. This highlights major power struggles and the tension between truth and control. And this opposition is part of a much larger, more momentous pattern of simultaneous outer planet alignments that all peak this month and go exact throughout the month of July. What happens with this is that Uranus completes its very first exact trine with Pluto, and then these planets at the same time lock into a complex basket configuration alongside Jupiter and Neptune. So this really heavy planetary geometry indicates that very significant precursor events are unfolding in the background this month, particularly surrounding rapid technological or military innovations. So later in the month, we finally see a more positive. in the astrological weather during the second half of July, where Mars separates from Uranus and then starts applying to a stabilizing constructive sextile with Saturn, which helps to ground some of the earlier chaos, and then also Mercury stations directing cancer, which begins to clear up some of the miscommunications, while the sun makes its triumphant ingress into Leo, and starts to form a very auspicious conjunction with Jupiter. there's a lingering Venus Mars Square operating in the background during the later part of the month which introduces this unwelcome element of creative friction, tension and partnerships, and pitting the forces of unification against the drive to sever and divide. And unfortunately in that configuration, Mars does have the upper hand in a superior square. So finally, this little lull, later in July, ultimately serves as a sort of temporary calm before the storm and by early August we swiftly transition into a clip season which brings those major beginnings and endings to the forefront just as Venus enters the sign where it's going to eventually retrograde back to thus entering its shadow phase on some level by sign. So that is the astrology of the month that we're going to be talking about later in this episode and obviously we have a lot a lot to talk about in the process of things. All right, so that is the astrology that we're going to be talking about in the process of things. later in this episode, but first let's talk about the news and things that have happened over the course of the past four weeks since our last forecast episode. Austin, welcome back, thanks for joining me. I'm glad you're back this month. Yeah, me too. There's a lot to talk about. Yeah, we knew in the year ahead forecast we talked about this month and how it would be momentous and now we're finally there and we can see all of the pieces falling into place and today, for example, like Mars just ingressed into Gemini into Gemini so it's full on, so it's full on, so it's full on heading towards, so it's full on heading towards with Uranus? Yeah, we're about an hour-ish end to Mars and Gemini right now. Yeah, and already there's been like a major news story that came out today that I'll talk about later related to that. But before we get there, let's do some review of June and the astrology of June. I wanted to start first by talking about the Venus Jupiter conjunction, which happened in the first half of June, basically, in some of the major news stories that came out surrounding that auspicious conjunction between Venus and Jupiter in cancer, which it went exact around the 9th, but was still in effect for at least a week before that and a week after. All right, so one of the major news stories that happened is on June 12th, right after the conjunction went exact, while Venus was still in cancer with Jupiter, SpaceX launched its IPO. It went public and the headlines all over that day. were that Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in the world. And what was striking about this is that he was born with cancer rising, as we learned a few years ago when his birth time was released in a biography. So the Venus Jupiter conjunction was taking place in his first house. And when his birth time came out a few years ago, we had talked about his chart and some of the wealth indicators in it. And what was interesting is what I talked about at the time was that the primary wealth indicator in his chart was the position of the lot of fortune in Virgo and how it was ruled by Mercury which is placed in the sign of cancer and his rising sign because according to the second century Estradirvadius Valens the 11th house from fortune is called the place of acquisition and when it's well situated it can indicate like the acquisition of large amounts of wealth and in this instance we actually saw by transit an activation of his place of acquisition and that wealth in his chart making him basically the richest person in history at that time and I thought that was pretty striking alignment. Yeah, it's a great example and then also having the ruler of fortune in the place of acquisition is by itself a wealth combination according to Valence and then to have that literally be subject to basically the most positive transit imaginable. is pretty good. Although Saturn's Saturn is coming and so he lost his trillionaire status shortly thereafter when Venus was when Venus was when Venus was no longer in cancer. Yeah well that was one of the funny things about you know we also last month we had the auspicious Venus Jupiter conjunction early in the month but then Mercury was also forming that conjunction with Jupiter but then it slowed down and it stationed retrograde before completing it. So it was like we delineated at least and I predicted last month that it was like something really positive looks