Chinese Zodiac: The Twelve Animals and Five Elements

The Chinese zodiac is a cycle of twelve animals, Rat to Pig, that names each year of the Chinese calendar. Together with a cycle of five elements it forms a sixty-year cycle. It is a cultural tradition of symbolism and folklore that is centuries old. This section describes the twelve animals, the five elements and how the tradition pairs them, and it gives every animal’s years with the exact date each one begins.

The year changes on the lunar new year, not on 1 January. The current Chinese year, which began on 17 February 2026, is a Yang Fire Horse year (Bing-wu). The next, beginning on 6 February 2027, is a Yin Fire Goat year (Ding-wei).

Find your animal

Use the Chinese zodiac calculator for your animal and element from a birth date, and the Chinese zodiac compatibility tool to compare two people. Both use the same dates as this section, and show their working.

The twelve animals

The order is fixed: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. A popular story, the Great Race, explains it: the Jade Emperor invited the animals to race across a river, and the order of arrival gave the order of the years. The story is folklore and exists in several versions, and each animal page tells it in a little more detail.

Each animal has its own page with every year to 2047, the exact start and end dates, traditional traits, the five element versions and the animal’s pairings.

The five elements

The elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. They are five phases of change in the Chinese tradition, linked by two cycles: in the cycle of generation Wood feeds Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth bears Metal, Metal gathers Water and Water nourishes Wood; in the cycle of control Wood checks Earth, Earth checks Water, Water checks Fire, Fire checks Metal and Metal checks Wood. Each element rules two consecutive years, one Yang and one Yin, by the last digit of the year.

• Wood: years ending in 4 and 5
• Fire: years ending in 6 and 7
• Earth: years ending in 8 and 9
• Metal: years ending in 0 and 1
• Water: years ending in 2 and 3

The sixty-year cycle

Ten heavenly stems, two for each element, run alongside the twelve earthly branches, which carry the animals. Because ten and twelve share a factor of two, only half of the 120 possible combinations occur, and the cycle repeats after sixty years. The animal-and-element pair, such as Fire Horse, is therefore the same for everyone born in that year of any cycle. The calculator names the year in the cycle, for example Bing-wu for a Fire Horse year.

Where the dates come from

The lunar new year dates are those of the Hong Kong Observatory’s Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table, first day of the first lunar month, for 1901 to 2100. They are civil dates in China and Hong Kong. Someone born within a day of the new year, in another time zone, may find the family date differs. Some traditions also change the animal at the start of spring, around 4 February, rather than at the lunar new year. This site uses the lunar new year, as most people do.

Compatibility

The tradition compares animals by trines, secret friends, clashes, harms and penalties, and compares years by their elements. The compatibility overview shows them all, without scores, in the same terms as the tool.

A calm way to read it

The zodiac cannot tell anyone what they are like or what will happen, and no study has shown that a birth year predicts character. What it offers is a shared language, a prompt for conversation and a connection to the way many families celebrate the new year. Read the descriptions, notice what feels true and discard the rest. Some cultures use a different list: the Vietnamese zodiac has the Cat in place of the Rabbit, and the Thai zodiac has the Naga in place of the Dragon. To compare with the Western zodiac, try your sign in both systems.

Frequently asked questions