Animal Crossing: New Horizons Fall Halloween Update Release Time & Date (Version 1.5)

4 years ago Justin 12 Comments

The exciting Fall Update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons with brand new features like growing pumpkins and the Halloween event with Jack is almost here! Learn exactly when the update will be available for download on Nintendo Switch.

When Will Animal Crossing: New Horizons Fall Halloween Update Release For Download?

The Fall Halloween Update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons including the new Halloween event with Jack, the ability to grow and harvest pumpkins, brand new reactions to use, new costumes at Able Sisters, and more is scheduled for release on Wednesday, September 30th according to Nintendo!

However, the company didn’t specify an exact release time in the official trailer, which naturally always leads fans to wonder exactly when they’ll be able to enjoy the update’s new features in New Horizons. As usual though, thanks to some additional information on the Japanese Nintendo website, we have concrete details on the exact release time!

According to the official Nintendo website in Japanese, the Version 1.5.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons containing all of the new Fall and Halloween features will be released at exactly 10AM Japan Standard Time on Wednesday, September 30th.

For everyone living in other time zones, which almost certainly includes you, that release time converts to 6PM Pacific Time or 9PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 29th! That’s notable because it means the update will actually be arriving quite a bit earlier in some parts of the world than Nintendo advertised in the English trailer.

UPDATE: The Fall Halloween Update has officially been released! Check out our Pumpkin Farming, Spooky Set Items, and Halloween Costumes & Clothing guides for more details on the new additions.

Here’s a comprehensive list of various Animal Crossing: New Horizons Fall Halloween Update release times around the world, based on the Japanese release date:

• Tue, September 29th at 6PM Pacific Time (PDT)
• Tue, September 29th at 7PM Mountain Time (MDT)
• Tue, September 29th at 8PM Central Time (CDT)
• Tue, September 29th at 9PM Eastern Time (EDT)
• Wed, September 30th at 2AM British Summer Time (BST)
• Wed, September 30th at 11AM Australian Eastern Time (AEST)

Technically speaking, Nintendo hasn’t specifically announced these release times for outside of Japan, but every major update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the past followed the exact same pattern with the update delivered worldwide simultaneously.

Therefore based on both the Japanese website and past updates, we’re pretty certain in saying that you’ll be able to download the Fall Halloween Update at 6PM Pacific Time or 9PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 29th!

So if you’re excited to get your hands on the Fall Halloween Update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons as soon as possible, be hopeful for an early release at the times listed above and have your Nintendo Switch ready to update. Keep in mind you will likely have to manually trigger the update, which we’ll detail in the section below.

How To Download Fall Halloween Update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Your copy of the game should update automatically for you, but if for some reason it doesn’t, you’ll be able to manually trigger any available updates by pressing the + button on the Animal Crossing: New Horizons home screen icon, selecting Software Update, and hitting Via the Internet.

The Nintendo Switch will then check for all available Animal Crossing: New Horizons updates when you do so and download the Halloween Update if it’s released on time.

When Can You Grow Pumpkins And Experience Halloween?

It’s worth mentioning that while the Fall Halloween update will be available to download for everyone on either September 29th or 30th, many features of the update may not be possible to experience until October without time traveling.

Based on the information released by Nintendo so far, Pumpkin Seeds will only be available at Nook’s Cranny during the month of October. They’ll also be sold by Leif year-round, but you would need to be lucky enough to have him visiting your island on the 29th or 30th of September.

As for the new Halloween costumes like the Mage’s Dress at Able Sisters, it’s said that they will be sold during the month of October as well. So it seems likely both these major new features will be unavailable initially for those who don’t time travel.

As for the actual Halloween night event with Jack, it will begin on October 31st at 5PM in-game time. However, it’s likely that you won’t be able to simply time travel to the event as soon as the update drops as Nintendo sometimes has new events locked to a real time clock, like with Wedding Season and Bunny Day in the past.

UPDATE: This has proven to not be the case — you can time travel directly to Jack’s Halloween event right now.

Here’s a rough translation from Japanese detailing the time traveling restriction for this update:

Please note that even if the update data has been downloaded, the event will not start just by changing the main unit date to the date and time of each event period. After the real-time event start date, you need to connect the main unit to the Internet and start the software with the user and Nintendo Account linked.

That being said, it is possible to bypass these time based restrictions by hacking a Nintendo Switch, so you may see some screenshots out there of the event beforehand. We’ll of course be working hard on full guides as soon as possible too.

What’s Next After The Fall Halloween Update?

While the new features in the Fall Halloween Update are exciting, we can never help ourselves from looking towards the future too! Not much is known yet, but Nintendo has announced that the next update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be the Winter Update releasing in late November.

As usual, we don’t know many specifics yet, but the teaser graphic makes it clear we can look forward to both Franklin’s Harvest Festival event and Jingle’s Toy Day event making a return in Animal Crossing: New Horizons soon.

Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for everything on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including our extensive Guides section here. In particular, don’t miss out on our popular Pumking Farming, Spooky Set Items, Acorns & Pine Cones, Redd Art, and Sea Creatures guides.

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