March 20 Zodiac Sign: Pisces or Aries?

March 20 is a cusp birthday: in 73 of the 87 years from 1940 to 2026 the Sun entered Aries during March 20 (US Eastern Time), so people born that day are Pisces before the change time and Aries after it; in 2 years the change came earlier and the whole day was Aries; in 12 years the change came later and the whole day was Pisces. Your sign depends on the year and time of birth — see the table. Pacific Time: change during the day in 74 years, whole day Aries in 7, whole day Pisces in 6.

March 20 at a glance

• Possible Sun signs: Pisces before the change, Aries after
• Elements: Water (Pisces), Fire (Aries)
• Modalities: Mutable (Pisces), Cardinal (Aries)
• Rulers: Neptune, or Jupiter in classical astrology (Pisces); Mars (Aries)
• Data: NASA JPL Horizons, 1940–2030

Each birth year gets two entries, Eastern and Pacific. A printed time is the moment Aries began that day, so earlier births are Pisces and later ones Aries; an empty entry means a single sign, named in the row, covered the date. The coasts can disagree. In 2000 the Sun entered Aries at 02:35 EST on March 20 in New York, when Los Angeles clocks still read 23:35 PST on March 19, so every Pacific birth on March 20, 2000 had an Aries Sun. Chicago and Denver get no column of their own, so births there belong in the birth chart described below. For March 1 to 31 at a glance, see March zodiac signs.

On this date the coasts pull in opposite directions. In 1942, 1946, 1967, 1971, 1975 and 1979, New York stayed in Pisces until midnight, yet on Pacific clocks Aries arrived that evening, between 21:22 (1979) and 23:37 (1967). In 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 the pull reversed: the Eastern change came in the small hours, and the whole Pacific day was already Aries. In 2020 and 2024, and in the computed 2028 row, both columns show Aries from the first minute. War Time labels mark 1942, 1944 and 1945, when clocks ran one hour fast between February 9, 1942 and September 30, 1945. In 1948 the two times sit only two hours apart, 11:57 EST and 09:57 PDT, since Los Angeles was on daylight time.

Two kinds of March 20 births can hinge on the local time of birth: those in a year whose row shows a change time, and births in Central or Mountain Time, which have no column. Enter the date, the hour from the birth certificate and the city in the free birth chart, which asks for no sign-up, to check your Sun sign with your birth time. If the time box stays empty, the chart is calculated for 12:00 noon and marked as such.

Instead of relying on a single noon position, the calculator checks for any sign changes across your entire local birth date. If the Sun, the Moon, or another planet changes sign during that local day, the result shows each possible sign for that day rather than guessing a single one.

Astrology tags every sign with a modality that marks its slot in the seasonal year, and the two candidates for March 20 sit at opposite ends of that scheme: Pisces in the last place of one season, Aries in the first place of the next. Astrology is an interpretive tradition, not a scientifically validated method, so what follows describes the two signs, not a person born on this date.

In the old division of the signs by season, Pisces, the sign before the change minute, is the final sign of winter north of the equator (of summer south of it), and Mutable is the label for that end position. Neptune, the planet modern astrologers give to Pisces, carries in astrology the themes of projections and the collective consciousness; the classical choice of ruler is Jupiter. For the whole sign, turn to the Pisces zodiac sign.

Aries, the sign after it, begins at the March equinox and is the first sign of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (of autumn south of the equator). Cardinal is the label for that opening position, and astrology reads it as action. Mars, which rules Aries, is astrology's planet of willpower. Continue with the Aries zodiac sign.

FAQ

Is a March 20 baby a Pisces–Aries cusp? People often say so, since "cusp" is the popular nickname for a birthday when the Sun may switch signs. The nickname belongs to the calendar, not to the person: at the moment of birth the Sun stood in Pisces or in Aries, and the year table read with your local birth time shows which.

Is there a set time when March 20 turns from Pisces to Aries? No. For birth years 1940–2026 the Eastern change on March 20 came as early as 00:30 EDT (2016) and as late as 23:39 EST (1983). Where the Eastern column shows no time, the change fell on March 21 if the day was all Pisces and on March 19 if it was all Aries. The computed rows put the 2029 change at 04:02 EDT and the 2030 change at 09:52 EDT.

How this page was made

Prepared by the Astrolivo editorial team. The March 20 change times are Sun ingresses computed with NASA JPL Horizons for 1940–2030, expressed in Eastern and Pacific clock time using the IANA time zone database. For the sign details the team used the Wikipedia articles "Astrological sign," "Triplicity," "Planets in astrology" and "Astrology and science," and every line was compared with them; sign meanings appear as astrology's own readings.