2026: Year of The Wheel

As you may have seen in last month’s post about The Hermit, each year has a corresponding tarot card, calculated by adding the digits of the year together. In 2025, this card was number 9, The Hermit. This means that 2026’s Card of The Year is the Wheel of Fortune. Buckle up, because the Wheel of Fortune promises one hell of a ride.

This can be one of the most misunderstood archetypes of the tarot deck because of (surprise, surprise!) the way it’s portrayed in the media. The Wheel of Fortune is not a harbinger of bad luck, though watching rom-com Just My Luck in the 2000s (long before I came by my first tarot deck) certainly made me think so. This card isn’t an ominous omen that bad luck will befall you either, much like the Death card isn’t an omen of death! Like all tarot cards, the Wheel of Fortune is complex and nuanced, and focusing on the idea of ‘luck’ really misses the point.

So, what does The Wheel of Fortune actually represent? First and foremost it is, well, a wheel, and so it is representative of cycles, in their many forms. This can be patterns that need to be addressed or cycles that need to be honoured. Furthermore, wheels and cycles are also a symbol of perpetual motion, something that indicates change. We also cannot ignore the mystical nature of the Wheel of Fortune. While I am a big proponent of free-will (my practice largely centres around using tarot as a tool of empowerment), some things are indeed bigger than us and outside of our control, and this card serves as a reminder.

And so these are our key themes for 2026 - cycles, change and control.

Cycles

This year, we can expect patterns and cycles, both positive and negative, to come to the forefront of our awareness. This is when we realise that we’re going round and round in circles, or that we keep dating the same type of person again and again but expecting the relationship to be different. This is waking up to the fact that a relationship we hoped would change, in fact hasn’t, for many, many years, or starting a new job believing “this time, it will be different” only to find we’re playing the same games we were at our last job, and the one before… and the one before. These are, of course, not patterns worthy of repeating. They’re keeping us stuck, which is precisely the opposite of what the Wheel of Fortune represents. But more often than not, we’re not aware that we’re repeating these patterns over and over again. They are our default setting, and if we’re not paying attention, we might wonder how we end up back where we started, every time we believe we’ve struck gold.

In this way, 2026 is an exceptionally powerful year, because becoming aware of these patterns gives us an opportunity to be intentional about what we do next. The Wheel of Fortune is that ride-or-die bestie who’s seen us date loser after loser, patiently waiting for us to see it, and now we finally do, begging us to break the cycle, once and for all. That creates the opportunity for profound change, and perhaps unexpected change, if we’re not yet consciously aware of the patterns we’ve been repeating.

But not all cycles are meant to be broken, because life and nature is, itself, cyclical. In our machine-driven society, it’s easy to forget it, but we are meant to have seasons. And what are seasons part of? The Wheel of The Year! It’s a wheel because time is always moving, and the seasons are perpetually melting into one another. Winter will always evolve into the blossom of spring and spring will always grow into the full bloom of summer, which will naturally fall away into autumn, fully shedding into winter… which will evolve into the blossom of spring once again. Nature is not always in bloom, though, and that makes for an important metaphor for the positive cycles we might pay more reverence to this year.

On a larger scale, we might find 2026 brings very clear and distinct seasons - a harsh winter, hot summer, sweater-weather autumn and fertile spring. This can, of course, make it easier to live seasonally on an individual level too. It’s much more tempting to hibernate in winter when it’s cold outside, and a steaming bowl of pumpkin soup might be all the more tempting in autumn.

But we have our own ‘seasons’, don’t we? This year, we may notice these more, whether that be mood cycles, energy levels ebbing and flowing, or even your menstrual cycle, if you have one. This is getting in touch with our very nature and honouring it, without shame or judgement. Maybe you’re a bit cranky before your first cup of coffee, or you can’t sleep without that cup of herbal tea before bed. Maybe you always feel tired on a Monday, so you plan your workouts for later in the week. Maybe you feel emotionally fragile on the full moon, but getting your journal out really helps, or wrapping yourself in a blanket and watching your guilty pleasure show on TV. The point is becoming aware of your own nature and embracing it, living in alignment with it rather than fighting against it, so that you can live your best life.

This being said, if you have a habit, ritual or routine you’d like to commit to, but haven’t been able to make it stick (or you simply haven’t even started yet), this year could be a wonderful time to make it happen. Habits and routines are the patterns that we choose for ourselves. You want to wake up earlier, exercise, drink more water? Meditate, journal, prioritise date night? There is massive potential for change this year, and this means you can decide to make change if you want to.

Change

‘The Wheel is always turning’, as they say, and due to the cyclical nature of this card, this could not be more accurate. Reductive (and harmful) interpretations of this card view this in a very black and white way - we’re up one minute, and the next, we’re down. But that describes more of a see-saw type motion than a wheel, doesn’t it? The point of this being a wheel is to say that things are always evolving, which means they’re always changing. But we, as humans, hate change. The reason why is because change brings with it an inherent unknown. This is why we are always more likely to put up with something uncomfortable but familiar, than make a change to improve our situation. Even if we know that the situation will improve, our body doesn’t know. It just feels like it’s in unfamiliar territory and, therefore, unsafe.

