Guides/Endgame
The six festivals: what runs when, and which are worth clearing your evening for
Guild Wars 2 runs six recurring festivals a year, each with its own maps, currencies and skins. The calendar, what each contains, and why festival skins behave oddly on the market.
On this page
Six festivals return every year, on roughly the same dates, and each brings back its own maps, activities and currencies. They are free, they need no expansion, and a new player can join any of them on their first evening.
They also quietly matter to the market, which is the part this site can say something about that a calendar cannot.
The calendar
| Festival | Usually runs | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lunar New Year | late January to late February | Divinity’s Reach | firecrackers, Lucky Envelopes, luck and gold |
| Super Adventure Festival | mid April to early May | Rata Sum | the Super Adventure Box, a platforming dungeon |
| Dragon Bash | early to late June | Hoelbrak | hologram stampedes, races, arena challenges |
| Festival of the Four Winds | late July to late August | Labyrinthine Cliffs, Crown Pavilion | races, adventures, Queen’s Gauntlet, Boss Blitz |
| Halloween | mid October to early November | Lion’s Arch, Mad King’s Realm | the Labyrinth, the Clock Tower, Your Mad King Says |
| Wintersday | mid December to early January | Divinity’s Reach | Winter Wonderland, Bell Choir, Toypocalypse, snowball fights |
Dates shift by a few days each year, so treat these as seasons rather than appointments.
What each one is known for
Lunar New Year is the luck festival, and the one most tangled with the economy: envelopes open into coins and materials, and the whole thing runs on gambling instinct.
Super Adventure Box is a full platformer wearing a Guild Wars 2 skin, styled as a 1990s console game. People who dislike jumping puzzles dislike it intensely. Everyone else waits all year.
Dragon Bash is the loudest and the shortest to learn: run in, hit holograms, collect.
Festival of the Four Winds is the biggest in surface area, two maps of races, adventures and single-combat arenas (in detail).
Halloween owns the game’s most famous jumping puzzle, the Mad King’s Clock Tower, and the Labyrinth, which is one of the friendliest group farms in the year.
Wintersday is the cosiest, mostly mini-games, and the one that pulls back the most lapsed players.
Why a newcomer should care
Everything is free. No expansion gates a festival. If you own only the base game, festivals are the single largest pile of content available to you.
They are the easiest achievement points in the year (why AP matters), because festival achievements are built for casual participation.
They teach the game sideways. Races teach mounts, the Gauntlet teaches your class under pressure, the Box teaches patience.
The market angle
Festival items behave unlike anything else on the trading post, and the pattern repeats every year.
Supply arrives in a flood, then stops. During the two or three weeks the festival runs, thousands of players farm the same currencies and dump the same materials. Prices sag. Then the festival ends and nothing new enters the supply for eleven months.
Which means the cheap moment is while it is running, and the expensive moment is the month before it returns.
That is a real pattern rather than folklore, and the honest caveat is that it is also widely known, so the easy version of the trade is already priced in. What still works is patience: buy what you want during the festival because you want it, not the week after somebody posts a guide about it (how the fees change the maths).
Skins unlock permanently. Anything you unlock into the wardrobe this year is yours forever, whether or not you keep the item (how the wardrobe works).
The practical advice
Do the festival that is running. It will not be back for a year, and whatever you were farming instead will still be there next week.
Start with the achievements marked easy. Festival categories are usually generous, and half of them complete while you look around.
Do not try to finish everything. Every festival has a long collection meant to span multiple years. Chasing it in one season is how a holiday becomes a job.