Every year Final Fantasy XIV celebrates its anniversary by kicking off the popular The Rising event, which is a replacement for the Foundation Day festivities. This year’s event is confirmed to run from Wednesday, 27 August 2025, at 7:00 GMT to Thursday, 11 September 2025, at 14:59 GMT.
Heading To The Future, Respecting The Past
The Rising 2025 starts in Limsa Lominsa at X11.3/Y13.7. You have to speak with the wandering minstrel to get started; once accepted, the quest will lead you to the drowning wench. The event follows a wannabe adventurer who wants to find out a mystery involving the lighthouse nearby.
The event leads you to a couple of different locations; there are actually two quests, but they lead into each other, so you really just have to follow. Once you have completed the main quest, there is a special message by Naoki Yoshida. This happens every year, and it’s a character model designed after him: Even the wandering minstrel is slightly based on Yoshida-san.
After finishing the quest, it will reward you with a minion based on Gulool Ja Ja, the two-headed Mamool Ja who rules Tuliyollal. The minion is really cute, though I have a feeling we may not see him that much more in the future.
Time To Remember
I completed the event fairly quickly, and this is my issue with this and most recent events with Final Fantasy XIV. Though the idea in theory is solid enough, I feel like now that we are in the 12th year of the game, I would love to see this event increased in scope somehow. For example, other MMOs even have dungeons completely redone just for a specific event. I think this is a big problem for a lot of the events in Final Fantasy XIV, though. The summer event made me hopeful, but my hopes were dashed again by this latest outing.
I would love to see more effort put into the anniversary; they make it sound so unique and that they care about us during the cutscenes. Valentine’s Day once had a maze added for two players to have to compete, and Halloween had a revamped version of Haukke Manor to give it a spooky makeover. As such, I would like to see either something completely original or maybe one of the dungeons/raids could get some sort of exciting change just for the anniversary.
The event doesn’t have to be too challenging but mainly something that helps bring the community together or at least have people playing together. I know for a lot of fans, Final Fantasy XIV is more of a single-player game nowadays, but at the heart of it, it’s an MMO, and as the anniversary is supposed to represent the game and the player, it just feels disappointing for proving so lacklustre.
In case you missed it, Square Enix has also confirmed dates for the Final Fantasy Fanfest in 2026, which will take place in the US, Germany, and Japan.