Change also means that we have to let go of something in order to make room for something new. This is something we feel more strongly in the Death card, but it applies in all instances of change. Change means things are different, which means that something that was, no longer exists. That can be hard, painful even, but it is a necessary part of our growth. The baby must become something different to grow into a toddler, who must grow into something different to become a child, who must grow into something different to become a teenager, who must grow into something else to become an adult. No stage of growth is a ‘loss’, it is our natural evolution, and yet, something still has to be left behind in order for that evolution to take place.

What have you outgrown? What is ready to naturally fall away? Where have you met the edge of your comfort zone? Are you ready to expand?

In some instances, these changes are going to feel very decisive and intentional, but in other cases, they might not. Sometimes, we don’t quite feel ready to move on, but life is pushing us ahead. Nature is telling us that we’re ready and coaxing us forward - because that wheel gotta keep on turning…

Control

And that brings me on to our final theme for the year, control. Oftentimes, when this card appears in readings, especially in relation to potential, outcomes and the future, it is here to tell us that some things are not meant to be known. Some things need to just unfold as they do. As a Capricorn stellium, I like to be in control. I like to know what’s coming. I like to have a plan. And so believe me, I know this can be frustrating as hell! But the tarot is full of reminders that trying to control everything is a fruitless exercise that kind of misses the point of life.

You are not meant to have all the answers. You are not meant to know every step along the map of your life. You are not meant to know the destination. Because sometimes, the not knowing is actually part of the story. It’s part of your growth, your evolution. Knowledge is power, yes. But if we knew all the answers and all the outcomes, it would be a bit like playing a game on cheat mode. We might make all the ‘right’ moves, but at the end of the game, did we really learn anything? In fact, let’s consider we get to the last level of the game and suddenly cheat mode gets turned off. Chances are, we wouldn’t just fail, but we’d crash and burn, because we never actually learned the skill of playing the game.

Now, I’m absolutely not saying that life is a game. But the principle is the same. Sometimes, it’s the wrong turns, the mistakes, and the bravery that we find inside ourselves when we take a leap of faith, that are the things that truly show us what life is about.

This means that, in 2026, we can expect the unexpected. The year may not go as you planned it, and when you try to control things, the universe may have other ideas. But what does happen is likely to be significant, even if you can’t quite see what the significance is by the end of the year. Reflecting back, I’m sure you can think of a moment or two in your life that seemed like everything had gone horribly wrong, and yet was the beginning of everything going horribly right. Likewise, is there a moment in your life that was entirely insignificant at the time, and yet, was a catalyst to something that now means the world to you? Or perhaps a moment that you thought would be important for one reason, that in fact, became important for a completely different reason than you thought?

The point here isn’t to surrender everything to the universe and take no action ourselves. Rather, this is about controlling what is within our control, surrendering what isn’t and trusting that if things don’t go our way, there may just be a powerful lesson or experience in there, which will alter the course of your life or lead you somewhere you could never have gotten to without it.

The Backdrop of The Magician

Totalling the digits of the year brings us to 10, which is the Wheel of Fortune, but being in the double digits, it does mean that we can reduce the number down even further, to 1. While the Card of The Year is indeed the Wheel of Fortune, we may still feel The Magician’s influence lingering in the background. The Magician’s divine masculine energy of manifestation is something we can both embody (by making magic happen) or experience (by witnessing magic). And we can see this in that push and pull between control and surrendering to the divine. When we’re taking action, making intentional change, breaking patterns, embracing our cycles, we are using our Magician energy to make sh!t happen, and we are very much in control of this. But in those moments where things fall apart but somehow manage to fall together in a way that we never could have anticipated, in those moments of serendipity and happenstance, we are experiencing the Magician’s energy, because it feels like magic. Whether you take that job out of necessity, because it will pay the bills, only to meet the love of your life working in the same office, or your landlord serves notice on a home you love, days before your best friend’s roommate moves out, or a stranger walks into the bar you work at and hands you a deck of tarot cards that will alter the course of your life, these are those life-changing moments that we look back on and go, “If it wasn’t for that… then I wouldn’t have done this… and so I wouldn’t have been there that day when…”

That intricate tapestry of your life that weaves itself together without you noticing? That’s the Wheel of Fortune doing its magic.

In this way, the Wheel of Fortune isn’t about the ups and downs of life at all. Rather, it’s about the unpredictability of it. Good things can turn out to be unexpectedly disappointing. Bad things can turn out to be unexpectedly positive. And most of life doesn’t happen at either end of the spectrum. It’s the cycles, the patterns, the habits and the rituals. Each small step taking us a step further along our journey, destination unknown. That’s the magic of life.

Did this resonate with you? Do you have different expectations for this year, based on the Wheel of Fortune being the Card of The Year? Let me know in the comments!

N x