The Energy and Opportunities of 2026
By now, most of us know that January doesn’t magically reset anything. We don’t step into a new year clean. We cross the threshold carrying memory in our bodies, lessons in our nervous systems, and choices we never thought we’d have to make.
And yet, each year still arrives with its own energetic instruction.
Some years dismantle, some years test, and some years ask us to sit still and listen. And then there are years that arrive after the dust has settled, quietly asking a different question:
Now that you see clearly, what are you going to do? This is what 2026 is asking of us.
Like astrology, numerology helps us understand the collective tone of a year and how to move through it with intention rather than resistance. When we add the digits of a year together until we reach a single number, we uncover the Universal Year frequency, the energetic current shaping our personal and collective experiences.
In 2026: 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 10 → 1
A One Universal Year. A beginning year of initiation, authorship, leadership, and direction. But to understand the weight and responsibility of that beginning, we need to acknowledge the impact of the years before.
2024, Eight Universal Year of Redefining Power + Abundance
2024 was a year that asked us to come face-to-face with power and its meaning in our lives, both individually and as a people.
Eight energy governs material systems, authority, money, labor, and control. It reveals who holds power, how it’s used, and who pays the price when it’s misused, so collectively, 2024 felt heavy. The world seemed louder, harsher, and more polarized.
We witnessed ongoing genocide and state violence, watched governments double down on policies rooted in domination over care, and saw corporate interests repeatedly prioritized over human life, environmental stability, and collective well-being. Economic pressure intensified, the cost of living rose while wages stagnated, and many felt like they were running just to stay in place. For many people, it brought a deep reckoning with the systems we’ve been told to trust.
On a personal level, 2024 tested our relationship with success and worth.
Many experienced burnout, financial anxiety, and a growing sense that the rules we were taught no longer apply. People questioned careers they once worked tirelessly to build, reevaluating what “making it” even means. For some, abundance showed up as opportunity. For others, it showed up as the painful realization that what they were chasing was never going to give them the safety or fulfillment they were promised.
Eight energy also forced us to confront how power operates internally. Where do you overextend yourself? Where do you tolerate imbalance to survive? Where have you been conditioned to believe your value is tied to your productivity, output, or resilience?
2024 revealed the quieter ways many of us have learned to exploit ourselves in order to belong, succeed, or feel secure. And while it was truly exhausting in many ways, it was mega clarifying. Because by the end of 2024, many of us knew exactly what was not sustainable anymore.
2025, Nine Universal Year of Unraveling + Completion
If 2024 confronted us with reality, 2025 asked us to let go of what that reality made impossible in our lives.
Nine energy governs closure, completion, grief, and integration. It is the final step in a nine-year cycle, and it does not rush. It asks us to metabolize what we’ve lived and what we were positioned to learn, so we don’t drag unfinished business into the future.
Collectively, 2025 carried a palpable sense of mourning. There was grief for lives lost, for futures altered, for institutions that failed us. Grief for the realization that some systems will not be reformed, only replaced. Grief for the illusion of stability that many once relied on.
At the same time, unresolved issues intensified. Conflicts escalated, tensions rose, and not because we were moving backward, but because anything left unaddressed demanded that it be resolved. Nine energy has a way of bringing matters to a head so they can finally be released, and that’s exactly what we collectively experienced.
On a personal level, 2025 was deeply emotional, often cornering us for our own greatest good.
Many experienced endings that felt inevitable. Like relationships that shifted or fell away, careers that no longer made sense, and realizing that roles that once felt defining actually felt restrictive. It was a year of continuously shedding identities that had been outgrown, sometimes quietly, sometimes painfully loud.
For some, 2025 brought exhaustion rather than motivation. A desire to pause, grieve, and integrate. To stop pushing forward out of habit and actually ask what kind of life they want to carry into the future, versus the life that they’d been living out of habit rooted in the influence of society.
2025 was a year that required deep surrender. Surrender to what could not continue, to the truth of what no longer fit, and to the wisdom gained through loss.
Nine energy is deeply humanitarian, but it is also deeply personal. It asks us to release resentment, forgive, and take responsibility for the discomfort we’ve encountered, and the lessons we’ve been positioned to learn as a result. It asked us to make peace with the mess that delivered those messages.