like it's coming up on the horizon but then it gets canceled out kind of at the last minute because of not just that not just the mercury retrograde but also the Mars Uranus conjunction forming at the same time and it was interesting that there was a version of that with him there was a version of that with like the Iran war peace negotiations and even Spielberg's movie basically, which initially launched a success but then declined really significantly after the first week? Yeah, there was a, you know, as we noted in the year before, there was a bit of a cruel joke position at the end of June, or one might see it as a cruel joke, or just that things reverse direction rather quickly and harshly, and that if you anticipated that the mid-June, the early mid-June rivalry would continue. on abated, you would be very surprised and disappointed. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so that was, like you said with Musk, there was like the initial trillionaire status and then it was, it dropped because like the price of the IPO and the stock dropped a bit after that. So that was a thing, another thing that happened was Stephen Spielberg on the same day on June 12th that that Musk released his IPO, released his big movie Disclosure Day. I thought that was striking because it turns out that Stephen Spielberg also has cancer rising, so it was also in his rising sign. But further, Stephen Spielberg was born with a Venus Jupiter conjunction, so that means this was also a occurrence transit for him. And what I found when I was researching his biography is that his first two movies that he made, the first one was a made for TV movie, and he released it on a Venus Jupiter conjunction, and then his next movie was the first time he had a actually in theaters and that was also on a Venus Jupiter conjunction. So it's funny that he also had one come out here and that Venus Jupiter conjunction in his chart of course is in the fifth house along with the Moon which is the ruler of his ascendant. So it's like the contrast is Spielberg has cancer rising had the Venus Jupiter in his first house but the ruler of his ascendant and his Venus Jupiter conjunctions in the fifth in the place of creativity and so he's creating movies and doing creation. product, but then Elon Musk has the ruler of the ascendant, is the moon and Virgo in the third house of travel and his thing is, you know, Tesla with cars and now SpaceX with space travel? Yeah, and the satellite system as well. Good point. Yeah, it's interesting that you point out that Spielberg has this Venus Jupiter signature and that he's put out major works under Venus Jupiter configurations because that is, a critique of Stephen Spielberg is that his works are too benefic or they're too sweet or they're sacarin that you know it's like that the beneficts are there but what about the malefics right that the yeah that that his works evidence that double benefic quality but with insufficient life has. Yeah, I found a, so here's his chart with Cancer Rising and the Moon in Scorpio with that Venus Jupiter conjunction. And I found a funny anecdote this month where he's doing on these press tours and somebody was asking him about his most iconic shot or they're asking him about the logo of his production company and it's that iconic image of ET, like Elliot and E.T. the alien ET, from his movie ET, flying on a bike in the air across the moon and they said like where did that logo come from and he said that shot in the movie it came from Halloween and like Halloween decorations where you would have like a witch flying across the moon and he said he wanted to create something like that but like more wholesome yeah and I thought I thought that was an amazing manifestation of his like cancer rising and like moon ruling the ascendant that his logo for his company is literally has the moon on it. Yeah well that like the moon with both benefits and that it was an attempt to take something negative or scary and find a positive variant of it. But to his credit he definitely did things that were darker in tone in order to offset I think some of that criticism on like his World War II stuff like saving Private Ryan and Schindler's list etc. Yeah for sure. And then the final thing there, I'll just mention in passing, was with Musk, we mentioned the ruler of the ascendant with the moon in the third house. And I had contrasted him previously in my third house episode with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who also had the ruler of the ascendant in the third house. But now in the past year, Musk has launched to this Wikipedia competitor called Grokopedia. And like I've noticed recently, it's actually showing up in search results. on Google. So Google is actually prioritizing pages from that and what Musk has the ruler of the ascendant in the third house in Virgo, just like the founder of Wikipedia. So I think that's also a bizarre, like weird correlation and repetition. