Animal Crossing: New Horizons Getting Winter Update This Week With Loads of New Features

Nintendo has announced that Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be getting a free Winter update on Nov. 19, 2020, that adds special events, quality-of-life features, save data transfers, new hairstyles, new emotes, and much more.

Animal Crossing’s version of Thanksgiving, Turkey Day, will take place on Nov. 26 and Toy Day (AKA Christmas) will be on Dec. 24. For Turkey Day, Chef Franklin will host a gathering in the plaza and you’ll have to go and collect ingredients for some dishes.

And on Toy Day, Jingle will pay a visit to your island and you can even help him deliver presents to your neighbors. It’s also worth pointing out that from Dec. 1 to Dec. 25, you can buy toys from Nook’s Cranny and adorable holiday-themed clothes from the Able Sisters’ shop.

Nine new reactions will also become available at the Nook Stop Terminal and there are six new hairstyle options to give players even more opportunities to create their perfect villager.

And if you constantly run out of space in your home, you’ll be happy to know that Nintendo is increasing the home storage to a whopping total of 2400 slots.

Another neat change that comes with this update now allows players to visit random islands in Dreams, instead of having to choose a specific one.

New seasonal items will also become available at Nook Stop for the entire month and from Dec. 26 to Dec. 31, there will be New Year’s Eve-themed items. There will even be a special New Years’ countdown event on Dec. 31 starting at 7 p.m. Since we’re not supposed to be out at large gatherings in the real world, spending the night online in Animal Crossing with your friends is the next best thing.

And best of all, island and resident data transfers are finally coming. According to a press release, “the whole island transfer feature will enable you to move your user save data, along with the island itself and all the residents, to another system. This service will be facilitated by the free Island Transfer Tool app in Nintendo eShop.”

You can check out the trailer below that shows off all of the new events and features:

You can look forward to the next free update sometime in late January.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now available for the Nintendo Switch.