A solar return is the moment the Sun comes back to the exact ecliptic longitude it held at your birth. It happens once a year, close to the birthday, and astrologers draw a chart for that instant, known as the solar return chart, to look at the year ahead. The return and its chart are separate things: the instant is the same everywhere on Earth, while the chart also needs a place.
Because the calendar year and the Sun’s yearly cycle do not line up exactly, the return can fall on the birthday itself or on the day before or after it. Its time of day changes from year to year as well. Reading the chart as a forecast for the coming twelve months is an astrological convention, not a measured effect.
The solar return calculator searches for the exact instant near the birthday year you choose and draws the chart for your birthplace, or for other coordinates if you enter both. It uses the same calculation and house limits as the full birth chart tool. An uncertain birth time stays uncertain in the return chart, and the guide to unknown birth times explains what that affects. Your details stay in the browser.
The Sun’s position at birth is also your Sun sign. For the moving positions during the rest of the year, see transit and the personal transit calculator. The house system entry explains why two return charts can divide the houses differently.
In a chart
Suppose a birth chart shows the Sun at 18°24′ Gemini. Every year, around the same June birthday, the Sun reaches 18°24′ Gemini again, and that instant is the solar return. Cast for London, the return chart has one Ascendant and set of houses. Cast for New York at the same instant, the planets keep the same signs and degrees, but the Ascendant and the houses change, because the local horizon is different.
Where you see it on Astrologican
These free tools and pages calculate or list it, so you can see it in a real result.