[STEAM] With a new update on the horizon, Genshin Impact’s Lantern Rite event is going permanent

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Fans of Genshin Impact’s annual Lantern Rite festival will be able to experience the once-seasonal event throughout the coming year.

Version Luna IV, the newest update to HoYoverse’s fan-favorite role-playing game, is slated to come out on January 14. As part of the launch, Genshin Impact is bringing back the Lantern Rite festival, an annual event celebrating the first full moon of the year. In 2026, however, the festival is extending far beyond its traditional five days, with the Genshin Impact development team confirming to GamesBeat that the event is sticking around indefinitely in a written interview.

“This year’s Lantern Rite Festival story will be retained as a permanent story, and players who join later can also experience it,” wrote a representative of the Genshin Impact development team, who requested GamesBeat attribute the statement to the broader development team, rather than an individual.

The Lantern Rite festival is one of Genshin Impact’s Flagship Events, annual, limited-time events that take place alongside major holidays throughout the year. Making this year’s Lantern Rite festival a permanent fixture represents a shift in the way HoYoverse is approaching Flagship Events, although the Genshin Impact development team declined to specify whether the company would follow this approach for additional Flagship Events moving forward.

Within the Genshin Impact community, fans have welcomed the change, with commenters on

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speculating that HoYoverse might make both past and future Flagship Events go permanent, and that the purpose of the strategic shift might be to use the Lantern Rite festival to help launch Zibai, the White Horse Adeptus — one of the new characters released alongside Version Luna IV. The Genshin Impact developer team confirmed that Zibai would debut at this year’s festival, pointing out that it corresponds with the Year of the Horse.

Zibai is not the only new content to roll out on Genshin Impact as part of the game’s Version Luna IV update. The update will also feature the new characters Columbina and Illuga, as well as an expansion of the game’s map northward and a new quest intended to drive the game’s main story forward. Development of Genshin Impact’s Luna IV update took “considerable time,” according to the development team representative, who said that the development process of this update fit within the standard time scale of between 6 and 18 months, although they declined to specify exactly how long this month’s update was in the works.

“Version Luna IV will bring the climax of Nod-Krai’s main story, where players can experience a thrilling decisive battle between the Traveler and their allies against Il Dottore,” said the Genshin Impact development team representative in a written interview with GamesBeat.

Going into 2026, the Genshin Impact development team representative teased more updates to come, including both new story formats and updates to Miliastra Wonderland, Genshin Impact’s user-generated content system.

“Miliastra Wonderland will also continue to evolve, providing creators with better support through tools and assets to facilitate the participation of indie developers and other creators in level design,” said the Genshin Impact development team representative.

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