Every year around the Lunar New Year, Diablo 4 transforms Sanctuary with one of its most rewarding limited-time celebrations: Lunar Awakening. This event blends festive flair with explosive gameplay incentives, giving players a chance to earn massive experience gains, unlock exclusive rewards, and engage with unique event mechanics that amplify nearly every action you take during the event window. Whether you're leveling a fresh character, grinding Paragon points, pursuing Nightmare Dungeons, or chasing cosmetic prestige, Lunar Awakening is one of the most impactful seasonal events Blizzard has released.

 

In 2026, Lunar Awakening runs from February 12th through February 26th. It's available on both Seasonal and Eternal Realms, meaning you can participate with existing characters regardless of whether you're in a season or not.

 

What is Lunar Awakening?

Lunar Awakening is a limited-time event, inspired by the Lunar New Year, that enhances the way Shrines work across the entire game world. During the event, nearly every Shrine found throughout Sanctuary - including in open world areas, dungeons, and even Nightmare content - is transformed into a Lunar Shrine. These special shrines not only give you a hefty experience buff but also award a unique reputation currency called Ancestral Favor. As you collect reputation, you earn exclusive rewards and cosmetics, culminating in repeatable high-value caches known as Unceasing Gifts from the Ancestors once you complete the main reward track.

 

Lunar Awakening is structured around two main pillars: activating shrines for buffs and experience, and earning and spending Ancestral Favor reputation to unlock event rewards.

 

Getting Started: Enter the Event

To participate in Lunar Awakening, you first need to locate the event hub and speak with the appropriate NPC:

 

Travel to Ked Bardu, a major hub town in the Dry Steppes region.

 

In the northern part of town, you'll find the Lunar Night Market, marked on your map with a purple event icon.

 

Inside the market, speak with Ying-Yue, who leads the festivities. She'll introduce the event and track your reputation progress.

 

Once you've spoken with Ying-Yue, the event mechanics will become active on your account. You don't need to complete the main campaign to participate, although some players report that quests or NPC visibility may require at least basic campaign progression based on game state and patches.

 

Lunar Shrines - The Heart of the Event

During Lunar Awakening, every Shrine you encounter - anywhere in Sanctuary or Nahantu - becomes a Lunar Shrine. When you activate one of these shrines, several things happen:

 

You receive a 100 % multiplicative bonus to experience for the duration of the Shrine buff (higher than the 50 % bonus from older iterations).

 

You earn Ancestral Favor reputation every time you kill monsters while the buff is active.

 

You gain enhanced powers unique to that shrine type, which significantly alters combat.

 

Monsters known as Miserly Spirits spawn immediately when a Lunar Shrine is activated, giving you instant targets to make use of the buff.

 

This event mechanic ensures that wherever you are in the game - whether you're exploring the wastelands, tackling dungeons, or grinding Nightmare content - you have frequent opportunities to level up faster and advance your reputation simultaneously.

 

Shrine Effects - What Gets Enhanced

Each type of Lunar Shrine not only confers its normal effect (like boosting damage or defense), but also gains a special augmented ability that makes gameplay feel fresh and dynamic during the event. These enhancements are typically tied to the shrine's original theme and add dramatic flair to combat. You'll find the same augmented effects across multiple event coverage sources:

 

Artillery Shrine: Your attacks have a chance to summon a holy bomb, dealing significant area damage.

 

Blast Wave Shrine: Explosions trigger additional cluster bombardments, expanding your area damage potential.

 

Channeling Shrine: Grants increased attack speed and a chance to instantly reset skill cooldowns, dramatically enhancing rotation efficiency.

 

Conduit Shrine: Summons frequent, powerful shocking strikes, adding persistent lightning damage in battles.

 

Greed Shrine: After a set number of kills, Treasure Goblins spawn, giving you loot-rich targets.

 

Lethal Shrine: Struck enemies have a chance to be instantly executed, frightening nearby foes.

 

Protection Shrine: You reflect all incoming damage for the duration, turning defense into offense at high levels.

 

The combination of these effects means that each shrine encounter can change your combat approach - and when combined with the experience buff and reputation gain, you're incentivized to constantly hunt down shrine locations in every zone.

 

Earning and Spending Ancestral Favor

Every time you activate a Lunar Shrine and start killing enemies under its buff, you accumulate Ancestral Favor reputation. This reputation is the event's primary progression currency and serves as the key to unlocking rewards.

 

As you earn reputation, you fill up a progress bar with multiple levels. Each level you complete grants a reward - typically cosmetic Diablo 4 Items, crafting materials, special caches, or other event loot. There are ten main reputation levels during the event. Once you complete all ten, additional reputation continues to earn you Unceasing Gifts from the Ancestors, which are ongoing reward caches you can keep collecting until the event ends.

 

Rewards you can earn through reputation include several festive and exclusive cosmetic items, like armor embellishments and mounts. One highlight of the 2026 Lunar Awakening is the Trag'Oul's Consort mount, a unique seasonal mount that players can unlock for free by progressing in the event.

 

In addition to the free reputation rewards, Tejal's Shop in Ked Bardu offers Lunar Awakening-themed cosmetic skins for purchase with Platinum - these are optional and not required to complete the event.

 

Tips for Maximizing Your Event Efficiency

To get the greatest value out of Lunar Awakening, a few strategic habits go a long way:

 

Activate every shrine you see. Even if you're just passing through an area, clicking a shrine ensures you get bonus experience and reputation progress.

 

Plan routes between shrines. Shrines grant their experience buff for a limited time, so mapping a path through zones with high mob density keeps that buff active longer, accelerating both XP and reputation gains.

 

Use Nightmare Sigils with Ancestor's Favor affixes. Some Nightmare Dungeon Sigils can roll an affix that guarantees multiple Lunar Shrines inside the dungeon run, making them excellent for stacked reputation farming. You can buy Diablo 4 Items to get them quickly.

 

Mix open world and dungeon play. Open world areas offer many shrine spawn points, while dungeons provide condensed combat for efficient reputation grinding.

 

Check back with Ying-Yue often. Don't let reward contents sit unclaimed; part of the fun of the event is collecting layers of rewards as you progress.

 

Final Thoughts

Lunar Awakening stands out as one of Diablo 4's most engaging limited-time events. It not only celebrates the Lunar New Year with festive aesthetics and unique rewards, but it also significantly enhances core gameplay loops - incentivizing exploration and combat with substantial experience bonuses and top-tier loot. For players looking to advance characters, grind Paragon, or simply collect all the cosmetics, this event offers a concentrated window of opportunity each year that's well worth diving into.

 

Whether you aim to ride away on the Trag'Oul's Consort, deck out your characters in lunar armor, or build Paragon power for endgame raids, make sure you seize the Lunar Awakening event while it's active - once the festivities fade, these rewards and bonuses vanish until the next year.