2025 Chinese zodiac sign: Wood Snake

Chinese year 2025 begins on Wednesday, January 29, 2025, and ends on Monday, February 16, 2026, the day before the Year of the Fire Horse begins. It has a full 384 days, because it is a leap year with 13 lunar months; the next one comes in 2028. The Chinese calendar adds the extra month roughly every two or three years so that it doesn't drift away from the seasons.

The year opens with the new moon on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 7:36 a.m. ET, which is 8:36 p.m. China Standard Time, so the date is the same in New York and in Beijing.

The Lantern Festival, which closes the New Year celebrations, comes on the fifteenth day of the first month, so on Wednesday, February 12, 2025. The year's first full moon falls on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 8:54 a.m. ET.

It is year 42 of the sixty-year cycle that began in 1984 with the Wood Rat. In Chinese this year is called 乙巳 (yǐsì): the heavenly stem 乙 gives the element and the earthly branch 巳 the animal.

In Ba Zi astrology, the Four Pillars of Destiny, the year 2025 begins not at the lunar New Year but at the moment of lìchūn (立春, “start of spring”), when the Sun reaches 315° of ecliptic longitude: on Monday, February 3, 2025 at 9:10 a.m. Eastern Time. That is 5 days after Chinese New Year, so anyone born between January 29 and that moment already has the Wood Snake sign in the lunar calendar but still the Wood Dragon sign in Ba Zi.

This page and the calculator give your sign by the lunar calendar.

The Snake is the sign of wisdom and intuition. It observes quietly, analyzes and acts only once it understands the situation well, and then it is rarely wrong.

Growth, curiosity and cooperation. Wood brings a gardener's patience: it builds slowly, with an eye on what will grow in the years ahead.

The Wood element covers two years in a row, 2024 (yang) and 2025 (yin), and comes back every ten years: before that in 2014–2015, next in 2034–2035.

The Wood Snake combines the Snake's wisdom with the warmth of Wood. It is more open and sociable than other Snakes, has an artistic sensibility and gets along well with people. It thinks long term and loves to grow, often learning something new all its life. It needs recognition, though, and when it doesn't get it, jealousy stirs.

In 2026, people born in 2025 turn 1 year old. The Year of the Fire Horse is running now, which tradition counts as a year with no special tie for the Snake. People born in 2025 reach their next běnmìngnián, the year of their own sign, in 2037, when they turn 12 years old.

The Snake comes back every 12 years, each time with a different element. The exact combination of 2025, the Wood Snake, returns every 60 years: in 1965, 2025 and 2085.