ACNH May Events & Updates 2023: Seasonal Items, DIYs, Critters, Villager Birthdays, Changes in Animal Crossing
Welcome to our Animal Crossing New Horizons guide to May. We'll discuss all events that will be held, the seasonal items that can be collected, the different creatures that can be caught, and the villagers' birthdays that will be celebrated.
ACNH May Updates 2023: Events, Seasonal Items, DIYs, Critters, Birthdays, Changes
May is Definitely another exciting month in Animal Crossing New Horizons with lots of fun updates and changes for you to enjoy around the island. April was just full of different events new seasonal items and all kinds of things to collect and enjoy and there's a lot of that here in May as well. There's also some exciting new content outside of the game that we'll want to check out too, so let's take a look at the updates and changes happening in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
ACNH May Events 2023
To start us off in May, we're going to take a look at the events now there are two significant events happening and some seasonal events taking place with exclusive items:
May Day Event
Date: April 29th - May 7th
Items: Rover's Briefcase, Rover's Photo, Bell Vouchers
Starting on April 29th and running until May 7th is the May Day event. Over the course of these days, you can use a special ticket at the airport to participate in an exclusive island tour maze featuring the character Rover, you can only do this once but you're rewarded with bell vouchers and a picture of Rover for your completion of the event
International Museum Day Event
Date: May 18th - May 31st
Items: Fish Plaque, Bug Plaque, Fossil Plaque, Art Plaque
Tour the gorgeous museum with the International Museum Day event, Blathers has set up various stamps to collect around all four exhibits of the museum that you can complete every day from May 18th to May 31st. Your reward for finding all the stamps in each exhibit is a plaque for bugs, fish, fossils, and artwork.
Japanese Children's Day
Date: April 27th - May 5th
Items: Carp Banner, Newsprint Helmet
Children's Day in Japan takes place from April 28th to May 5th and it comes with a couple of seasonal items as well, these being the newsprint helmet and the carp banner.
Cheese Rolling
Date: May 22nd - May 31st
Items: Gloucester Cheese
In the city of Gloucester is an annual event where people chase a wheel of cheese down a hill in tribute to this Nintendo has added a double Gloucester cheese item for decorating your island between the days of May 22nd and May 31st.
Mother's Day
Date: May 22nd - May 31st
Items: Carnations, Thank-You Mon Mug
Throughout the entire month of May, you can pick up some carnations from nook shopping in celebration of mother's day, in older Animal Crossing games you used to be able to plant carnations as actual flowers but these are merely vanity it seems. Don't be as much of a letdown as Nintendo is and get your mom something better for Mother's day.
ACNH May DIY Recipes & Items 2023
Now let's take a look at some exciting changes to seasonal materials. For those of you in the southern hemisphere, you have two very big and exciting changes happening this month, while in the northern hemisphere, we'll just have the end of the bamboo season.
Mushroom DIYs & Items
Date: May 1st - May 31st (Southern Hemisphere)
Materials To Collect: 3x Elegant Mushroom, 14x Flat Mushroom, 1x Rare Mushroom, 8x Round Mushroom, 15x Skinny Mushroom
DIY Recipes: Forest Flooring, Forest Wall, Mush Lamp, Mush Log, Mush Low Stool, Mush Parasol, Mush Partition, Mush Table, Mush Umbrella, Mush Wall, Mushroom Wand, Mushroom Wreath
In the southern hemisphere, the mushroom season happens all month and this will allow you to collect mushrooms and mushroom themed DIY recipes, these are some of the absolute best items in the entire game, even before the 2.0 update they were incredible and they still are, so you'll want to make sure you collect a lot of these mushroom items if you don't have them already.
