2026 · the year of the horse
Ben ming nian is one relation, not a mood. In 2026 the year branch is Wu, so the animal that shares it meets Own Year and Punishment at once, while three other animals meet Clash, Harm and Break. Below is every animal, with the relation printed.
The year pillar turns at lichun, and the engine computes the 2026 instant as 2026-02-04 04:02. That gives the year pillar 丙午 (Bing Wu), and the year branch 午 (Horse).
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Lichun 2026 (Beijing time) | 2026-02-04 04:02 |
| Year pillar | 丙午 Bing Wu |
| Year branch | 午 Wu, Horse |
| Year pillar 2025 (for contrast) | 乙巳 Yi Si |
The tradition groups the relation between an animal and the year branch into five kinds. All five are computed from tables here, with no ranking: two can apply at once, as when the same branch is also a self-punishing one.
| Relation | How it is decided |
|---|---|
| 值太岁 Own year | your animal is the year branch — ben ming nian |
| 冲太岁 Clash | your branch sits six positions from the year branch |
| 刑太岁 Punishment | your branch shares a punishment group with the year branch, or both self-punish |
| 害太岁 Harm | your branch forms a six-harm pair with the year branch |
| 破太岁 Break | your branch forms a six-break pair with the year branch |
The table below is computed from the animal-to-year-branch relation, item by item — not a copied list:
| Animal | Branch | Relation in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Rat 鼠 | 子 Zi, Rat | 冲太岁 |
| Ox 牛 | 丑 Chou, Ox | 害太岁 |
| Tiger 虎 | 寅 Yin, Tiger | none |
| Rabbit 兔 | 卯 Mao, Rabbit | 破太岁 |
| Dragon 龙 | 辰 Chen, Dragon | none |
| Snake 蛇 | 巳 Si, Snake | none |
| Horse 马 | 午 Wu, Horse | 值太岁 + 刑太岁 |
| Goat 羊 | 未 Wei, Goat | none |
| Monkey 猴 | 申 Shen, Monkey | none |
| Rooster 鸡 | 酉 You, Rooster | none |
| Dog 狗 | 戌 Xu, Dog | none |
| Pig 猪 | 亥 Hai, Pig | none |
So exactly 4 animals meet a relation in 2026: Rat (冲太岁), Ox (害太岁), Rabbit (破太岁), Horse (值太岁+刑太岁). The other eight form none — any claim that every animal offends tai sui does not survive the table.
A horse year recurs every twelve years, but the year stem changes with each pass, so a Bing-Wu (fire horse) year returns only every sixty. Across the engine table the Bing-Wu years are just three:
| Year | Year pillar | From 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 1906 | 丙午 Bing Wu | -120 years |
| 1966 | 丙午 Bing Wu | -60 years |
| 2026 | 丙午 Bing Wu | this year |
Horse years come every twelve years, with the stem cycling through Bing, Wu, Geng, Ren and Jia; Bing-Wu recurs every sixty, next in 2086. Media routinely conflate a horse year with a fire horse year, and the two differ by a factor of five in rarity.
The tables above are structural facts: the relation between an animal and the year branch can be checked item by item. The traditional reading of those relations — that a ben ming nian calls for caution, that a clash year brings change — belongs to the reading layer. This site labels it as traditional, issues no fortune verdict, recommends no remedy and sells no service. For the structural facts of 2026 itself, see the year-structure page; for the difference between a horse year and a fire horse year, see the fire-horse page.
A note on what this page deliberately does not do: the popular versions of this material assign a fixed personality to each term — one character per branch, one destiny per stage. This site rejects that framing. What is published here is a structural position: which element sits where, on what kind of ground, with which tenants inside. The same term reads differently under a different month command, and no meaningful judgement exists without the other characters of the chart. Where the tradition offers a reading it is labelled as the tradition's; this site's own contribution is that every number and term on this page is computed, versioned and checkable against the methodology page.
These are the questions specific to this page; broader conventions live on the methodology page.
Every enumerable component of ba zi has its own page here. Each page is computed by the same engine and can be checked item by item — none of it is a personality table.