Events

Every event in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a visitor who sets up in the plaza, hands out one kind of currency, and leaves. What separates them is the clock. Jack gives you seven hours on Halloween night, Flick and C.J. give you a working day, Pave stays until dawn, Rover waits a full week at the airport, and Zipper T. Bunny lingers for twelve days. The shorter the stay, the more the event depends on what you did beforehand, which is why our nine event pages fall neatly into a ladder from the tightest window to the loosest.

One rule applies to all of them and comes straight from our time travel page: events arrive as downloads, so setting the clock to a date the game has not been updated for produces an ordinary day. The Festivale page says the same about Pave. Time travel can still buy you preparation time before an event, and it can stretch a single day's points, but it cannot conjure the host.

The hosts, shortest stay first

The one page that is not a visitor sits underneath the shortest stay: pumpkin farming is a month of preparation for Jack's seven hours, so it is covered with him.

Seven hours: Jack, and the October that leads up to him

Jack arrives at the plaza at 5 PM on October 31 and is gone at midnight, and the Halloween page is blunt that the evening is decided in the preceding month. Candy is the currency, Nook's Cranny sells one piece a day for 120 Bells through October only, and the page wants 15 to 20 in your pockets before the night. Costumes come from Able Sisters, body paint and coloured contacts cost 2,400 Nook Miles, and two Spooky Towers appear outside Resident Services from October 29 as a warning. On the night itself, candy handed to Jack returns Jack's Robe, Jack's Face and the Haunt reaction, and after that he only pays back random pumpkins, so the rest goes to villagers. Each trick-or-treat yields a Spooky Set piece (flooring, rug, wall, garland or table setting, sometimes with the recipe), a lollipop or the Scare reaction, and villagers in costume, villagers at home and villagers you frighten while wearing Jack's outfit all hand out free candy. Three lollipops taken back to Jack unlock the Spooky Carriage, its recipe and the Spooky Wand recipe.

The pumpkin page covers the other half of the prep. Pumpkin starts are 280 Bells at Nook's Cranny or half that from Leif in October, take four days with daily watering to yield up to three pumpkins, then regrow from the same plant. Colours are random from a start (orange common, then yellow, white, green), but replanting a harvested pumpkin fixes the colour, and orange is what the recipes want. A pumpkin sells for 350 Bells and restores energy like fruit. The 14 Spooky recipes range from a Spooky Lantern at four pumpkins to the Spooky Carriage at 30 pumpkins, 20 each of wood, softwood and hardwood and 10 iron nuggets, and the Spooky Wand needs the lantern plus three of the star fragments on our items guide.

Nine hours: Flick and C.J. run the same contest

The Bug-Off and the Fishing Tourney share a format: a host in the plaza from 9 AM to 6 PM, three-minute rounds, one point per catch, two bonus points for reaching three in a round, and swag at 10 points a pull. Flick's page dates the Bug-Off to the third Saturday of November through February for southern islands, notes the northern schedule was not yet published when it was written, and adds that Flick's prizes are random bug furniture. On ordinary visits he simply buys bugs above the shop rate, which matters for the stags on our bugs guide.

C.J.'s page is far more detailed because the tourney rewards preparation. It runs four times a year (the page tables the dates from 2021 to 2025, all second-weekend Saturdays in January, April, July and October) and needs Resident Services upgraded plus a two- or three-star rating. Entry is 500 Bells a round, discounted for the first round and in multiplayer, and every fish lands in an unlimited blue cooler that must be emptied before he will trade points. The prep list: dig Manila clams for fish bait so fish spawn on demand, carry spare rods or reset a rod's wear with a 600-Bell customisation kit, and, if you have terraforming, cut a pond beside the plaza to skip the run. In multiplayer every participant gets 10 bonus points whenever anyone catches a fish. The 13 prizes come out unique for the first 13 trades, from an 80-Bell Fish Umbrella to the 1,500-Bell Fish Wand, and the trophies fall at 300, 200 and 100 points for gold, silver and bronze. C.J. also buys the day's catch at 150 percent of shop price, the same premium noted on the fish guide. Points reset at 5 AM, so a late time hop must stay inside the day.