By the end of 2025, many felt lighter but also uncertain. Clearer, but less attached to certainty itself. The ground beneath us has shifted, and that is exactly why 2026 matters in the way it does.
2026, One Universal Year of Initiation
One is the number of beginning, authorship, and direction. It marks the opening of a brand-new cycle and asks us to step forward as active participants in our lives rather than observers of them. After years of reckoning, confrontation, and release, 2026 arrives with a different request. Not to process endlessly, not to wait until everything makes sense, but to move.
A one year does not meet us gently…it meets us honestly. It makes it difficult to stay suspended in indecision or hide behind preparation because the energy presses on the things we’ve been delaying, hesitating, or waiting for permission to do. What hasn’t been chosen begins to feel uncomfortable, and what has been avoided starts asking for clear direction.
This year does not support dragging the past forward. It also does not support rushing to erase it. Instead, it asks us to stand exactly where we are and decide how we are going to move from where we are with what we have and what we know now.
And while the world may continue to feel volatile, this is not a year of passive endurance. It is a year of authorship that asks us to take responsibility for the direction of our lives, even when certainty is unavailable.
It invites questions that are both simple and confronting:
Who are you now, after everything you’ve lived through?
What are you willing to stand behind?
What are you choosing to build, and what are you no longer willing to carry?
What begins in a one year shapes the years that follow. This is not about dramatic reinvention or reckless action just for the sake of looking like you’re doing something. It’s about intentional movement. Decisions made with presence and integrity.
A One Universal Year does not require certainty. It requires your participation.
2026 is not only a One Universal Year. As of February, it also marks a Lunar shift from the Year of the Wood Snake into the Year of the Fire Horse.
Where the Wood Snake of 2025 asked us to slow down, observe, and get radically honest about what we were sustaining and why, the Fire Horse of 2026 asks us to move with what we now know, to stop rehearsing truth internally and embody it. Live it out loud.
The Snake required discernment, patience, and a willingness to shed our skin, often without witnesses, while the Horse demands visibility, courage, and motion, making it increasingly uncomfortable to remain contained, silent, or strategically still. No more playing small or what our ego thinks is safe. The Year of the Fire Horse is for galloping forward with truth and bravery.
What We Should Focus on in 2026
Choosing direction instead of waiting for certainty
A One Universal Year does not reward delay. It asks us to orient ourselves even when the full picture has not yet revealed itself. This is a year to stop waiting for perfect conditions, external permission, or total clarity before moving. Direction comes first. Refinement comes later.
Building new structures instead of repairing broken ones
We have to be realistic — some systems are past the point of repair. 2026 asks us to stop pouring energy into structures that have already shown us their limits, and begin building alternatives rooted in truth, care, sustainability, and shared responsibility. This applies both collectively and in our personal lives. New ways of working, relating, organizing, and resourcing want to emerge now.
Living our values through our daily decisions
This year asks for integrity that is lived, not spoken. Our values will be reflected in how we spend our money, how we use our time, how we care for our bodies, and how we treat one another in ordinary moments. 2026 places less emphasis on ideology and more emphasis on behavior. Less talking, more being and doing. More embodiment.
Participating instead of spectating
A one year paired with Fire Horse energy calls for engagement. This is not a year to sit on the sidelines of your own life or the world around you. Collective change happens through participation, through showing up consistently, and through choosing responsibility over commentary.
Being brave enough to make the first move
2026 asks for courage. If we want outcomes we’ve never experienced, we have to be willing to act in ways we haven’t. This includes holding ourselves accountable, speaking honestly, naming truth in community, and leading with integrity even when it feels risky. Collective change happens when individuals are willing to step forward, say the thing, take the action, and move first, without waiting to see who else will go.
Allowing expansion to require unfamiliar behavior
Expansion in 2026 shows up through changed behavior, not just changed beliefs. Growth asks us to step outside familiar patterns, social conditioning, and old survival strategies. If we keep moving the same way (or not moving at all in an effort to protect our ego), we will keep creating the same results. This year asks us to tolerate the discomfort that is most times present in the process of expansion, to stay in the stretch, and to trust that living differently is how new futures are built sustainably.
