Second Life marks its 23rd anniversary in 2025, with a month of activity kicking-off on Thursday, June 19th through until Sunday, July 19th. 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.
Theme
The theme for 2026 is The Golden Age of Hollywood, which the Lab describes thus:
Think classic cinema, red carpets, vintage glamour, and the magic of the silver screen. While the theme may inspire many builds and performances, exhibits are not required to follow the theme. We encourage you to share what makes your Second Life experience meaningful. Your interests. Your communities. Your creativity.
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 SL23B 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 SL23B Shop and Hop Participating Merchants list.
Meet the Lindens
As per usual, SL23B 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 (from 13:00 SLT) | Participants |
| Monday June 22 | Philip Rosedale – Founder and CTO |
| Tuesday June 23 | The Product Team |
| Wednesday June 24 | The Engineering Team |
| Thursday June 25 | The Marketing and Growth Team |
| Friday June 26 | The Second Life Studios Team |
Meet the Lindens SLurl: Orpheum Theatre, plus Theatre #2 and Theatre #3.
If you cannot attend a session in person, you can watch it on the Second Life YouTube channel.
Entertainment and Performances
Live performers and DJs from across Second Life and around the globe are lined-up to perform at SL23B. 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 SL23B Golden Ticket booth (win up to LS 1,000,000), the SL23B Swaginator HUD, Premium and Premium Plus gifts, teleport portals and boards 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 SL23B 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 SL23B 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 SL23B 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.
- Orpheum Theatre – home to the Meet the Lindens sessions and more.
- Westeria Palms Event Stage
- The Funky Monkey Stage
- The Golden Palms Event Stage
- The Tapestry of Time and Gift Area
- SL23B 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
| The Salty Saddle Saloon Events Stage: | Smouldering | Feisty | Spicy | Steamy |
| Exhibitor Regions: | SLB Alluring | SLB Daring | SLB Euphoric | SLB Irresistible |
| Shopping Regions: | Buttercup | Goldenrod | Freesia | Trillium |
| Peony | Hibiscus |
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