Chinese zodiac
Year of the Goat: years, ages and Singapore
The recent Goat years are 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003 and 2015, one every twelve years. Anyone born in them turns 71, 59, 47, 35, 23 and 11 in 2026. The next Year of the Goat is 2027, the Fire Goat.
The part people get wrong: a zodiac year starts at Chinese New Year, not on 1 January. A birthday in January or early February belongs to the previous animal. Check a birth date against the actual boundary, or read the full table below, which runs back to the 1920s.
Goat years and ages in 2026
Each row is the age reached during 2026. Before the birthday, subtract one.
Goat personality
Goats are described as gentle, artistic, compassionate and calm: tender-hearted and creative, drawn to beauty and quiet, generous with those close to them. Tradition also has them indecisive or dependent, preferring support and consensus to going it alone, with a quiet resilience under the soft exterior. The branch is 未, and the sign is also translated as Sheep or Ram, since 羊 covers all three.
Why the Goat returns every 12 years but its element takes 60
Years are named by pairing one of ten heavenly stems with one of twelve earthly branches. The branch gives you the Goat; the stem gives the element, two years to each. Ten and twelve do not line up again until sixty, so a given element reaches the Goat about once in a lifetime. 2015 was the Wood Goat, 2027 is the Fire Goat, and the next Wood Goat is 2075.
- Wood Goat1955, 2015growth-minded and cooperative, taking the long view
- Fire Goat1967, 2027dynamic and bold, quick to lead
- Earth Goat1979, 2039grounded and dependable, building to last
- Metal Goat1931, 1991disciplined and principled, holding a firm line
- Water Goat1943, 2003adaptable and persuasive, reading people well
The Goat superstition that Singapore data does not support
You will read everywhere that Chinese couples avoid Goat-year births because of 十羊九不全, roughly "nine of ten Goats are incomplete". The belief is real and widely discussed. The birth dip is not, at least not here.
Chinese resident total fertility rate in Goat years, measured against the mean of the two adjacent years, moved as follows: 1979 up 0.9%, 1991 down 3.1%, 2003 down 4.4% in the SARS year, and 2015 flat. Total live births in 2015 were 42,185, essentially level with 42,232 in 2014 and above 41,251 in 2016 (SingStat). Compare that with the Tiger and Dragon effects, which are large enough to be visible in the same series and have been formally measured in published research that finds no Goat effect at all.
Even in China the demographic reality is contested. Duan Chengrong of Renmin University analysed national population data from 1954 to 2002 and concluded that Sheep-year birth avoidance does not survive analysis (CNN, February 2015). Treat it as folklore that people repeat rather than a pattern anyone here acts on.
Three goats, and the I Ching phrase behind them
Chinatown's 2015 centrepiece was a 10m lantern of three goats standing on a mountain, with 338 goat-shaped lanterns and 1,500 shaped like gold coins (AsiaOne's retrospective). Three goats is not a design choice, it is the motif 三阳开泰, and it is usually explained backwards.
The phrase is not about sheep. 泰 is one of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, and its first three lines are yang, hence "three yang". It is a start-of-year phrase tied to the winter solstice, after which daylight lengthens. 羊 (goat) is simply a homophone of 阳 (yang), which is why artists draw the phrase as three goats. The Palace Museum's own lexicon puts it plainly: 羊 and 阳 sound alike, so craftsmen use three goats to decorate objects with that meaning (故宫博物院, which also holds a Qing jade carving of the motif). Written as 三羊开泰, it is the pun; written as 三阳开泰, it is the original.
The 2027 Goat is being decided by public vote. The Chinatown Festivals Committee shortlisted three centrepiece designs, "Blooming Fortune" by Ng Toh Chuan, "Prosperity & Harmony" by Casey Loh Kah Chung and "Pasture & Water" by Stan Tan Waye Pinn (chinatownfestivals.sg). The 2027 Goat coin is still pending too: MAS unveils each issue in November of the preceding year, so expect it around November 2026. The last Goat coin, in 2015, belonged to the older Third series, which used Chinese seal characters and a peony rather than a Singapore location (MAS).
Goat compatibility and clash
Tradition, not a forecast. The trine, the secret friend and the clash are fixed by where the Goat sits in the twelve-branch order, so they describe a pattern rather than a person.
- Trine, the natural allies
- Pig and Rabbit. Signs four places apart, read as sharing the Goat’s pace and outlook.
- Secret friend
- Horse. Held to be the strongest one-to-one pairing, even across different trines.
- Clash, the Tai Sui year
- Ox, the opposite sign six places away. That makes an Ox year the Goat’s clash-with-Tai-Sui year, next falling in 2033.
Your own zodiac year: 2027 for the Goat
The cycle returns to your own sign every twelve years, and that year is your 本命年: for the Goat, 2027. Tradition reads it as a year to take care in rather than one to celebrate. Ox years, next in 2033, draw the same attention for the opposite reason. Sharing the year’s sign is 值太岁; being the sign opposite it is 冲太岁, also called 岁破, which for the Goat means the Ox.
Both are years people take to a temple rather than sit with privately. Lorong Koo Chye Sheng Hong Temple keeps all sixty Tai Sui, consecrated in 1993 from the Yuanchen Hall at Beijing’s Baiyun Guan, one of whom presides over 2027. Most temples here enshrine only that presiding figure. Prayers run from the fourth day of the first lunar month to the end of it (the temple’s Tai Sui hall page). What the temple publishes is a procedure, not a prediction about anyone born a Goat.
Common questions
What years are Goat years?
The recent ones are 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003 and 2015. The next is 2027, then 2039. The full list back to 1931 is in the table above.
How old are you if you were born in the Year of the Goat?
In 2026 a Goat born in 2015 turns 11, in 2003 turns 23, in 1991 turns 35, in 1979 turns 47, in 1967 turns 59 and in 1955 turns 71. Subtract one if the birthday is still to come.
When is the next Year of the Goat?
2027, starting at Chinese New Year on 6 February 2027. It will be the Fire Goat, the last of which was 1967.
Do people really avoid having babies in Goat years?
The belief exists, but Singapore’s birth data does not show it. Chinese fertility in 1979, 1991 and 2015 tracked the adjacent years closely, unlike the clear Tiger dips and Dragon spikes in the same series. Even in China, demographers dispute whether the effect is real.
Is the Goat the same as the Sheep or the Ram?
Yes. The Chinese character 羊 covers goat, sheep and ram, so all three translations refer to the same eighth sign of the zodiac.