Maple Leaf DIYs & Items
Date: May 16th - May 31st (Southern Hemisphere)
Materials To Collect: 57x Maple Leaf, 15x Acorn, 9x Pine Cone
DIY Recipes: Autumn Wall, Colored-Leaves Flooring, Leaf Stool, Maple-Leaf Pochette, Maple-Leaf Pond Stone, Maple-Leaf Rug, Maple-Leaf Umbrella, Red-Leaf Pile, Tree's Bounty Arch, Tree's Bounty Big Tree, Tree's Bounty Lamp
Then you have the maple leaf season from the 16th to the 25th, so this one is a little bit more fleeting you don't get as much time to enjoy this one, but still, it's a really nice time of the year you get to see the leaves floating about just like you do with the cherry blossoms and there's a lot of cool items to collect. So if you haven't played these already or maybe you just want to collect more of these items in general then we definitely recommend hopping on during these times so that you can take part in it, it's definitely a good time to be a southern hemisphere player especially after we got so much with the cherry blossom stuff back in April.
Bamboo DIYs & Items
Date: February 25 - May 31 (Northern Hemisphere)
Materials To Collect: Bamboo Piece, Young Spring Bamboo
DIY Recipes: Bamboo Series & Spring Bamboo Series
There is one thing to note for those of us in the northern hemisphere though and that is that young Spring Bamboo will end this month, so if you need to get more young spring bamboo, you'll definitely want to make sure you do that before the month ends. The only good thing is that now, of course, you can take a ride with Kappan and you can get these items out of season but that does cost 1,000 nook miles per round trip and you do then have to get lucky enough to be able to get the island you want. So it's definitely worth getting these items as they actually appear in the seasons as it will be a lot harder to get them through captain.
Celeste Star Fragment DIY Recipes
From April 20th to May 20th is Taurus season, if you manage to catch celeste during this time period, she'll teach you the Taurus bathtub recipe shown here.
From May 21st to June 21st you can use your Gemini fragments to make a Gemini closet also learned from celeste during those dates.
ACNH May Critters 2023
This is the classic update that happens every month and this is new fish, bugs, and sea creatures for those in the southern and northern hemispheres, so let's take a look at the new critters arriving in May for both hemispheres.
New Fish in May
There are a total of 44 of the 80 collectible fish available on May, 8 new fish begin to spawn this month and 3 fish will stop spawning after May is over.
Angelfish
Betta
Catfish
Frog
Giant Trevally
Mahi-mahi
Nibble Fish
Rainbowfish
New Bugs in May
In the month of May, you can catch 43 of the 80 total bugs, there are 8 new bugs available this month and only one bug is leaving:
Banded Dragonfly
Diving Beetle
Great Purple Emperor
Pondskater
Queen Alexandra's Birdwing
Rosalia Batesi Beetle
Scorpion
Violin Beetle
New Sea Creatures in May
22 deep sea creatures are available in May that's 5 new ones from last month but with three benthic creatures leaving you have some work to do to complete your critterpedia.
Sea Urchin
Slate Pencil Urchin
Gigas Giant Clam
Vampire Squid
Spotted Garden Eel
ACNH Villager Birthdays in May 2023
The following villagers all celebrate their birthday in the month of May in order from the first to the 31st:
May 1st - Clyde
May 2nd - Mint
May 3rd - Carlo, Sylvia
May 4th - Deirdre
May 5th - Paolo
May 6th - Tank
May 7th - Ozzie
May 8th - Curlos
May 9th - Bunnie
May 10th - Patty
May 11th - Cherry
May 12th - Ellie
May 13th - Biskit
May 14th - Canberra
May 15th - Leonardo
May 16th - Ike
May 17th - Gayle
May 18th - Pekoe
May 19th - Olaf
May 20th - T-Bone
May 21st - June
May 22nd - Colton
May 23rd - Peggy
May 24th - Deli
May 25th - Derwin
May 26th - Bruce
May 27th - Del
May 28th - Reneé
May 29th - Purrl
May 30th - Hamlet
May 31st - Marcie
ACNH May Nintendo Switch Icons 2023
An exciting bit of new content outside of the game that Nintendo introduced in 2022 which basically allows you to create your own custom icons for the Nintendo Switch and this is of course connected with Animal Crossing New Horizons. It basically allows you to collect characters whose birthdays are that month and special new backgrounds as well related to the season, so you'll be able to get some villagers who have a birthday in May when the month rolls around.
