BODY: Four decades after Link first stepped into Hyrule, Nintendo is turning its anniversary machine up to full volume. During the "The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct 2026.9.8," the company unveiled a pair of fan-facing keepsakes tied to the milestone—one physical, one digital.
The headline item is a specially designed Nintendo Museum admission pass. Starting September 9, visitors to the Kyoto-area museum will receive the Zelda 40th anniversary version of the entry ticket, available for a limited window of roughly one year. For a facility where the printed admission card is already treated as a souvenir, the anniversary skin turns a routine ticket into a collectible in its own right.
On the digital side, Nintendo's smartphone app Nintendo Today! launches "The Legend of Zelda Collection Cards," also beginning September 9. The free daily-content app has steadily become Nintendo's low-key channel for wallpapers, calendars, and drip-fed franchise trivia, and the Zelda card series slots neatly into that habit-forming format.
Both offerings underscore how Nintendo is treating Zelda's 40th not as a single blowout but as a year-long campaign, spread across its museum, its app ecosystem, and presumably more announcements still tucked inside the Direct itself.
The insider take
From Tokyo, the pattern here is unmistakable: Nintendo has learned that scarcity plus dailiness keeps fans engaged far longer than a one-off drop. Tickets to the Nintendo Museum in Uji already sell out months in advance through a lottery system, so a time-limited anniversary pass gives resellers and superfans alike a fresh reason to chase a booking. Pairing that with a daily card mechanic in Nintendo Today!—an app most Japanese users open first thing in the morning—shows Nintendo quietly building the same engagement loops that power mobile games, without ever charging a yen for them.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).