Animal Crossing New Horizons Nook’s Cranny Upgrade Rumour - Future Shop Update In ACNH

Today we are discussing Nook’s Cranny and the rumors of an upgrade in the future, starting with a bit of history, recapping what the store is,  how it traditionally upgrades, and how Nook’s Cranny upgrades actually work.

Animal Crossing New Horizons Nook’s Cranny Upgrade Guide

Nook's Cranny is the shop run by either Tom Nook or Timmy and Tommy pretty much across all previous Animal Crossing games. In fact, Nook’s Cranny is typically the very first shop available in any town when you first start the game. As you develop the town and spend more money with Nook, the shop upgrades, as you progress with each upgrade shops, get larger stock more items.

For example, as recent as New Leaf, it started out as nuclear injunction before upgrading to T&T Mart, then super T&R, then T.I.Y until it was fully upgraded to T&T emporium which included multiple characters selling a wide variety of items across multiple floors. Now this trend has been consistent through all previous Animal Crossing games where every Nook Store features around four upgrades totaling five different stores, each more impressive than the previous. Now based on this we're going to discuss the next Nook’s Cranny upgrades currently available in New Horizons and talk about the rumors and why players think more Nook’s Cranny upgrades will be available in the future.

Related read: ACNH Future Shop Upgrades (Nook’s Cranny, Able Sisters)

How The Nook’s Cranny Building Is Constructed 

How to build Nook’s Cranny? When you first start playing New Horizons, there isn't a Nook's Cranny store to start with, although Timmy can be found inside the Resident Services tent and will buy and sell things there, he continues to do this until a number of milestones have been reached in the game including playing off the initial 5,000 Miles Ticket debt upgrading your tent to a house as well as donating 5 unique critters to Tom Nook to prompt blathers to set up shop in a tent, at which point Timmy will then ask you to collect a bunch of different crafting materials, so they can build an independent Nook's Cranny store and ask players to position the plot accordingly. 

How Do You Upgrade Nook’s Cranny In Animal Crossing

This is the first upgrade going from tent to an actual Nook’s Cranny building and the first for any Animal Crossing game. This little store can be upgraded further as you progress through the game.

Triggers for upgrading Nook’s Cranny store:

• At least 30 days since the Nook’s Cranny building finished construction.

• The amount of bells for buying and selling items to Timmy and Tommy inside Nook’s Cranny exceeds 200,000 bells. If you’re short of ACNH bells, check out our money-making guide for some handy tips.

• Mabel must visit your town.

Nook’s Cranny upgrades for a second time revealing a more impressive larger store which strangely is still called Nook's Cranny. So after a couple of months of playing New Horizons it's pretty common to have upgraded a couple of times and seen two different Nooks Cranny stores.

How The Upgrading Of Nook’s Cranny Buildings Work In ACNH 

1. Museum

For the museum, begin with bladders×10 which is the very first plot for the museum and determines where the museum will be constructed and how big the plot will be. As we progress through the game, the museum sees its first upgrade from tent to an actual building but how the plot size is the same. It occupies a little more space. The tent had ropes and furniture items around it. But now the museum has probably half a tile worth of space free either side. 

Thanks to the art gallery that was added a couple of months back, the museum saw a second upgrade to this a much larger museum building again occupying the same plot size. But this time the walls of the building are flush with the plot leaving no space. So the museum goes from tent to building to a larger building whilst always occupying the same plot size but making use of every pixel of plot space. Now this pattern of upgrading isn't unique to the museum and is the case for all upgradable buildings in New Horizons even our house.

2. House 

The player's house has little bushes to disguise the extra space but eventually the house gets upgraded to make use of the full area of the plot. Now this is where the speculation and rumors to further Nook's Cranny upgrades come in.

Future Shop Update & Nook’s Cranny Upgrade Rumour

If we go back to Nook's Cranny, we can see the plot is marked by a tiny fence either side of the store and even has a little bucket in between to use up some of the space. As it upgrades to the next stage to a much nicer larger store, the fence is gone but it's still occupying the same plot size and for some reason the bucket survived the transition. Despite the building being bigger, Nook's Cranny still isn't taking up the entire plot space available just like the middle museum upgrade did where the walls weren't flush with the edge of the plot. So what is currently the largest Nook's Cranny store clearly has room to grow and the next stage will almost certainly make use of this extra space and continue upgrading until the entire plot is used and the walls of the store are flushed to the edges of the plot.