Fire accompanied the Rooster in the Chinese zodiac year beginning on January 28, 2017.
The year is commonly called the Year of the Fire Rooster. Its lunar year began with Chinese New Year on January 28, 2017, rather than at the start of the Gregorian calendar year.
The Rooster is the tenth animal in the twelve-sign sequence and is paired with the earthly branch You. The Fire designation comes from the heavenly-stem and earthly-branch system, which combines five elements with yin-yang qualities across a sixty-year cycle.
The previous Rooster year began in 2005, but it had a different element. This is why simply identifying a year as a Rooster year is less specific than naming its full stem-and-branch designation. The zodiac year ended at the next Lunar New Year in February 2018.