WoWS 2026 Anniversary: Snowflakes, Festive Tokens and best rewards

How does the 2026 World of Warships Anniversary work?

The core of the event remains the Festive Rewards system.

Veteran players will probably keep calling them “Snowflakes.” After so many years, it is easier to accept that some habits are more durable than a terminology change decided by Wargaming.

Each eligible ship in your Port lets you claim one unique Anniversary reward.

Ships from Tier V to X award Festive Tokens, while Superships directly award Steel.

The larger your collection, the more profitable the event becomes.

It is even one of the rare times of the year when keeping old ships you barely play can finally have a real benefit.

How much does each ship earn?

According to the values currently being tested for Update 15.8:

Each reward can be claimed only once per ship during the event.

A Tier X therefore earns five times as many tokens as a Tier V. Lower tiers should not be ignored, however: with a large fleet, they still add up to a meaningful number of tokens.

A few examples:

• 20 Tier V ships = 500 tokens
• 20 Tier VIII ships = 1,500 tokens
• 20 Tier IX ships = 2,000 tokens
• 20 Tier X ships = 2,500 tokens
• 10 Superships = 2,000 Steel

The Anniversary therefore rewards the depth of your Port far more than owning only a handful of prestigious ships.

Good news: you do not need to play every ship

This is probably one of the most important mechanics of the event, especially for veterans.

A second mechanic lets you claim rewards from several ships without having to play each of them individually.

After earning 1,000 Base XP, you can trigger additional Festive Rewards on other ships in your Port.

The number of ships affected depends on the size of your collection:

For large accounts, the difference is enormous.

A player with more than 600 ships can continue playing a few ships they genuinely enjoy while clearing up to seven additional rewards each time the mechanic triggers.

That saves you from taking several hundred ships out of Port one after another, including forgotten low-tier hulls whose existence you sometimes rediscover only during the Anniversary.

How should you clear your Snowflakes efficiently?

With a small Port, there is no need to plan a Pacific-scale military operation: simply play your eligible ships and claim their rewards.

With several hundred ships, a slightly more organized approach becomes useful.

Start with the ships you actually want to play

Use your usual ships first.

You will naturally clear their Festive Rewards while accumulating the Base XP needed to trigger the additional rewards.

Use the extra rewards on ships you do not want to play

Save the automatic triggers for the least appealing ships in your Port:

• old low-tier ships;
• forgotten premiums;
• tech-tree lines you no longer play;
• ships you perform poorly in;
• ships you simply have no desire to take into another battle.

That is much more efficient than insisting on clearing every Snowflake manually.

Do not forget your Superships

Each Supership currently awards 200 Steel.

With 10 Superships, that already means 2,000 Steel.

With 20, you reach 4,000 Steel.

For well-developed accounts, this is therefore a particularly valuable part of the Anniversary.

The free 11th Anniversary gift

Update 15.8 is also expected to include a free Anniversary gift in the Armory, available after your first battle.

The currently planned contents are:

• 11 days of Warships Premium Account;
• the Happy Blastday destruction effect;
• the Blast & Bash permanent camouflage;
• 3 Battle of Santiago de Cuba containers;
• 3 Premium Red Steel Titan containers.

Even if you have no intention of grinding the event, play at least one battle and claim this gift.

The 11 days of Premium Account alone already make it worthwhile.

What are Festive Tokens used for?

This is where the choices become genuinely interesting.

Festive Tokens can be exchanged in the Armory for different types of content, with a new Japanese supercruiser presented by Wargaming as the main reward.

Kurama

Kurama is a new Japanese supercruiser offered in Early Access during the Anniversary.

Its currently tested price is:

11,000 Festive Tokens

That is obviously a huge amount.

For example, if you earned all your tokens only from Tier X ships, you would need:

88 Tier X ships

to reach the required 11,000 tokens.

In practice, your fleet will obviously contain several tiers, but the example gives you a useful sense of scale.

Kurama is therefore clearly aimed at players who already have a substantial collection.

Do you absolutely need to buy Kurama?

Not necessarily.

This is probably one of the main traps of the event: seeing a brand-new ship available and immediately assuming it must be the best possible use of your tokens.

Before spending 11,000 tokens, look at what the same amount can buy elsewhere.

Supercontainers: the most obvious alternative

A Supercontainer is currently expected to cost:

125 Festive Tokens

with an announced limit of 130 Supercontainers.

