Everything you need to know about Animal Crossing's Festivale event

Festivale is coming to Animal Crossing! New Horizons’ latest event is a big celebration filled with colorful feathers and energetic peacocks. Considering that the game just got through a big string of holidays from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, Festivale sounds like one heck of a February bash.

For those who aren’t familiar with previous Animal Crossing games, the new event may seem a little peculiar at first. If you want to know more about what Festivale has in store for your island, here’s everything we know about current and past iterations of the event.

When is the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Festivale start date?

Mark your calendars: Festivale is on Monday, February 15. While some previous Animal Crossing events span multiple days, Festivale seems to just be a one-day affair, so you’ll have to log in that day or miss it entirely. A free update for the game will be available on Thursday, January 28, which adds the event into the game, so you’ll need to make sure you have that downloaded.

Is there an Animal Crossing: New Horizons Festivale trailer?

Yes! Nintendo released a short little teaser that gives a taste of what you’ll be doing and what kinds of rewards you can grab. It also teases a March update that has something to do with Mario.

What is the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Festivale event?

Despite being so close to Valentine’s Day, Festivale is actually Animal Crossing’s Mardi Gras equivalent. The aesthetic heavily borrows from the New Orleans tradition with bright colors and costumes.

The main thing to know is that it adds a new NPC to the game. Pavé is a peacock who will appear in your island’s town square during the event. You’ll need to talk to him to kick things off. From what we can tell from the trailer, the event revolves around catching colorful feathers that are floating around town and bringing them back to Pavé.

As with most seasonal events, the big incentive to celebrate is cosmetics. The trailer shows off a host of new items and costumes that players can presumably craft or receive during the event. Most notably, villagers are shown wearing different feather hats, presumably made from the ones you’ll collect during the event.

What was Festivale like in previous Animal Crossing games?

Festivale isn’t new for the Nintendo Switch game; it’s been a part of the series since Animal Crossing: City Folk. The event follows the same format across previous games, with players collecting some sort of item and trading it to Pavé to receive furniture from a special Festivale line.

The previous furniture includes a bed, sofa, lamp, and just about any basic decorations you need to build out a room. The Able Sisters are known to sell some special clothing for the event as well.

The main thing that the New Horizons trailer doesn’t show is special games. Previous Festivale iterations included small mini-games that involved chatting with villagers. Those can be as basic as a game of rock paper scissors, or as creative as a text-based soccer game. It’s not clear if those are coming this time around, but the new trailer does seem to tease some sort of photo mode, not unlike wedding season.

What does Festivale mean for Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

While it seems like a pretty modest event, Festivale has a little extra significance for New Horizons. This might be the last unique event we see in the game. Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched last March, which means that its one year anniversary is fast approaching. Unless there’s an early March event in the works, the cycle will begin anew after Festivale, which means that the dreaded Bunny Day is imminent.

With Nintendo laying all of its cards on the table, the question becomes: How will year two be different? Are events going to change at all, or just be repeats of what we’ve seen previously? In other Animal Crossing games, not too much changes from year to year. New Horizons is a bit more fluid a game since it receives regular updates, so players can only hope it’ll switch up less popular events.