Lunar New Year 2026: Year of the Super Horse Event

Hay there, Super Animals: the Year of the Super Horse is here! To kick off the new year, we have three weeks of event challenges and rewards galloping your way.

Alongside the holiday event, we’ve included some targeted bug fixes and quality of life improvements for Super Animal World. Our bigger v2.1 Major Spring Update is still on the way too with major improvements and new features (see our Roadmap for all the details). But first, let’s saddle up and see what’s new for the Lunar New Year!

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/843380/view/637955472778854913

Highlights

• AddedYear of the Super Horse event (until Feb 27)3 weeks of challenges, cosmetics, new NPCs, and festive island decorations.

• New Super Horse breed each week, starting with the Super Red Hare.

• AddedSAW Shopnew Lunar New Year cosmetics, 80’s dance emote and the Stable Boy Bundle.
• AddedVictory IslandGuan Yu set is now available for Carl Coins.
• AddedCarl’s Cartlegacy Lunar New Year items from past events are back in the Cart.

• Quest Balancing: easier pearl hunting while their quests are active, plus multiple quest difficulty/requirement adjustments.

• AddedQuality of Lifelong-term quest tracking improvements, UI polish, and new animations.

• Bug fixes + performance improvements across CPU/memory, UI, and more.

• Pasta Twitch Drops run until Feb 27, with 5 cosmetics to earn.

Year of the Super Horse Event Week 1

To kick off the Year of the Super Horse, the SAW Lab Labs have created the Super Red Hare, based on the legendary steed of Guan Yu.

While you’re out on the island dodging bullets, Zombie Joes, and bananas, make sure to pick up Red Envelopes to restore a small amount of health and advance your challenges. You’ll also earn some bonus Red Envelopes at the end of each match.

Keep an eye out for seasonal Firework Crates and use them strategically: they explode when hit and drop Red Envelopes too!

In the Social Hub, the SAW Welcome Center fountain has been updated for Lunar New year, with seasonal music featuring instrumentals from Pang Wing Man, who we collaborated with after hearing their amazing cover of the Super Animal Royale theme with Chinese instruments a few years back!

Stop by the event kiosk to meet the new Super Siamese Cat NPC, Miao Nian, and learn more about the Year of the Super Horse. And if you’re visiting the SAW Bamboo Resort, keep an eye out for another new face: the Super Horse, Ma Ji!

5 challenge rewards to earn

• Lunar Aviators | Collect Red Envelopes (1000)

• 1500 XP | Break Firework Crates (2)

• Lunar Outfit (2026)| Get Kills (12)

• 750 Carl Coins | Chop Bamboo Bushes (75)

• Lunar Umbrella | Land at the SAW Bamboo Resort

New Super Animal Breed

• Super Red Hare (Available in the Research Lab at level 60)

Victory Island Shop

The Guan Yu set, previously only obtainable via Twitch Drops, has been added to the Victory Island Shop and its items can be purchased with Carl Coins!

We’ve heard you loud and clear on bringing back more legacy Twitch Drops sets, and we plan to make more of them available again in the future.

We’ve also added sparkling effects to the Golden Tophat and SAR Trophy melee to make them extra fancy!

New LNY Items in the SAW Shop

Ms. Macawsome’s stocked the shop with six new standouts:

• Blue Chinese Outfit

• Traditional Chinese Glasses

• Hobby Horse melee

• Heart Collar

• Firecracker Necklace

• 80’s Dance Emote

Note: Heart Collar and Firecracker Necklace both use the neck accessory slot.

80's Dance Emote

Stable Boy Bundle

The Stable Boy Bundle is here, because obviously all these Super Horses aren’t going to groom themselves:

• Stable Boy Outfit

• Stable Boy Flatcap

• Broom melee

• Wheelbarrow Gravestone

All of the Lunar New Year items (including the Stable Boy Bundle) will be available in the SAW Shop for the full duration of the event, until Feb 27!

Lunar New Year Legacy Items Return

Legacy Lunar New Year items from past events are back in Carl’s Cart, and 2025’s Year of the Super Snake items are now in the event’s Super Legacy Item track.

Carl’s Cart items:

• Lunar Headband

• Lunar Flower

• Lunar Paper Umbrella

• Bunny Pendant

• Lunar Bunny Ears

• Water Rabbit Umbrella

• White Hanfu

• Hanfu Headwear

• Lunar Hat 2023

Claim Year of the Super Snake items from 2025 in the event’s Super Legacy Item track:

Pearl Changes, Quest Adjustments, & Quality of Life Updates

Before our v2.1 Major Spring Update arrives, we wanted to ship a few targeted improvements alongside this event based on your feedback, mainly around quest difficulty and tracking.