The 11,000 tokens needed for Kurama therefore correspond exactly to:

88 Supercontainers

At that point, the choice becomes far less obvious.

On one side you have:

one guaranteed Supership

and on the other:

88 Supercontainers.

Supercontainers are obviously random. You may receive very useful resources, or even ships, just as you may witness RNGesus' annual demonstration of its ability to give you exactly what you did not need.

For an account that is still developing, spreading the tokens across several rewards may therefore provide more overall value than putting everything into Kurama.

The other planned rewards

According to the values currently being tested:

These rewards obviously do not all have the same value.

How should you spend your Festive Tokens?

1. Start with the unique rewards you genuinely want

If Kurama is clearly your goal, the strategy is simple: save your tokens until you reach its price.

At least you know exactly what you are buying.

2. Look at permanent content and collections

Containers tied to collections deserve particular attention.

Standard Battle of Santiago de Cuba containers can notably be purchased with Festive Tokens during Update 15.8.

They let you progress through the collection linked to the unique Spanish Commander Pascual Cervera y Topete.

Another collection, Red Steel Titan, is linked to the Soviet Tier IX premium battleship Sovetskaya Rossiya according to currently available development information.

For a player who regularly uses Spanish ships or wants to progress toward a permanent premium ship, these collections may be more interesting than a purely cosmetic reward.

3. Supercontainers

At only 125 tokens, they are a particularly flexible use of the Anniversary currency.

I would still leave them until after securing the guaranteed rewards that interest me.

Guaranteed content is generally easier to value than a random draw, even if opening containers remains one of the industry's most successful ways of making people forget that fairly basic fact.

4. Cosmetics

Destruction effects and other visual items can be fun, but they do not improve your economy, progression, or ship collection.

If your tokens are limited, they logically come behind:

• ships;
• collections;
• useful resources;
• permanent rewards.

What strategy should you use based on the size of your Port?

Small Port: fewer than 50 ships

Your total number of tokens will remain relatively limited.

Building your entire event around Kurama probably does not make much sense.

I would prioritize:

1. the free Anniversary gift;
2. Snowflakes from all available ships;
3. Steel from any Superships;
4. worthwhile guaranteed rewards or collections;
5. Supercontainers with the remaining tokens.

Medium Port: between 50 and 200 ships

The event starts becoming much more profitable.

The additional reward system also lets you clear your Port without having to play every ship individually.

The first thing to do is therefore very simple:

calculate how many tokens your Port can realistically produce.

Only then should you check whether Kurama is a realistic target.

Doing it the other way around means deciding on the purchase before checking your budget. Humans love this method, but that does not make it any better.

Large Port: more than 200 ships

This is where the Anniversary really comes into its own.

Between 200 and 399 ships, you can already clear five additional rewards each time the mechanic triggers, then six from 400 ships and seven beyond 600.

Kurama therefore becomes much more accessible.

One thing still matters, however:

11,000 tokens = 88 Supercontainers.

Even for a veteran with a massive fleet, the opportunity cost remains significant.

The September login calendar

The Anniversary is not limited to Snowflakes.

A special login calendar begins on September 1 and remains available during the month.

It notably contains:

• days of Premium Account;
• several Supercontainers;
• Coal;
• Credits;
• Free XP;
• 100 Doubloons;
• bonus containers;
• various containers linked to the new destruction effects and decals.

Currently announced rewards notably include Supercontainers on days 5, 11, and 21, as well as Premium Account days on days 1, 13, and 23.

Even if you do not have time to play regularly during the month, at least remember to log in.

It would be a shame to lose rewards for an effort as exhausting as clicking an icon.

Have you been playing for 11 years? There is an extra reward

Account-age rewards are also expected to evolve.

For an account celebrating its 11th year, currently available information notably includes:

• 3 weeks of Premium Account;
• 12 Supercontainers;
• 15 White permanent camouflages;
• 5 legendary economic bonuses of each type;
• a 50% discount coupon;
• the For Meritorious Service patch.

This reward is separate from the general Anniversary gift.

The oldest accounts may therefore stack several sets of rewards during the update.

The Marlborough B Dockyard

Update 15.8 is also expected to launch a new Dockyard centered on Marlborough B, the Black Friday version of the British Tier IX battleship.

The ship keeps the broad characteristics of Marlborough:

• sixteen 356 mm guns;
• high rate of fire;
• very high volume of fire;
• good concealment;
• but mediocre accuracy and protection that is far from exceptional.

