Leo Dates, Traits & Compatibility (Jul 23 to Aug 22)

Leo illustration

Leo runs July 23 to August 22, and its symbol comes from the single most iconic monster in all of Heracles’s twelve labors: a lion whose hide couldn’t be pierced by any mortal weapon.

Dates, element, and modality

• Dates: July 23 to August 22 (inclusive)
• Element: Fire
• Modality: Fixed
• Symbol: The Lion, drawn as a stylized mane and tail (♌)

Fixed signs fall in the settled middle of a season, and Leo lands at the height of summer, when the heat has fully arrived and shows no sign of leaving. Fixed Fire is a very different animal from Cardinal Fire (Aries): it’s less about starting the blaze and more about being the steady, hard-to-ignore center of it.

The myth behind the symbol

The Nemean lion terrorized the region of Nemea with a golden hide that no weapon, blade, or arrow could pierce. King Eurystheus assigned Heracles to kill it as the first of his twelve labors, expecting the task to be nearly impossible. Heracles cornered the lion in its cave and, finding weapons useless, strangled it with his bare hands. He then used one of the lion’s own claws, the only thing sharp enough, to skin it, and wore the impenetrable hide as a cloak for the rest of his adventures. Zeus placed the lion among the stars as Leo to commemorate the feat, right next to Cancer, the crab from Heracles’s second labor.

Ruling planet

Leo is traditionally ruled by the Sun, astrology’s symbol for identity, vitality, and visibility, a fitting match for a Fixed Fire sign associated with sustained presence rather than fleeting sparks. As with every sign here, that’s a chart-reading convention inherited from ancient astrology, not an astronomical claim: the Sun’s rulership of Leo has nothing to do with orbital mechanics, since every sign experiences the Sun’s actual physical effects (daylight, seasons) identically regardless of birth date.

Personality lore

Fixed Fire combines Fire’s drive with Fixed modality’s staying power, which is a different mix from Aries’s Cardinal Fire (quick to start, quick to move on) or Sagittarius’s Mutable Fire (restless, always chasing the next thing). Popular astrology leans on that combination to describe Leo as warm, proud of its creative work, and drawn to recognition and celebration, someone who doesn’t just start the party but wants to keep it going and be remembered for it. That’s a trait set built from the element-modality math, not an interchangeable adjective list.

Compatibility

Charts commonly pair Leo with Aries and Sagittarius, the other two Fire signs, on the idea that shared-element signs match each other’s energy and confidence. Air signs, especially Gemini and Libra, are the other classic pairing, since Air is said to supply the ideas and social spark that keep a Fire sign’s flame going. As with any compatibility list, treat it as entertainment rather than a verdict on real relationships.

Tropical zodiac vs the night sky

Leo’s dates follow the tropical zodiac, a seasonal calendar rather than a live map of the stars. Worth being direct about, once: none of this is science. Astronomy measures where stars and planets actually are; astrology layers cultural meaning onto a birth date through an older symbolic system, and neither one is a rebuttal of the other because they’re not answering the same question. Precession, the roughly 26,000-year wobble of Earth’s axis, has shifted which constellation the sun is actually crossing on a given date since ancient astrologers fixed these tropical boundaries. NASA’s explainers on this topic also flag Ophiuchus, a 13th constellation the ecliptic technically passes through with no tropical sign attached. If you were born right at the edges of July 23, the Cancer page is worth checking, since some charts nudge the cusp by a day.

Nearby signs

Compare Cancer and Virgo, or browse the full Western zodiac hub. Leo birthdays span two birthstone months, July and August, a separate tradition from sun signs.

Enter your birth date in the birthday calculator to confirm your sign, weekday, and moon phase, and see methodology for how this site classifies dates.