Zelda Calendar 2026

It is that time of the year again, where your current wall calendar will soon have completed its service. And in the past Zelda fans could look forward to something new every year, but those days seem somewhat over...

The team at Danilo decided to make their Tears of the Kingdom calendars a trilogy, so it's more of the same. That means you get another 12 months of character artworks from the last 3D Zelda game, with some repeats and some new ones. Here is what's in it:

Link, Riju, Sidon, Tulin and Ganondorf are repeats from 2024. Zelda, Yunobo, Rauru and Hestu are repeats from 2025. And the Great Deku Tree, Purah and Mineru have their first occurrence.

Well, this could have been easily reduced to two calendars. Especially the current poster, which was last year's cover motive (and vice versa), seems rather uninteresting. And since there had been five repeats in the previous calendar already, two would have been enough to include all the artworks. Plus, they still haven't made use of everything there is yet, like Yunobo's default artwork.

At least the overall design has improved quite a bit, compared to last year. There is a lot more variance in the backgrounds and they have added the names of the characters, which looks good. I still like the one from 2024 the best, even though it has the simplest design of the three, but its simplicity made it the most stylish in my opinion.

Of course, the new calendar is very much still up-to-date with the releases that we had this year. Tears of the Kingdom got a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, new amiibo, and its own spin-off game with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. A calendar based on the latter would have been amazing, though, but that probably wasn't as easy/cheap to realize, since it involves a third party. In addition, Mineru and Tulin will make their crossover debut in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, so there is some small relevance to 2026 as well.

Still, some love for Echoes of Wisdom would have been nice. This is where Abrams could have shined, but I'm pretty sure they have simply recycled stuff from their previous calendars, while getting some inspiration from Pyramid with their cover motives. So, I'd rather take the Tears of the Kingdom calendar for a third time, because this has at least something "fresh" in it.

Zelda Calendar(s) 2025

The year is coming quickly to a close and it's high time to get some new calendars for your walls. If you want something Zelda-themed, you get to choose between two different companies again, which are Abrams and Danilo. I picked the latter, because their calendars are more easily available where I live and they are simply ahead of the competition.

Danilo's 2025 calendar is essentially a sequel to the one from this year. It's entirely focused on Tears of the Kingdom and uses exclusively the different characters arts for the game, but it's a different set for the next year:

You get Rauru, Yunobo, Teba, Hestu and the Captain Construct, which were all missing in 2024. And you also get the secondary artworks for Riju and Zelda this time, which is nice. However, the other five artworks are repeats, which is not so nice. Of course there aren't even that many character artworks to use, but there is still Yunobo's alternate art, as well as artworks for Purah and Mineru, which could have been included here. I didn't even know that some of these existed, like Hestu's for example.

At least the character variety is much better than it was this year. Only Zelda is seen twice and each of the sage descendants is featured exactly once. Ideally, they would have spread things out more, so that the 2024 calendar has no doubled characters except for maybe Link and then use the rest for 2025.

The overall design is fine. It's not the prettiest, but I appreciate that they were trying to do things differently for the same idea. The calendar by Abrams (not pictured) looks much cleaner with its backgrounds, but they are essentially just copying the competition from what they did last year, so they also are now doing a Tears of the Kingdom calendar with the character arts... At least they got the character variety right from the start, but this isn't the first time that they are just looking at the competition to make next year's calendar. This was also a thing when Pyramid was still around and it makes Abrams quite unappealing, because they always seem to be one year behind.

For 2026 I expect something that has Echoes of Wisdom in it... from both parties. But if you want some Echoes of Wisdom in 2025 already, you can try the free table calendar from My Nintendo.

Zelda Calendar 2024

2023 has been all about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the Zelda fans and naturally you'd want a Zelda calendar themed around the new game for the upcoming year. In the past this never has been in the cards, because these officially licensed calendars got planned and produced so early that they weren't able to include the artworks from the latest game(s). The first calendar for Breath of the Wild got released in 2019, for example.