The currently tested format contains 28 phases:

• 23 can be completed through missions;
• 5 must be purchased with Doubloons.

The currently planned prices are:

• one phase: 1,400 Doubloons;
• 5-phase Starter Pack: 4,500 Doubloons;
• 10-phase Starter Pack: 8,500 Doubloons.

If these prices remain unchanged at release, the 5-phase pack is clearly more efficient than buying the five mandatory phases separately:

4,500 Doubloons versus 7,000.

Only buy it, however, if you genuinely intend to finish the Dockyard.

Buying the pack and then abandoning the event halfway through remains an excellent way to turn a discount into wasted spending.

Three new Operations for lower tiers

Update 15.8 is also expected to introduce three new Operations:

• Trial by Fire
• Swarm of Steel
• Beehive

They are designed for lower-tier ships and should allow players to use more Tier II to VI ships in PvE.

It may not be the flashiest addition to the Anniversary, but it could be particularly valuable in the long term.

World of Warships contains hundreds of lower-tier ships that usually end up gathering dust in veteran players' Ports.

Giving them more structured PvE content is therefore an excellent idea.

The Holiday Convoy continues at the same time

Another important point: the 2026 Holiday Convoy continues during the Anniversary period.

You may therefore have all of these running at once:

• Holiday Convoy Tokens;
• Anniversary Festive Tokens;
• Snowflakes;
• collections;
• the Dockyard;
• the login calendar.

In other words, several temporary currencies and systems will operate in parallel, because a WoWS event where every token is immediately understandable would apparently have been too relaxing.

Just remember this:

Holiday Convoy Tokens are used in the Holiday Convoy.

Festive Tokens earned through Festive Rewards are used for Anniversary content.

They are two different currencies.

Our recommended strategy for the 2026 Anniversary

If you want to benefit from the event without turning September into administrative work, this is the order I recommend.

1. Log in regularly

The September calendar contains several worthwhile rewards that can be claimed with practically no effort.

2. Play your first battle in Update 15.8

Then immediately claim your free gift in the Armory.

3. Play normally with your favorite ships

That will naturally begin clearing your first Festive Rewards.

4. Use the additional rewards on ships you do not want to play

The larger your Port, the more important this mechanic becomes.

5. Collect the Steel from every Supership

It is a guaranteed and particularly valuable reward.

6. Do not spend your Festive Tokens immediately

First try to estimate the total number of tokens your fleet can produce.

7. Then decide whether Kurama is worth the investment

At 11,000 tokens, it consumes a huge part of the event budget.

8. Compare random rewards with guaranteed rewards

Supercontainers can be very attractive, but they remain random.

A ship, a completed collection, or a guaranteed resource is much easier to value.

9. Leave cosmetics until last if your tokens are limited

They can be fun, but contribute almost nothing to account progression.

10. If you want Marlborough B, decide quickly on the Starter Pack

If the conditions remain unchanged at final release, waiting too long may cost you access to the discounted pack.

What is the best reward in the 2026 Anniversary?

There is no single answer that works for everyone.

For a collector with a huge fleet:

Kurama will probably be the main reward to target.

For a player whose account is still developing:

collections, Steel, the free gift, and Supercontainers may provide more overall value.

For a veteran player who already owns many ships:

the Festive Rewards themselves will probably be the real jackpot of the event.

And for everyone, the 11 days of Premium Account in the free gift and the login calendar are valuable enough that they should not be forgotten.

Conclusion: count your ships before spending your tokens

The 2026 World of Warships Anniversary primarily rewards two things:

the age of your account and the size of your Port.

Every Tier V to X ship becomes a source of Festive Tokens.

Every Supership becomes a source of Steel.

And thanks to the mechanic that lets you clear several additional Festive Rewards, even players with several hundred ships should no longer need to play them all one by one.

The main mistake would therefore be to start spending your tokens during the first few days.

First, claim as many Festive Rewards as possible.

See how many tokens your Port actually produces.

Then choose between:

• Kurama;
• collections;
• Supercontainers;
• resources;
• cosmetic rewards.

With 11,000 tokens for Kurama versus only 125 tokens for one Supercontainer, the difference is large enough to justify a few minutes of calculation before heading to the Armory.

The Anniversary gives away a huge number of rewards.

You might as well avoid somehow turning that into a bad deal.