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense though, right? Like that regular communication, something that's normally consulted as part of ones every day as a sort of roadmap, or a a map to local meanings and terms, etc. etc. Yeah, and that's an entirely like AI-based, you know, version of form of Wikipedia or Wikipedia rival. So those are things moving on to other things. Another thing we said we were expecting what with the Venus Jupiter conjunction was like prominent marriages around the Venus Jupiter conjunction and there was actually a notable surprise celebrity marriage on May 31st Dualipa got married basically and that was like all over the news for the next week both of the marriage and then her honeymoon so that was a striking Venus Jupiter conjunction correlation and then there's been a weird one with like Taylor Swift where there was speculation she was going to get married earlier in June but now the tabloids are reporting that she's booked out Madison Square Garden for like July 3rd and there's a lot of speculation that she's about to get married at the beginning of July and I'm for reasons we'll talk about like later in terms of alignments like hoping that's not the case and we'll see if maybe you know the marriage took place already or is having some other time but that's kind of a weird thing that's happening that's still unfolding Yeah from when I understand it's pretty unconfirmed one thing I would say about doing it that next weekend like once Jupiter's crossed into Leo is that does put in configuration with her early Aquarius Venus, whereas Jupiter and Cancer is not configured to the Natal Venus? Yeah, well it's like one of the things I'll say is like they did, they got together originally during, I think Venus was like in Leo or it was part of the Venus retrograde in Leo or something like that a few years ago, so they have a Venus in Leo's signature and that is one of the positive things that's happening this month briefly is that when Jupiter now that it's gone into Leo it's gone into Leo it's temporarily formed a sign-based conjunction with Venus again. So it's possible that that's being activated, but you know I don't know the Mars Uranus is so volatile that that's that's a really tricky aspect in early July. Yeah, it's not a stay-together forever configuration. Well we'll see we'll see what happens. So another weird Celebrity One was Tom Holland in the middle of June. In an interview he was doing press tours for movies and stuff and he said for the first time that he and Zendaya he confirmed that they had gotten married last year already so it was a weird like confirmation that a really prominent celebrity marriage had taken place in the past that they'd kind of like kept private up to that point apparently. Yeah that's a good example. Yeah so all right so those are the some of the Venus Jupiter's another Venus Jupiter is you know we talked about and I kind of went out of a limb on the limb on the last forecast episode and talked about how Venus Jupiter conjunctions can be good for peacekeeping efforts and that we expected some things regarding like a peacekeeping deal that looked temporarily good, but then we could see that things would unravel later in the month due to the Mercury retrograde and the Mars Uranus conjunction. And that's basically what happened where on June 14th on Trump's birthday, he announced that some sort of major peace deal had been worked out with Iran. And this was when Venus was at one degree of Leo, still pretty closely conjunct Jupiter at 26 degrees of cancer. So Venus had changed signs, but it was still very close to a degree-based aspect that you could still see visually in the sky. And they eventually like signed some sort of memorandum of understanding within the next few days after that. If I understand correctly, I believe that signing took place on June 17th. which was wild because that was the actual day of the Moon Venus conjunction in Leo, although it was almost exactly opposing Pluto at the same time, which was already indicating some of the issues underlying that even though it seemed like something on the surface. So already now that we're at the end of June, we're recording this actually today. It's June 28th, 2026, it's Sunday just before 3 p.m. and already with the Mercury going retrograde and canceling the conjunction with the Mars Uranus conjunction moving into alignment things are already starting to unravel at this point it seems like. Yeah I thought that that was a pretty classic example of Mercury appearing to be on its way to conjunction with Jupiter Mercury therefore announcing things that were peaceful and you know peaceful and just and high-minded and positive and provoking optimism. at least in the market, that we're not going to pan out because Merger was in the station retrograde. And as I mentioned to you the other day, it's very interesting that a lot of the important provisions in that deal have a 60-day time limit where both sides have to fulfill certain conditions by 60 days. And that 60 days puts us within one day of our first solar eclipse in Leo, in the middle of August. as if there was not enough within the deal to provoke skepticism as if there was not enough astrology between here and there to provoke skepticism even that 60-day timeline lands lands at a point where the sun disappears in the middle of the day and an eerie darkness shall rain. Yeah, so if it's like if it even makes it that far, because it's like on June 25th, 26, 26th, things started escalating already when Iran struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and then the US did direct military strikes on Iran and then Iran shot back and it keeps escalating back and forth over the past few days and we're heading like right into that Mars Uranus conjunction which had been restrained it was being held back somewhat because while Mars was still in late Taurus it was applying to the sexile with Jupiter which was still in late cancer but then now that has moved into Gemini. It's just directly applying to Uranus at this point, which is so volatile and unstable and violent and unexpected. Yeah, and yeah, that