So, it's remarkable that the new company in calendar town, Danilo, managed to make a Tears of the Kingdom calendar for 2024 already. Actually, this is exactly what you would expect, but for some reason the competition never managed to pull this off...

In fact, Abrams is still releasing their calendars, but the one for 2024 only has one motive from Tears of the Kingdom and that's the cover art, which was first published by Nintendo over a year ago. The rest is made out of the same old stuff that has been used for these calendars multiple times already, so I've once more refrained from buying their product. It's getting stale.

With the Danilo calendar I will get one year of completely new stuff, even though it's all made exclusively out of the character artworks from Tears of the Kingdom. But there isn't much to work with otherwise, because the game only really got one key art and that's the one for the cover, where Link crouches on a sky island.

Breath of the Wild had two different covers arts, as well as another key art with Link climbing. Plus, they've made additional illustrations for the DLC packs, where the Golden Lynel from The Master Trials is one of those overused calendar motives by now... Tears of the Kingdom doesn't have this much stuff to work with.

But the main problem with the Danilo calendar is the selection of characters, where Tulin, Sidon, and Ganondorf all appear twice. Link is featured with all three of his character arts and while he's the playable main character, that's no excuse for featuring him in one quarter of the entire calendar.

Some of the artworks were withheld by Nintendo for quite some time, so it's understandable that the calendar doesn't include Yunobo for example. But in the very least they could have used the Captain Construct and/or the corroded Master Sword to mix things up a bit more and save the second artworks of some characters for future calendars.

I also would have preferred to get both artworks of Riju, instead of Tulin... Who even likes Tulin?

Like last year, the calendar comes with a "poster", where they are using the inner pages as something that can be hung up on its own afterwards, but it will have holes at the top and the bottom. So, don't expect an actual poster to be included, it's just a neat way of making a part of the calendar useful after the year is over.

Zelda Calendar(s) 2023

It's December already and with that it's time to look for some new calendars to hang on your walls. However, you will quickly notice that there is no general Zelda calendar available this time, which feels fitting after 2022, the first year without any release for the Zelda series in a decade. Instead there are two "different" calendars for Breath of the Wild only – one by Abrams and one by Danilo.

Also for the first time in a decade, I haven't gotten the calendar from Abrams, because it felt heavily redundant. They already had made a Breath of the Wild calendar in 2019 and two more followed by different companies, where there is only so much that you can do with a single game. So, I decided to check out the 2023 calendar by Danilo instead to at least have something "new":

Pyramid hasn't released another Zelda calendar for 2023, where their Breath of the Wild calendar for 2022 has essentially served as a blueprint for the competition this year. In fact, a majority of the motives has already been present in the 2022 calendar, where about half of the Danilo calendar is made of repeats and the one by Abrams has only two artworks that weren't present in Pyramid's calendar from last year. It just seems lazy and uninspired, like so often. Both calendars even feature the same "Link fighting against a snow storm" artwork in December...

This seems like missed opportunity for Pyramid, where they could have scored big time with a general Zelda calendar, which offers something different. Their 2021 calendar with the Chamber Dungeon design is still my favorite. I don't know... maybe these licensed merchandise corporations didn't think that there would be any interest in such a thing, because Zelda is all about Breath of the Wild now. At least they could try to use something from Age of Calamity as well, but this would probably require them to get licenses from Koei Tecmo in addition, which creates more cost and therefore generates less profit, all while Age of Calamity isn't that popular. So, I think I understand the business decisions here, but I really don't like them.

And we won't be seeing anything from Tears of the Kingdom before 2025, because the calendars for 2024 will be developed before the game comes out. Maybe one of these calendar companies is smart enough to already grab the existing cover art for Tears of the Kingdom and uses it for a general Zelda 2024 calendar. This would be preferable, because they have seemingly reached the limit of what can be done with Breath of the Wild.