One day: Franklin's kitchen and Pave's feathers

Franklin turns up around 6 AM on November 26 and the Turkey Day page is a shopping list. He asks for four dishes, each with a base recipe and a secret ingredient he only hints at: Clam Chowder (three Manila clams, secret scallop), Pumpkin Pie (an orange pumpkin plus another colour, with the two remaining colours as the secret), Seafood Gratin (a mussel with mushrooms or an oyster, secret Dungeness crab, and squid and sea urchin instead on southern islands) and Fish Meuniere (sea bass with olive flounder, dab or red snapper, secret barred knifejaw). Villagers cooking nearby will trade ingredients. The Rug, Wall, Flooring and Cornucopia arrive after dishes one to four regardless, but the seven craftable pieces, from the Wheat Decor at ten weeds to the Hearth at a campfire, 30 stone and 10 clay, only unlock if all four dishes carried their secret ingredient. Some of the set appears at Nook's Cranny the next day.

Pave's Festivale is a single day that moves with the Lent calendar (the page lists February 12, 2024, March 3, 2025, February 16, 2026 and February 8, 2027) and he dances in the plaza until 5 AM the following morning. The fortnight before matters: Festivale furniture is on sale at Nook's Cranny from February 1, costumes at Able Sisters, and a Festivale reaction pack for about 20,000 Bells, and Pave will not talk to you unless you are dressed for it. He then hands over the Rainbow Feather recipe and the day's job: net red, blue, green, purple and rainbow feathers floating around the island, ducking into a building to respawn them and trading with villagers for colours you lack. Three matching feathers or one rainbow feather buys a random piece from the nine Festivale items; once you own all nine, three rainbow feathers handed over together earn the Festivale Float, which cannot be recoloured. Everything else can be, and the page totals 13 rainbow feathers to recolour the full set. Nook's Cranny stock is tinted by your airport colour, blue airport for red items, yellow for blue, green for green and orange for purple.

Seven days: Rover's maze

May Day is the only event that happens off the island. Between May 1 and 7, Tom Nook points you to Orville, who holds a single May Day ticket; choose to fly and use it whenever you like within the week, but it is one ride. You hand over your whole inventory at the airport and Wilbur drops you empty-handed on an island that is one large maze, with Rescue Service on your phone as the only reset if you box yourself in. Solving it earns Bell Vouchers, each worth 3,000 Bells at Nook's Cranny, and reaching Rover at the end earns Rover's Briefcase; both are posted home afterwards.

Twelve days: Zipper and six kinds of egg

Bunny Day runs from April 1 to 12, the longest stay on this list, and it is split across two pages. Bunny Day eggs explains where each of the six comes from: Earth eggs from the cracks you would otherwise dig for fossils, Stone eggs from hitting rocks, Leaf eggs from shaking trees that visibly carry them, Wood eggs from chopping (more often on mystery islands and coconut trees, and the page advises a stone axe and no fruit so you do not fell the tree), Sky eggs from balloons and Water eggs from fishing. Each egg type also carries an outfit recipe once you have collected enough of it.

Bunny Day recipes is the ledger. Recipes drop from balloons, bottles and villagers, and its table gives the egg cost of every piece: most furniture wants one of each egg, the Wall, Flooring and Arch two of each, the Wall Clock three Sky eggs, the Vanity four Leaf, the Table and Wardrobe four Stone, the Lamp four Wood, the Stool three Water. Outfits are three eggs of one colour, shoes and shells two. The Wobbling Zipper Toy costs four of every egg and is the key to the finale: Zipper gives its recipe around April 12 once every other recipe is learned, and showing him the toy unlocks the Bunny Day Wand, crafted from the toy and three star fragments. The bunny wand page lists the 16 items that count toward that finale, and the cherry blossom season on our recipes guide overlaps the same ten days in the north.

Frequently asked questions

Can I time travel to an event I missed?

Not to the event itself. Hosts are added by game updates, so an unpatched date shows nothing. You can time travel within an event day to keep earning points, as long as you do not cross 5 AM.

Which events cost Bells to enter?

Only the Fishing Tourney, at 500 Bells a round with a discount on the first. Halloween and Festivale are free to join but expect you to have bought candy, costumes and reaction packs beforehand.

Where do the seasonal hosts appear?

Jack, Flick, C.J., Franklin and Pave all stand in the plaza outside Resident Services. Rover is reached through Orville at the airport, and Zipper wanders the island. The permanent residents who unlock these visitors are on our characters guide, and the year's calendar is laid out on the Animal Crossing: New Horizons hub.