Dansday
Nintendo ran a 40th anniversary Zelda Direct on 8 September 2026 at 7am Pacific, about thirty minutes long. The headline was an Ocarina of Time remake for Switch 2, arriving in November. The part nobody had on their list was the instrument.
Alongside the game, Nintendo is selling an actual ocarina. Not a plastic prop — a working instrument that connects to the console, so the songs you have been inputting with a controller for nearly thirty years can be played by blowing into a thing and covering holes with your fingers.
It is a genuinely strange product to greenlight and an obvious one in hindsight. The whole game is built on a musical interface. Nintendo simply decided to finish the joke.
Hardware followed: a special-edition Switch 2 console and Pro Controller, both dated 29 October 2026, ahead of the game itself.
The film got a name and a date and nothing else. It is called The Legend of Zelda — no subtitle, no colon — and it arrives 30 April 2027. The Direct showed a logo and no footage. Shigeru Miyamoto described it as an original work inspired by the series rather than an adaptation of any single game, which is either a sensible creative choice or the most efficient way to disappoint everyone who wanted a specific one.
A new orchestral theme was written for the anniversary and played across the show. The Nintendo Museum gets a Zelda run too — dedicated tickets, a series history board, and a Master Sword photo op from 5 November 2026, with the Super Family Restaurant opening in the autumn.
Forty years is long enough that the anniversary has to do two jobs: sell something to the people who were there for the first one, and mean something to players who started with Breath of the Wild. A remake and a museum exhibit handle the first. The film is aimed squarely at the second.
The ocarina is the item that will still be on a shelf in ten years, though. Games get resold. Instruments do not.