Anyway, between the two Breath of the Wild calendars there wasn't much of a choice for me personally. As already said, the one by Danilo has less repetition and comes with a new design. There was also another selling point, because they've advertised it with having a poster inside. However, this is a bit misleading...

The poster is essentially just the center of the calendar, where they have made a double page. You can open the staples and remove it, but it has the typical holes at the top and bottom, so it's not a poster like you would expect it. The poster displayed on the back of the calendar doesn't even show these holes, where it's a bit of false advertising... It's still a good idea and I guess I can just leave it hanging like that, should there be nothing available for 2024. But as a poster it's not very nice.

The calendar design itself also isn't that great, it's a bit too dark for my taste. But they were going with a Sheikah Slate look and it's certainly more inspired than what Abrams has been doing for a couple of years now, so it's still the better choice overall.

Again, there was no Metroid calendar available, which seems like another missed opportunity after the release of Metroid Dread. Since I have one open calendar space right now, I would have gotten anything they throw at me...

Zelda Calendars 2022

The battle of the calendars between Abrams and Pyramid continues in 2022. Last year I was convinced that I would be exclusively going with the Pyramid calendar from now on, mainly because it had the much better variety in artworks and also because it uses ecofriendly, FSC-certified paper.

For the upcoming year, however, the guys at Abrams (to the left) have actually switched their paper source, so there is no difference here any longer. And the guys at Pyramid decided to make a calendar specifically for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for some reason. Ironically, this is what Abrams already has done for 2019, which seemingly also spawned the rival calendar series by Pyramid at the same time as an alternative, and a good one at that.

For 2021 the Pyramid calendar was the clear choice if you wanted more variety, but this has changed in 2022 thanks to Pyramid's focus on a single game. Abrams still is very reluctant to do much outside of the 3D Zelda titles, however, where for the first time they are featuring the remake of Link's Awakening with two months, but that's it. No A Link Between Worlds, no Tri Force Heroes, no Spirit Tracks, ... It's mostly just the popular 3D Zeldas again, which makes it seem like Abrams is afraid that no one will buy their calendar if it doesn't focus on the big titles.

But it's not like they are getting any competition here. The 2021 calendar from Pyramid was excellent, probably even the best Zelda calendar so far. Having all the months designed like Chamber Dungeons was a lot of fun and the selection of artworks had a good variety to it, even featuring five different 2D games. And from that they've moved on to a Breath of the Wild exclusive calendar.

I'm not sure what has happened here – maybe Nintendo even specifically requested this for 2022, because that's the year where the sequel is supposed to arrive. So, it might be a really good fit for this year. But come on... How many times am I supposed to look at that Gold Lynel artwork from The Master Trials? Don't get me wrong, it's a great artwort and I like it, but this was in Abram's 2019 calendar, in Pyramid's calendar this year and now it will be featured in both calendars for 2022.

The Zelda series is so rich in different artworks that there is no excuse about having this many duplicates in the calendars all the time. At least the Breath of the Wild calendar from Abrams tried some different compositions, but that's not the case here. The Pyramid calendar even reused one of its months from this year... And the following page for April 2022 is also very similar to the current one in December 2021, just with Zelda instead of Link:

The overall design is pretty good, as always, but it looks somewhat bland compared to the Chamber Dungeons in 2021, where the pages also had more contrast to them, instead of simply going with an old paper texture all over it. Maybe something that's fully based on the Sheikah Slate visuals would have been a good idea here and could have made the calendar truly pop.

At least it's still better than the Abrams calendar, where they seriously can't be bothered with even trying something like a design:

It's as bland and uninspired as it gets. And it's been like that since their Breath of the Wild calendar for 2019. In the past they at least had little artworks somewhere over the actual calendar on the lower page, but they've dropped this feature back then. It's all been very simplified, where it just shows a general lack of effort. You could probably design such a calendar in a couple of hours and then call it a day. It's just bad and there is no excuse for it.

