If you’ve been looking for a reason to get back into Animal Crossing: New Horizons once again, the big January 2026 update is as good a reason as any! Plenty of players with long playtimes on ACNH have hit a wall with stuff to do, but the 3.0 update is going to change that for all of us.
Adding tons of new features like a hotel, bulk crafting, and so much more, you’re likely looking forward to when it’s finally time to download that big update! Before you do, though, be sure to take care of these few things first.
Drum Up New Island Ideas
Slumber Island Allows Three Extra Islands Per Console
Plenty of us have enjoyed \ over the years, but part of what’s been holding long-time players back from getting back into ACNH was the need to ruin all our hard work from before if we did. Well, veterans, get those wheels spinning with ideas again, since you can now have multiple islands per console with the Slumber Island feature, which allows you to visit and design up to three new islands on one console.
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Whether you’re someone playing with children, spouses, or siblings on the same console, or you’re just a big fan of the copious ways to design and customize your space in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, having the chance to design islands per Switch console without sacrificing anything on your main island is going to be a massive improvement over only having one no matter how many users were playing.
Slumber Island is an exclusive feature for players subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online.
Feel Free To Get Wild Decorating
Mr. Resetti Can Help Clean Up In The 3.0 Update
And if you’ve been working out the specifics of those plans you’ve been making for your new island layouts when the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update drops, you’re about to have a much easier time with the cleanup efforts should you get partway through and realize you’d like to change the design.
Mr. Resetti is back once again, and while longtime Animal Crossing fans still have a tepid fear of the rodent who used to shriek at us if we happened to reset our consoles without saving back in the days before auto-save was a thing, he’s here to help.
Call on his new cleaning service and designate an area on the island that you’d like cleared, then watch him and his boys get to work on sprucing up your space. They can either stash the items in your home storage, or dispose of them on your behalf.
Invite More People To Play
Up To 12 People Can Play Together In Multiplayer
If you were playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on launch at the very beginning of the 2020 pandemic, then you likely have some oddly fond memories of time spent either hosting friends on your own island or visiting them on theirs. Whether you were giving tours, hosting work meetings, or having game nights with specialized courses, plenty of us loved having other people around on our islands.
But if seven people on your island wasn’t enough for you, the 3.0 update introduces new multiplayer slots and allows you to host up to 11 other people on your island at once. You’ll see a small redesign at The Roost to add extra chairs for these four new friends, too, spaces which you’ll fill happily once everyone finishes having to pause their game for a minute and a half each time to watch a double-digit number of arrival cutscenes…
Bookmark Patterns You Want To Make
Nintendo Switch 2’s Mouse Will Make Designing Easier
Veteran Animal Crossing fans know how far the design capabilities in these games have come since the first title more than two decades ago now, but there are always possibilities for making your design experience smoother when you use the custom pattern design tool.
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The 3.0 update makes Animal Crossing: New Horizons available natively on the Nintendo Switch 2, and with that console jump comes the new capabilities added with the mouse control mode for the NSW2’s joy-con. If you’re not using this new tool to make new patterns yourself, we bet there’ll be tons of intricate new content available for download before long!
Think Up Hotel Room Ideas
We’ll Be Decorating The Hotel Resort With Kapp’n And Family
If you played Animal Crossing: New Leaf on the Nintendo 3DS, then you probably have some very fond memories of the island and Kapp’n’s family who ran it. This island and family return in the 3.0 update for ACNH, too, and they’re putting you in charge of helping them design their hotel resort.
You’ll be able to design all kinds of styles of hotel rooms for the Resort Hotel, and once you’ve got some rooms made up, you’ll begin seeing visiting villagers on your island. Non-native villagers can stay at your hotel and roam the island the same way your residents will, and you can even invite your favorites for a visit with the amiibo scanner.
For your efforts, you’ll receive a new kind of currency, Hotel Tickets, that Grams will allow you to trade for all kinds of new hotel-themed furniture items, so be sure you’re thinking up ideas to get yourself started when the family of turtles opens their Resort Hotel doors on January 15, 2026.
Make Way For Villagers From Other Nintendo Titles
Zelda And Splatoon Villagers Debut (Slash Return)
The Resort Hotel will surely be a fun way to meet villagers you may never have seen before, but we bet you’ll be excited to meet the four new villagers coming in the ACNH 3.0 update, especially since they’re from two other iconic game series: Splatoon, and The Legend of Zelda.
The two Splatoon characters, Cece and Viche, have more modern character designs than previous Splatoon integrations for Animal Crossing games. We don’t see the return of the old favorite Zelda villagers, but we do get two icons from Tears of the Kingdom: Tulin, Sage of Wind, and Mineru, Sage of Spirit. Make space for these four new friendly faces if you’d like to invite them once the update drops!
Scanning any amiibo from the Splatoon or Zelda games will also give access to a variety of furniture items themed from the respective title.
Rev Up Your Retro Engines
Play A Few Retro Nintendo Games On In-Game Consoles
If you’ve been a Nintendo fan for a while, then you likely remember the fun you had when they made old-school classics available to play in Animal Crossing. Now, you’ll be able to play a variety of older titles within Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Iconic hits like Dr. Mario, Ice Climbers, and several more can be purchased and played within ACNH.
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And brick-building fans, rejoice, since the 3.0 update for ACNH brings with it a variety of Lego-branded furniture available for purchase through Nook Shopping. Even if you don’t have use for it in your own home, we bet your Playful villagers would love furniture made of colorful bricks!
Stock Up On Manila Clams
If you’ve ever needed to make Fish Bait to try your best to catch those most frustrating rare fish for the museum collection, we’d bet you’ve rolled your eyes a time or two when you needed to make several of the same item in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, because since launch, we’ve needed to craft everything one at a time.
The 3.0 update for ACNH, though, introduces the bulk crafting mechanic at long last, and it’s probably the feature that has fans most excited to return to their islands. Who cares if you need 100 pieces of Fish Bait to try catching the rarest fish while they’re in season? Sure, you’ll still need to source the Clams, but you don’t need to spend an extra hour at the crafting bench making your Fish Bait piece, by piece, by piece, by piece.
Crafting also uses resources you’ve got in storage when crafting inside your home, so you’ll no longer need to remove the resources from storage and hold them in your inventory while crafting!
Buy And Craft To Your Heart’s Content
If you do happen to make ample use of the new bulk crafting mechanic finally added in the 3.0 update, then don’t worry about needing to clear out any of your precious storage space to account for saving all of it, since we’re getting a huge increase to in-home storage.
Nintendo is doubling the available home storage in Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the 3.0 update, bringing us from 4,500 to a staggering 9,000 storage slots (after a brief pit-stop at 7,000 slots as you pay for the privilege to upgrade – thanks, Tom Nook). Not only do we get more storage spaces, but we’re also able to stash plant life like shrubs, trees, and even the array of flowers, both the natural ones and your painstakingly-crafted hybrid flowers.
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