How to get more Residents on your Island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

When you start your new Island life in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you’ll join Nook’s latest venture alongside two random residents.

While these new residents might be the best around and will be with you for the start of your adventure, the large size of your new paradise is big enough for more to join you down the line. But how exactly do you get more residents on your island?

The game doesn’t tell you after all, and that’s for a good reason! There are multiple ways, but we will be going through the ways to unlock more animal friends in the order they unlock.

To get from the original two residents to five, you will need to have the Museum and Nook’s Cranny unlocked first and foremost. As soon as Nook’s Cranny is built, Nook will start his morning address, answering his phone with new residents seemingly wanting to join your island!

When you go to see Nook in Resident Services, he will tell you about how more people want to come to the island and will send you out on a task. First, you’ll need to create a bridge, but you won’t have to have it completed yet to get the new plots for your Residents, you can go back to him and request them ahead of time.

You’ll be given three new land plots to put down, which will allow three new residents to join you in the future. You’ll need to complete some tasks and get some resources first, though, to get the residents to join, so finish those as soon as you can.

After you get up to five residents, you can upgrade Resident Services by playing the game naturally and buy new land plots from Nook for 10,000 Bells each. You can have a maximum of 10 residents on your island, so choose the locations of these new homes wisely.

You can move them in the future if you wish but it is quite expensive.