Speaking of no excuse for Abrams, there doesn't seem to be an official Metroid calendar for 2022, at least I couldn't find one. After the lackluster one for 2021 it probably didn't pay for them to do another. But maybe Metroid will return as part of the calendar business in 2023 after the success of Metroid Dread. Knowing Abrams, however, they probably won't have anything from Metroid Dread in it, because it's still too new, and then fill everything with the Metroid Prime Trilogy again. Or maybe we could get a Metroid calendar from Pyramid? That could be interesting...

Zelda Calendars 2021

New year, new calendars. Like the previous two years, I got both the Abrams calendar (on the left) and the Pyramid calendar (on the right). This could change in the upcoming years, however, because the difference in quality between the two keeps increasing.

I've always preferred the Pyramid calendar from a design standpoint, but because they just started doing this two years ago, their motives were a little bit too "vanilla" for my taste. I've seen all those artworks in the Abrams calendars before...

But now, funnily enough, it's the other way around. If you look at the 2020 calendars, four motives from the 2020 Pyramid calendar are now re-appearing in the 2021 Abrams calendar...! Talk about lazy... It's like they just were looking at what the competition is doing and said to themselves, "we can do that, too! Let's just copy that!"

Well, Abrams has expanded their previous focus on the 3D Zelda games to "3D Zelda games + A Link Between Worlds", so there is still not much love for the 2D Zelda games here. I didn't even bother with their new Metroid calendar for 2021, because it's twelve times a Samus render from the Metroid Prime Trilogy games. I'm not even joking, you get one month of Quadraxis and the rest is Prime Samus.

It's like the guys at Abrams have the mindset of "we have to go with the popular 3D games or else no one will buy this". Pyramid on the other hand will offer you artwork from The Legend of Zelda, The Minish Cap, Four Swords Adventures, A Link Between Worlds and the new Link's Awakening remake.

With the latter they are also more up-to-date. Abrams seemingly likes to produce and sell their calendars very early, but because of this they are usually two or even three years behind with what's new in the series. Pyramid doesn't seem to be as bad in that regard, where they got the newest Zelda game covered. Plus, they had a good pick with the Champions for December, where this also works nicely to represent Age of Calamity.

Also, the new design for the months in the Pyramid calendar is absolutely amazing. Check this out:

 

It's a dungeon map! This is probably inspired by the Chamber Dungeon feature from Link's Awakening and I absolutely love this. This looks so cool and you get a different dungeon every month! That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you design a nice Zelda calendar.

I won't even bother showing you the inside of the Abrams calendar, because it's the same uninspired, effortless single-color design as always. And you can see an example on the back above. So, if you only have space or money for a single Zelda calendar, definitely go with the one from Pyramid.

Zelda + Metroid Calendars 2020

It's time to look at the calendars for the upcoming year and like for 2019 we again get two different Zelda calendars. One by Abrams (to the left), who have been releasing these calendars for many years now, and one by Pyramid (to the right).

For 2019 the Abrams calendar focused entirely on Breath of the Wild, where in 2020 they "broaden" their spectrum again to all six 3D Zelda games. Wow. If you're also a fan of topdown Zeldas, the Pyramid calendar might be the better choice here, because it also features The Minish Cap and A Link Between Worlds in addition... Which isn't much, but better than nothing.

Pyramid's selection of motives is again a lot more vanilla, though, where it all feels very familiar if you had some of the Abrams calendars from the past. The new Abrams calendar is a little bit more interesting on that regard, at least for its Breath of the Wild motives, where it probably would have been a good idea to simply make a second calendar exclusively featuring the game, instead of posting the cover of Skyward Sword again.

On the other hand the Pyramid calendar has the much nicer design for its months:

This all looks like a beautifully crafted Zelda calendar, while the one from Abrams feels a lot more blank in comparison with only the motive on the top page and rather lackluster template with some random background color on the lower page:

So, it's ultimately your choice what calendar you're going with. Or just get both and hang them in different spots.