Pearl quest drop rate adjustments

We’ve heard a lot of feedback about how long Gold and Black Pearls can take to obtain for their quests. Higher-tier pearls are still meant to be rare “flex” finds, but having quests for them made the grind feel more like a requirement than a long-term project.

Normal pearl drop rates are unchanged. However, while you have the matching pearl quest active, your first pearl for that quest has boosted odds from Giant Giant Clams:

• Gold Pearl quest: first Gold Pearl is 2x as likely to drop.

• Black Pearl quest: first Black Pearl is 4x as likely to drop.

They’ll still be rare, but this should feel more forgiving while you’re actively working on the quests.

For players who already completed them, we’ll be granting an additional 200 Carl Coins for the Gold Pearl quest and 2000 Carl Coins for the Black Pearl quest this week as a little recognition for completing them before this change.

The Purple Pearl quest now also awards 150 Carl Coins (up from 100).

Bonus: our composer Catbaux has released Louie’s version of the Crab Dance on YouTube!

Quest tracking + small QoL updates

• Several quests are now tagged as"long-term"and won’t appear on the HUD unless you manually track them. They’ll also sit at the bottom of your Side Quests list.

• Players working on Bwoking Dead quests that require playing as a Zombie Joe will now be prioritized to start the match as the Red Zombie Joe in The Bwoking Dead (space permitting).

We’ve also made a few difficulty tweaks to smooth out these quests:

• Quest "Emusing Ourselves to Death" now works in any game mode.

• Quest "Scout's Honor" changed from 3 to 1 flag capture.

• Quest "Insistent Gifting" changed to 1 kill required.

• Quest "The Gift That Keeps on Giving" changed to 1 infection.

• Quest "The Straight and Sparrow Path" changed to "Course Combat Course", a quest about using any weapon in racing.

• Quest "Chonky Tonk" now works in any game mode.

• Quest "A Speedy Steed" changed to 5km.

• Quest "War Horse" changed to 1 kill and now works in any game mode.

• Quest "Eagle Scout" changed to 3 flag captures.

• Quest "Zip-line Sting" now allows any type of zip-line.

More Improvements

• Made some animation changes that should improve CPU performance, especially on Switch or lower-end PCs.

• Donk has more sound effects now when idling/walking.

• Lab Labs now have their own unique animations with clipboards and vials.

• Added total animals unlocked count in the Research Lab.

• MTN entrance interaction overrides player interaction.

• Lowered Shotgun bullet spawn distance by 0.5 SAU (4 pixels) so it matches JAG-7 approximately.

• Pearl and other item show off animations now play sound based on rarity, similar to fish & bugs.

• Cardinal Bow & Sparrow effects are now visible to spectators.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed typos in various NPC dialogues, along with updated translations. We’re still actively updating translations.

• Fixed and polished several Hamster Ball race track lines.

• Improved memory usage on several different screens.

• NPC exclamation marks no longer update while off-screen, improving CPU usage.

• Fixed a bug where HUD Quest listings would sometimes show Side Quests over Story Quests.

• Fixed matchmaking pill briefly showing 0 on the ready timer.

• Fixed the position of squad members being too close in the victory photobooth (when it's 4 players).

• Fixed 2 crates on the map that were unbreakable.

• Fixed a tent roof and loot spot in Murre Woods.

• Fixed one of the roofs at Pixile Port.

• Fixed a Sea Land jellyfish wall that had z-order issues.

• Fixed an issue where opening Rebel Caches while connecting could cause the player to see an unopenable cache.

• Removed duplicate English subtitles for on-screen titles, and fixed a couple of broken subtitles.

• Fixed the map biome hotkey working while typing in the map screen.

• Fixed a bug where users in Australia and New Zealand had BananOS glitched. Sorry mates.

• Fixed Gold & Black Dress having wrong sleeve size.

• Fixed Cardinal Bow & Sparrow missing sparkle icon on Customize.

Pasta Twitch Drops Campaign is Live!

For those looking to earn more cosmetics and support Super Animal Royale streamers, you can earn five free cosmetics by linking your Super Animal and Twitch accounts on the SAR Drops website and watching Drops-enabled SAR streamers on Twitch:

• Pasta Suit

• Pasta Dress

• Pasta Bow Tie

• Pasta Bow

• Spaghetti melee

The campaign ends on Friday, February 27th when the Lunar New Year event wraps up. Go get your items before it concludes!

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We hope you all have an amazing time horsing around together in this year's Lunar New Year event. See you on the island, Super Animals!

• Michael, Logan, & the Community team