Animal Crossing: New Horizons/Update history/1.6.0

The Winter Update (version 1.6.0), known in Australia as the Free Update, was an update for released on November 19, 2020. The update brought two returning holidays: Turkey Day and Toy Day, alongside their respective hosts Franklin and Jingle. Additional improvements, including increased storage capacity and new hairstyles were also added. It was announced on November 17, 2020.

Returning features

 * Harvest Festival has been renamed to Turkey Day in its return in 1.6.0, but the event is still hosted by Franklin as with.
 * For Northern Hemisphere players, Turkey Day is taken as a celebration of the fall harvest, while for Southern Hemisphere players it is taken as a celebration of spring. This is reflected by every furniture outside of Resident Services and the Turkey Day Series being customized for their respective hemispheres.
 * If the player misses Turkey Day, from after Turkey Day until November Nook's Cranny will sell the pack and Turkey Day furniture for Bells 19800.
 * This event is time-locked, and only unlocks on 1.6.0a.
 * Toy Day, and its host Jingle, return in 1.6.0.
 * In the days preceding Toy Day, Nook's Cranny will sell a random toy and Able Sisters will sell Festive-related clothing.
 * In a first in the series, Toy Day has two variants of its composition. A festive, calming rendition for Toy Day in the Northern Hemisphere and a upbeat, vibrant rendition for Toy Day in the Southern Hemisphere.
 * This event is time-locked, and only unlocks on 1.6.0b for the ready phases and 1.6.0c for the actual event.
 * Luna can now send players to random dream islands as she did before in . The option to activate this is "Surprise me".

New features

 * Nine new Reactions—Sit Down, Wave Goodbye, Take a Picture, Sniff Sniff, Work Out, Yoga, Here You Go, Excited, and Ta-da—are added in 1.6.0, and they can be obtained via.
 * Six new hairstyles are added and are obtainable from.
 * Tom Nook can now offer the player to expand their storage if they paid off all their home loan. This expansion moves the player up from 1600 storage slots to 2400.
 * The Save Data Transfer feature, which allows island save data or a single player's save data to be transferred to another Nintendo Switch, has been added.
 * A new promotion item for was added: the.
 * New Nook Shopping seasonal events include the following events:
 * To add on to the Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice, the and  were added alongside the  and  respectively. They are available throughout December.
 * Four items related to New Year's Eve were added are are available from December 26 to December 31: for Ōmisoka,  for Silvester,  for Nochevieja, and  for New Year's Eve. They all relate to their respective local holiday traditions for New Year's Eve.
 * The Japanese New Year, or Shōgatsu, features three items available from January 1 to January 15: the, , and.
 * Other items available from January 1 to January 15 to celebrate the New Year include the, , , and . They all relate to their respective local holiday traditions for the New Year.

Changed features

 * The availability of the and  were changed. Previously, the items were available in both hemispheres around June 6 to July 7. In 1.6.0, this was changed in that the items associated with their respective season would only appear on the hemispheres that were experiencing those seasons. In this instance for December, the Midwinter Sweater was only available for Northern Hemisphere players for the Winter Solstice, and the  was only available for Southern Hemisphere players for the Summer Solstice.
 * Leif now sells s year-round instead of limited to just October.
 * The names of the following items were changed:
 * Summer-Solstice Crown →
 * Winter-Solstice Sweater →

In 1.6.0

 * Any and all bug tables created on 1.2.0 prior to the 1.2.1 patch will no longer work.

Related updates

 * The NookLink mobile app now allows players to view their catalog. This update was announced alongside the 1.6.0 update and was released on November 29, 2020.