But if you only have the one spot available and you want a calendar done right, then it might be worth considering the official Metroid Calendar 2020 instead:

This seems to be the first Metroid calendar (at least I haven't seen one in the previous years) and it was also done by Abrams, which is quite surprising, because they have done an uncharacteristically good job here when compared to their Zelda calendars. It already starts with the selection of motives, which are covering absolutely all Metroid games (except for Prime Pinball):

Counting the two remakes, there are currently twelve Metroid games in total, which fits perfectly for a twelve month calendar. The games are even covered in their order of release, so it starts with the classic NES Metroid and ends with Metroid: Samus Returns. This is perfect!

It mainly uses the cover arts of the games for this, but for a first Metroid calendar this is completely fine. (For a second one in 2021 it won't be.) It's a nice journey through 33 years of Metroid and you'd wish that Abrams would also consider using arts from some older or less popular Zelda games for their calendars as well for a change.

Surprisingly, the only game that has been featured twice here is actually Metroid: Other M, where the Bottleship is used for the 2019 section, which features the months between September and December. You might not ever see that one on your wall, however, so that's fine in any case.

The design of the calendar is also quite nice and fits the futuristic feel of the games:

I like how the top pages fades in the background of the second page, because it makes it look more wholesome, while the last Zelda calendars by Abrams make a clear visual cut between the two pages. So, yeah, this is definitely a good start and I will be proudly hanging this calendar in 2020 somewhere where I can see it. (Not that I'm hanging any calendars where you can't see them... You know what I mean.)

Zelda Calendars 2019

Yes, calendars. Plural. There's seemingly two of them now. Abrams, the company responsible for the Zelda Calendar series that has been going for the last six years, isn't releasing their typical The Legend of Zelda Calendar for 2019. Instead they've made a calendar exclusively based on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, seeing how this is the new popular kid in town. At least this is giving us an almost fresh experience, where they even put in a little effort, like showing different character arts against backgrounds with ingame locations.

In addition Nintendo was licensing a Zelda Calendar to another company, Pyramid International. They now took over the typical calendar with motives from various Zelda games, for the most port the usual suspects - the big 3D Zelda games and A Link Between Worlds. The overall design looks a lot more polished and "valuable" than the Abrams calendars, but it's really just big artworks and illustrations in the same repeated frame, which means there are no character arts or other details to mix things up. Plus, the selection of artworks is really just the well known stuff, mostly cover arts, which feels super bland at this point, because many of these motives have been used in the Abrams calendars plenty of times already...

I'm not even sure where to hang the second calendar. Maybe I'll simply switch them in the middle of the month, where I can even save myself the trouble during June and December, because they used the same motives for both months. In June you have "Climbing Link" art from E3 2016 and in December the North American cover art of Breath of the Wild. Well, at least for the latter they've used a different crop.

2018 Zelda Calendar

Another year, another Zelda calendar. This is the one for 2018:

And I have to say that it's quite solid, probably the best calendar since 2013 for me (I didn't buy any before that year). There's only one motive that got used previously and it's the first one, which gets used for the September til December 2017 section, which is fine, because I'm not hanging that up anyway. But overall the Zelda series has enough official artwork and illustrations to have completely individual calendars for the next hundred years, so there's no need to repeat things.

But this time the selection of motives is quite rich and also as up-to-date as it gets, since they managed to use illustrations and artwork of Breath of the Wild from E3 2016. I'm also happy that Tri Force Heroes made it in there, because that game is too underrated and certainly offers a pretty nice page there. I also really like the illustration of Link walking through a dark Hyrule Castle from A Link Between Worlds.

I'm not too happy that both Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess got featured three times each, where the diversity suffers quite a bit. In the very least they should have used some of the amazing new artworks from Twilight Princess HD (especially the artwork of Zelda looks gorgeous), where the Wii U remaster so far wasn't featured in the calendars yet. Instead they keep bringing old Twilight Princess artworks from 2006. If they want to go old, they could use some of the classic artwork from the NES games instead. But at least they end the year with a pretty amazing piece of Fierce Deity from Majora's Mask 3D.