How This May Show Up for Us Personally
Beginnings that feel vulnerable rather than polished
New chapters may begin quietly. A new way of working, creating, relating, or expressing yourself may emerge before you feel confident in it, and that’s okay. This year favors sincerity over mastery, so you may find yourself doing things for the first time again, learning as you go, and discovering that confidence builds through experience rather than preparation.
A stronger intolerance for stagnation
Situations that once felt manageable may suddenly feel unbearable. This can show up in careers, relationships, routines, or habits that drain your vitality. It becomes harder to ignore what feels misaligned in your life. This isn’t restlessness for the sake of change. It’s your life force asking for movement. For some, this may show up in your health as the body is the external expression of what is occuring internally.
Growth that stretches the nervous system
Expansion in 2026 is embodied. It can feel exciting and disorienting at the same time. You may notice moments where your mind wants to retreat to what’s familiar while your body knows you’re meant to keep going. Learning how to self-regulate while expanding continues to be part of the work at hand. Nourish yourself as needed to keep galloping at a sustainable pace. Add to your self-care toolbox as necessary.
A shift from healing as reflection to healing as action
The personal work moves out of insight and into practice. How you rest, how you speak your truth, how you set boundaries, how you repair ruptures…healing becomes something you live out loud, not something you think about.
A clearer sense of self-authorship
Authorship means you are the authority of your life. You may feel less interested in explaining your choices and more interested in standing behind them. There may be a growing clarity around what you are responsible for and what you are no longer willing to carry, either for yourself or for others.
How We Should Approach 2026 Intentionally
✔ Begin where you are, not where you think you should be. This year supports imperfect starts. Waiting to feel ready often delays growth. Movement builds clarity.
✔ Choose direction and let it evolve. You don’t need the full map. You need orientation. Pick a direction that feels aligned now and allow refinement to come through experience.
✔ Create rhythms that support expansion. Consistency becomes stabilizing in a year of forward movement. Sleep, nourishment, movement, and boundaries form the container that allows growth without burnout.
✔ Let courage be part of your daily life. Bravery in 2026 is not dramatic. It shows up in honest conversations, in taking responsibility, in choosing differently even when it feels uncomfortable.
✔ Participate in the world you want to live in. Support what you believe in. Invest your time, energy, and resources in people and systems that reflect your values. Collective change happens through lived participation.
✔ Trust your capacity to respond. Certainty is not required. Presence is. You are capable of meeting what arises as it unfolds.
…Because in 2027, a Two Universal Year, the focus will shift from initiation to relationship, from movement to connection, and from acting alone to learning how what we’ve begun meets the world. 2026 is where we choose and take the first brave steps forward.
2027 will ask how we care for what’s been started, how we collaborate, and how we stay in right relationship with ourselves, each other, and the paths we’ve set in motion. For many, 2026 is the trial by fire. 2027 is where we begin to shine.
Understanding The Energy of Your Personal Year
While 2026 is a One Universal Year, each of us experiences a personal cycle within it. Your Personal Year Number offers insight into the specific themes, lessons, and opportunities shaping your individual experience of the year. Two people can live through the same collective energy and have entirely different internal realities depending on where they are in their personal cycle.
Exploring tools like astrology, annual profections, and your Personal Year Number can help you understand where initiation, growth, or consolidation is being asked of you most clearly.
If you’re looking for a grounded way to work with this year intentionally, the Visions Unbound Workbook was created to support exactly that process. Previously known as the Claim of Abundance Workbook, it has been guiding people through intentional living, reflection, and manifestation since 2018.
This evolved iteration reflects a deeper understanding of who we are as infinitely creative souls in human bodies and offers 115 thoughtfully designed pages with spacious prompts, consciousness-expanding guidance on abundance beyond commodified narratives, three guided meditations to release the past year and center the present, ten rituals to clarify what you’re ready to call in, and a new section focused on collective care that invites you to hold your personal vision alongside tangible intentions for contributing to a more just and equitable world.
For now, let 2026 be a year you meet with courage, curiosity, and commitment. A year where you begin again, and stay present as you grow into what you’re building.
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I’ll continue to share offerings to help us stay anchored in love and trust as we navigate these cycles. Click here to sign up for my mailing list and receive insights, tools, and updates on virtual and in-person events and offerings.
All images from Unsplash.