deal has to get through all of July. And I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that, based on the astrology, I'm very skeptical that this is a deal that will hold and that peace will rain. We'll circle back to that. The last two Venus Jupiter stories, one really quickly, it happened on the very day of the conjunction, Nintendo announced that it was going to release a long-awaited remake of the 1998 game, Legend of Zelda O'Carina of Time, and I thought that was really funny because, not because I'm like a gamer or Nintendo fan boy, but because of Lees on the last episode had noted that in the Venus. Jupiter in cancer in around 2001, like two Jupiter cycles ago, the Hallmark Channel was announced and it was very much about like nostalgia and like family programming and things like that. And this launch by Nintendo was funny because it's literally targeting the nostalgia basically of millennials who like grew up with that as one of the most popular video games of the late 90s and doing a remake of it that a bunch of millennials are stoked about due to the nostalgia of like their childhood basically. Yeah, so one thing to add to that I looked up the chart for the release of the very first legend of Zelda which was in 1986 and of course it has a Venus Jupiter co-presence in Pisces right? Yeah and so and the sun is there and mercury is there and so yeah and so that is unsurprising also it has the moon in cancer and the sun is there and mercury is there and so yeah and so that is unsurprising also it has the moon in cancer cancer and so like that that first release chart is lit up by the Venus Jupiter conjunction. I have one I have one more Venus Jupiter story that we haven't written down if there's time for that. Yeah that was the last one I was going to end with I thought was a funny story. Oh yeah it's great. I think even funnier is that right literally as the Venus Jupiter conjunction was forming and as it perfects and in the days afterward, Boston experienced a massive beer shortage after an estimated 50,000 Scottish fans came to the city for the 2026 World Cup. And so there are all these posts and stories about bars just being drunk dry. And the Venus Jupiter revelry of like traveling traveling across the world, like seeing a city dry in the process, like that's very Venus Jupiter and especially Venus Jupiter in a water sign, right? Like you're literally, we drank all the happy liquid. And so I thought that was, that was like a lot of fun. I wish I had that much fun. My Venus Jupiter conjunction was nice, but it was not drank a city dry of beer fun. Yeah, that is pretty fun, pretty excessive drinking. That's funny, because excess came up. up actually in the episode I did with Patrick just now where what was it who was the director of Wolf of Wall Street Scorsese? Martin Scorsese had like Jupiter and cancer and then he had a recurrence a goal year 71 year recurrence when he did the Wolf of Wall Street of Jupiter and cancer and like the one of the core themes of that movie was literally like excess like a life you know lived to excess in every possible area or every possible way. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, all right. So that is the Venus Jupiter segment. So with Venus Pluto, there was only one major headline story I noted that day around the time of the Venus Pluto opposition that happened in June, where there was some sort of like hack and there was this weird list of like a secret society that held meetings was leaked and it had a bunch of like celebrities on it. And so over the course of the next few days, a bunch of celebrities on it. And so over the next few days few days, a few days, a bunch of celebrities, a issues like statements downplaying it or other things like that and I thought it was a really interesting combination of Venus which is like associations like friendship and like coming together with people but then it's opposite Pluto and there was something about it being behind the scenes or hidden or underworldly or something like that that sort of came to the forefront at that time at least in terms of the public's discussion of it you know whatever the reality of that was Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I think I accidentally watched an incredibly Venus opposite Pluto movie right when that opposition hit. Have you seen the drama starring Zendaya and Robert Patterson? No, I wanted to see that though. I love both. Okay, so no spoilers. It's about a couple who are engaged to be married and everything's going well, but then a terrible secret from one of their past emerges and the movie is really all about trying to grapple with that terrible secret and can the relationship survive the emergence of this terrible secret like Venus we're gonna be happy we love a juror we're gonna get married but then can it survive the opposition by Pluto so yeah oops Wow Yeah that's that's pretty good I'll have to check that out I've been meaning to watch that that reminds me there was a story like that I just read it was from like 20 or something like that but it went viral again recently where it was like this couple in their late 90s and they got a divorce and they were like the oldest couple with the longest marriage or like 70 years had ever gotten a divorce in history and it was because of like something came up from one of their pasts that shocked the others and they decided to get a divorce basically at the in their late 90s which was pretty crazy. Yeah that's brutal. Yeah that's brutal. birth data for anybody involved. So it was