2017 Zelda Calendar

Originally I didn't want to get the new "official" Zelda Calendar for this year, because I never really have been satisfied with the quality of them. But it somehow felt like I missing something and these things are quite cheap, so I decided to get it anyway.

The selection of images feels richer than in the last two years, where the motives were rather bland, but it also somehow felt very familiar. And when I checked my calendar collection, it struck me that they reused quite a lot of the illustrations from the 2013 Calendar, which was the first Zelda Calendar that I got. In fact half of the motives simply got recycled, which is an even lazier effort than usual, especially considering the vast variety of artworks from the Zelda series that they could have used.

Another big issue with these calendars is the up-to-dateness, because they get planned over an entire year in advance. In fact you can already check out and pre-order the 2018 Zelda Calendar on Amazon, which looks like the best one in a long time. It has a nice selection of artworks (except for January, where they reused something from 2013 and 2017 yet again) and because they decided to use the E3 artwork from Breath of the Wild, it feels more up-to-date than usual.

Can't say that about the 2017 Calendar, though...

As you can see, this is all old stuff. Majora's Mask 3D is the newest title in there. There's nothing from Tri Force Heroes, even though that's a game from 2015, or Twilight Princess HD, which was released in March of 2016.

Also, it seems like Hyrule Warriors is on the ignore list. It might just be that they don't have the rights to use the artworks from Koei Tecmo, but it still would be nice to have something from that game.

It also would be nice, if they would stop having some intern, who probably never has played a single Zelda game in his life, randomly throw artworks together. These calendars are really just made for the quick buck, there's no soul in them...

2016 Zelda Calendar

Nothing too special, pretty much the same (lame) design as the previous two years. I do like the selection of pictures better than with the 2015 one, interestingly enough they also got a more spooky artwork for October again, but overall it's just lazy. Nothing from Hyrule Warriors, nothing from any classic games, while The Wind Waker HD gets featured three times for some reason...

2015 Zelda Calendar

Got the official Zelda calendar again. Same very basic design as last year. It almost seems like they don't put much thought into the choice of artwork with the exception of October, where you get a Poe, fitting Halloween very well. A Link Between Worlds only gets featured with the same artwork twice, while being the newest game in the series... and it only has Link, nothing from Ravio, Hilda or Yuga...

2014 Zelda Calendar

Okay, this should end my Zelda shopping spree for this year. It's the 2014 Zelda calendar:

Or actually it seems to be the Ocarina of Time 3D calendar, because eight months are covered by that game...! What the fairy...? I liked the 2013 calendar more, it had more variety to it. For example this one doesn't even include Spirit Tracks. And it looked richer, this one just seems to be simple character arts with nothing much to it.

Also, while I can understand that Nintendo only wants their latest titles, they do have the Virtual Console and adding those games could be a good idea as well. So, why not add some motives for Link's Awakening or the Oracle games? And it seems that these calendars get produced way too early. They weren't even able to add The Wind Waker HD? For the 2014 calendar you'd want the latest games from 2013. I want HD Toon Link! I want awesome Ravio!

Well, hopefully the 2015 calendar will have all that. Because I wouldn't want another year filled with Ocarina of Time 3D and Skyward Sword.

Edit:
Amazon is ridiculous. This 10€ calendar they sent me in a HUGE box (I was thinking I'm getting a new computer or something) padded from all sides... lol. But when I order a 220€ highly limited collectible, they put it in a paper bag. What's wrong with their brains?

2013 Zelda Calendar

Did you know that there's an official Zelda calendar licensed by Nintendo? I didn't. Immediatly after I learned about it I bought one on Amazon:

As you can see on the back of the calendar, it spans rather typical art from the last five retail games, Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Ocarina of Time 3D and Skyward Sword. Usually the different cover arts. So, while the quality is very nice and shiny, it's overall nothing special and a little bit boring.

But I like that the calendar has one additional page at the beginning that spans the months September til December 2012, which means I can already use it. Which is quite nice.