Animal Crossing: New Horizons is currently celebrating its one-year anniversary with new updates, items, and lots of new features on the way. New Horizon fans have had a whole year on their island getaway and experienced plenty of events during that time too. Events offer a refreshing change of pace for island life and normally introduce new items and DIY recipes.
We’ve decided to list every event from the past year, excluding the usual fishing and bug tournaments. We’ve ranked each one from worst to best. Did your favorite event from New Horizons rank highly?
16 Bunny Day
While Bunny Day offered a host of adorable new items and DIY recipes, players could just not get over being haunted by the giant yellow Zipper T. Bunny character day in and day out. If the unwanted visitor wasn’t enough, eggs were absolutely everywhere.
Whether you wanted to fish, shake trees, or shoot down balloons — you’d find yourself drowning in unwanted eggs, so much so that Nintendo actually nerfed the drop rate for them. No one is looking forward to the return of this event.
15 Lunar New Year
Lunar New Year was a fairly small-scale event that added some limited-time items to the Nook Stop Shop/App, including a Lucky Red Envelope, a Lunar New Year Decoration, and a Bokjumeoni Lucky Pouch.
Players could gift their villagers with some Bells by putting them in a Lucky Red Envelope. Isabelle and the other villagers on your island would discuss the event and players received a special Mom item in the mail too.
14 International Museum Day
International Museum Day was another small event that saw players taking part in a Stamp Rally in the museum, collecting stamps in order to receive special plaques from Blathers.
Plaques commemorated obtaining all stamps for the Fossil, Fish, and Bug portions of the museum. However, fans were disappointed that the Art exhibit was not included, despite recently being added before this event.
13 Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day didn’t seem to be a big deal in New Horizons really. Players could purchase a couple of limited-time items from the Nook Stop Shop/App if they wished, and additionally, they received a gift from a random villager on their island and from Isabelle in their mailbox.
12 May Day
The May Day Event offered players a trip to a special island where they were challenged to navigate through a maze using a combination of crafting and puzzle-solving to overcome environmental obstacles in order to reach the end.
More importantly, this event saw the return of the NPC Rover, a character that had been missing from New Horizons until this point. Completing the maze offered some small rewards, with the most notable being the Rover’s Briefcase furnishing.
11 Mushrooming Season
Mushrooming Season is a month-long event that takes place in November for the Northern Hemisphere, and in May for the Southern Hemisphere. Each day, players could collect five mushrooms that came in a variety of types, as well as collect new DIY recipes in order to craft items from the Mush Furnishing Set.
10 New Year’s Eve/Day
The New Year’s event in New Horizons was super cute as all of the villagers wore party hats and gathered in the plaza for the New Year’s countdown. Players could get light sticks and party poppers to celebrate and Isabelle and Tom Nook were both in adorable little tuxedos to celebrate
9 Turkey Day
Turkey Day is Animal Crossing’s equivalent of Thanksgiving and saw the return of the NPC Franklin. Players could help Franklin to cook up a storm by getting ingredients from him, and in return, he rewarded them with items and DIY recipes for the Turkey Furnishing Set.
8 Nature Day
Nature Day was the celebration of the real-world event Earth Day. Though it wasn’t the most rewarding event in terms of obtaining new items, it did introduce hedges to the game, though they are a firm staple now.
However, the real attraction for fans was the limited-time Nook Mile+ tasks, allowing players to earn even more miles. As Nook Miles is a super coveted currency, it was no surprise that an event that made earning them even easier was popular with players.
7 Festivale
Festivale was a bright and colorful event that saw all of the villagers getting their groove on and saw the return of the NPC Pave to the series. Players had to collect and trade different colored feathers in order to get new Festivale items and DIY recipes. Additionally, four new reactions were added to allow players to dance with Pave.
6 Fireworks Show
During the month of August, a Fireworks Show took place every Sunday evening where players could customize the fireworks with their own designs. Redd took part in the event with Redd’s Raffle, where players could try to win different seasonal items, such as pinwheels, tweeters, and sparklers.
As well as the items you could win from Redd, Isabelle gave out different head boppers during the event when spoken to, including to anyone who was visiting the island.
5 Maple Leaf Season
Maple Leaf season takes place from November 16th - 25th for the Northern Hemisphere, and between April 16th - 25th for the Southern Hemisphere. Players were able to collect maple leaves to create new furnishings from seasonal DIY recipes that could be found by shooting down balloons.
4 Wedding Season
The Wedding Season event was a welcome sight for players, as not only did it return fan-favorite NPCs, Reese and Cyrus, to the series, but players were able to obtain a variety of gorgeous wedding-themed furnishings by collecting Heart Crystals.
Players took part in photoshoots, following the theme that Reese requested in order to receive the Heart Crystals used to purchase the new seasonal items.
3 Toy Day (and Festive Season)
During Festive Season, players can collect festive ornaments by shaking trees that can then be used to craft seasonal DIY recipes. On Toy Day itself, the NPC Jingle makes an appearance and tasks players with crafting festive wrapping paper, before asking them to deliver gifts to all of the villagers. Players are rewarded with new festive DIY recipes and items.
Players can also exchange gifts with villagers and will often receive the Christmas-themed items that were available from the Nook Shop during the Festive Season.
2 Cherry Blossom Season
Cherry Blossom Season takes place between April 1st - 10th for the northern hemisphere, and between October 1st -10th for the southern hemisphere. Players were able to collect petals floating through the air to then use in the crafting of seasonal DIY recipes. Players could collect the seasonal DIY recipes by shooting down balloons.
1 Halloween
Halloween was an awesome event in New Horizons, where players could dress up and trick or treat with their animal villagers in order to receive candy. You could also buy candy in the run-up to Halloween from Nook’s Cranny.
The NPC Jack made an appearance on Halloween itself and giving him candy would reward the player with suitably spooky items, DIY recipes, and outfits. Both the Able Sisters, Kicks, and Nook’s Cranny sold Halloween-themed items, and rather adorably, your villagers would also dress up for the occasion.
