Second Life marks its 22nd anniversary in 2025, with a month of activity kicking-off on Friday, June 20th through until Sunday, July 20th. Celebrations will be taking place across the Birthday regions in Second Life, and and with previous years includes live music, DJ sets, art, shopping (via the dedicated Shop and Hop event), exhibits by Linden Lab and – particularly – exhibits by Second Life residents and communities.
The following is intended to provide a general overview of the celebrations and provide calendars, SLurls and anything else that might be useful to you when visiting the regions.
IMPORTANT NOTE: many of the builds at SL22B, particularly the stages, etc. have been built using PBR materials, and the skies are rendered as HDR. Therefore, to see the regions at their best, you should preferably be running a viewer that is “PBR enabled.”
Theme
This theme for 2025’s celebration is Myths and Legends, which the Lab describes thus:
It reflects the Second Life experience because we are all the heroes of our own adventures! The emphasis is on the characters and stories people create in SL both personally and within their communities.
However, as has been the case over the last several birthday events, exhibitions are not confined to the theme itself, with the Lab additionally noting:
Share your Second Life passions with us. Your interests. Your communities. Your world! Every year we celebrate because of you, the amazing and creative Residents who have chosen to call Second Life home. What has drawn you into this world, and what keeps you here? These annual festivities are an opportunity to show us what fuels your Second Life. Let’s celebrate that together!
SL Birthday Calendar
The best way the stay abreast of all that’s going on is via the official calendar of events, which I’ve embedded below.
- Use the Week / Month options, top right to change the calendar view.
- Click on any given line item on any given day of festivities to view more information, including teleport SLurls.
Key Events
Shop and Hop
The SL22B Shop And Hop event is taking place across multiple regions, and features many creators and merchants. The best way to find out about this event is via the Shop and Hop Destination Guide entry and via the SL22B Shop and Hop Participating Merchants list.
Meet the Lindens
As per usual, SL22B will feature a series of events featuring various members of the Lab’s management team and those from front-line teams. The sessions will be a mix of live sessions at the celebrations events and pre-recorded sessions. They will take place per the schedule below.
| Day (Times SLT) and Event | Featuring |
| Monday, June 23rd, 13:00 Meet the Product Operations team |
Senior VP of Product Operations, , Customer Support & Trust & Safety Patch Linden; Manager, Customer Success & Trust & Safety Keira Linden; Creative Producer Izzy Linden. |
| Tuesday, June 24th 13:00 Watch the Product and Engineering teams (pre-recorded) |
Senior VP of Product & Engineering Grumpity Linden; Director of Engineering Web & Platform Kali Linden. |
| Wednesday, June 25th 13:00 Meet the Founder of Second Life |
Philip Rosedale. |
| Thursday, June 26th 13:00 Watch the Marketing team (pre-recorded) |
TBA |
| Friday, June 27th 11:00 Meet the Moles. |
The Moles are builders, scripters, and content creators employed by Linden Lab to work in the Linden Department of Public Works. |
Meet the Lindens SLurl: Astral Athenaeum
If you cannot attend a session in person, you can watch it on the Second Life YouTube channel.
Entertainment and Performances
Live performers from across Second Life and around the globe are lined-up to perform at SL22B between Friday, June 20th and Sunday July 20th. The complete schedule can be seen below.
The Welcome Area
Never been to an SLB event before? Try starting at the Welcome Area where you’ll find lots of help, things like the SL22B Hunt HUD, teleport boards and teleport portals to key event areas, and more!
The Tapestry of Time and Gift Area.
First presented in 2018, the region-wide Tapestry of Time presents visitor with a walk-through of Second Life’s history from 2003 through to the present day using images, text and videos. True, not everything has been recorded, but there’s enough within the region to be of interest to the historically minded.
within the Tapestry of Time can be found the SL22B Gift Area, offering gifts from the Birthday exhibitors and from merchants participating in the Shop & Hop event.
Exhibitor Regions
As is common for SLB events, the mix of content is varied, and the representation of interests broad. Role-play groups, arts, communities, are represented across the nine regions open to exhibitors; some are static, others are interactive in nature.
- Direct links to the exhibitor regions can be found in the SLurls lists at the end of this piece.
- Information / SLurls for individual exhibitors can be found in the SL22B Exhibitor Showcase.
Note that teleport boards are available at the centre of all Exhibitor regions for easy of moving between them.
Adult Exhibitor Regions And Adult Shop and Hop
2025 sees the Adult content and groups exhibitor regions combined with the Adult Shop and Hop regions. Once again, the celebrations include Adult content and groups, with exhibits at the event, with the Shop and Hop taking place across four dedicated regions separate to the main exhibitor regions. I’ve also included individual region SLurls at the end of this article.
Advice on a Better Experience
The SL22B regions can get exceptionally busy. To help ease the pain for you:
- If you have a high draw distance, reduce it to as low as is comfortable for your enjoyment.
- Turn off shadows in your viewer if you usually have them enabled.
- Go to Preferences → Graphics and reduce the slider Max # Non-Imposter Avatars to a minimum and dial-down your Complexity slider.
- Remove texture-heavy HUDs to free-up more texture memory.
- Remove unnecessary scripted attachments and dress lightly, avoiding accessories of high complexity.
SLurls and Destination Guide Links
Core Event Region SLurls
- The Welcome Area – teleports to the stages, Tapestry of Time, Pod Tours, Gift Area, Community Gallery and Shop and Hop, etc.
- Astral Athenaeum – home to the Meet the Lindens sessions and more.
- The Observatory – the general stage
- The Royal Keep – opening ceremony and more.
- The Tapestry of Time and Gift Area
- SL22B Pod Station – for pod tours (or hop on a passing pod!).
- General Shop and Hop Main Landing
General Rated Exhibitor Region SLurls
Adult Rated Regions
| Odin’s Bar and Grill Stage | Pod Tours | |||
| Exhibitor Regions: | SLB Alluring | SLB Daring | SLB Euphoric | SLB Irresistible |
| Shopping Regions: | Buttercup | Goldenrod | Freesia | Trillium |
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