like a couple from Italy, but if anybody happens to know the story I'm talking about in their birth data, let me know. Yeah, you'd hope that after 70 years you'd kind of worked a lot of things out. Yeah, you'd hope so, but I don't know, people are people. All right, so moving on. Last section of news was the Mars Uranus stories, which just started to heat up over the past week, especially as the Mars. conjunction came within 10 degrees. And the major and central one was that there was this major set of earthquakes, and especially there were twin two earthquakes, a 7.2 and a 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela. And as of last night, it was like, it crumbled like a ton of buildings and high-rise. And the numbers I was reading last night were around 1,500 people are known to have died basically and over 3,000 are injured, but a bunch of rescue operations are still desperately underway right now. So a lot of those numbers may go up. And in the last forecast episode, Lisa and I noted that Venezuela was one of the countries we were keeping our eye on because they were one of the countries born with a Mars Uranus conjunction. So we were expecting. a major turning point for Venezuela, for the US, for Lebanon, was the other one we mentioned, and there was like one more, I can't remember what the fourth one was at the moment, but Cuba, right? Cuba, yeah, Cuba is the other one that we're expecting and we're waiting on as well, but this, so it meant that this huge earthquake part of it was that because it was a, it was a Venus, a Mars Uranus recurrence transit for Venezuela. basically dating back to their revolution that started in 1810 around that Mars Uranus conjunction? Yeah, Venezuela can't catch a break. Yeah, it's just been a string of really bad things basically for the past six months. So probably other significant things will come out of this still and we'll have to pay attention, especially over the next few weeks while Mars is moving through Gemini that that's really going to be activating something central about about the birth chart of Venezuela and Lisa actually pointed out that when the earthquake happened that Mars was at like 27 degrees of Taurus and so it was activating the eclipse from February which was back in Aquarius at I think 26 27 degrees of Aquarius squaring Uranus at 27 degrees of Aquarius squaring Uranus at 27 degrees of Taurus so that may be part of the timing surrounding this as well besides the Mars Uranus recurrence was all also that eclipse being a precursor. Yeah, and not only that but within half a degree of 27 tourists you have the fixed star put algal which has a deservedly fearsome reputation. Absolutely. All right, so moving on to the next new story. Another thing that's developing right now is on June 26th, I think this is tied in with the Mars Uranus conjunction. The Trump administration had been putting some sort of like order on some of the AI companies that they couldn't share their newly developed high profile artificial intelligences because they were deemed to be too dangerous and too powerful in detecting vulnerabilities and websites and other programs and things like that. But on June 26 the Trump administration announced that they struck a deal with Entropic which granted the company permission to release its new mythos five model to a group of 100 companies and federal agencies. according to CNBC. And I think this is really important because I think this is one of the main signatures of this, not just this Mars Uranus conjunction, but also potentially some of the subsequent conjunctions of Mars and Uranus and Gemini over the next seven years, which is the military use and development of artificial intelligence as well as the attempts to control it by the government basically. to what was happening the last time Uranus was in Gemini in the 1940s and you had the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb, which was deployed for the first time on a Mars Uranus conjunction in Gemini in 1945. So this is also happening in connection to and reminds me that in February, on the last Mars Uranus Square that led into this conjunction, the day before the Iran war began, remember. there was that whole like news story with entropic about them supposedly like standing up to the government and saying that the government couldn't use their program for military purposes but then it led to this whole power struggle with with the government at the time about them cutting off funding or something like that so I think this is like a major major theme that's emerging with this and some of that's going to be accelerated this month not just with the Mars Uranus conjunction but also with into entraining Pluto in Aquarius for the first time? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And to strengthen your example of last time Uranus was in Gemini, although the Manhattan Project was certainly the most famous big government project that produced military technology, all of the, all around the world nations were doing, we're putting huge amount of of money into producing and improving military technology in what was in no case a sort of open free market with no regulation, right? Like that is the nature of military technology as it's not for your opponent. And so like the whole world was doing that was rushing to do that last time and so yeah not very far into Uranus's time. And with Mars just getting in there, we're glimpsing that pattern. And as I said, I could not agree more. I think that's a very safe call. Yeah. And that's one of the