World Anvil News: April 2025

Spring is here! 🌸 (Or not, depending on where you live!) And with it, we also bring you a worldbuilding course, a spring-themed challenge… and very soon, the winners of the Worldbuilding Awards! Let’s take a look at what’s new and what’s coming next.

As always, our team has been busy improving World Anvil this month!

📚 Worldbuilding courses are live!

We created World Anvil to help you organize your worldbuilding and be more productive and efficient, but we also want you to become an even better worldbuilder! So we’ve launched our free Worldbuilding 101 course, complete with video lessons and assignments so you can practice everything you learn.

This is the first course of many, and you can find it in the new “Courses” option on the top menu bar:

Learn more about courses here!

👀 User profile followers are back!

Wondering who’s following you on World Anvil? You can now see your (and any other user’s) followers and followed accounts!

Go to your profile (or anyone else’s)
Click on the “Guestbook” tab.
Followers and followed users will appear on the right-hand area of the page.

🔍 Learn section search

We’re constantly working on improving our help resources over at the Learn section. Now, you can find the guides your need easier than ever! Just press Ctrl+K (or the search bar at the top right) and type the feature guide or tutorial you’re looking for:

❌ Option to remove social media buttons from Manuscript

Want a cleaner UI for your Manuscripts? If you disabled social media share buttons for your world, Manuscripts will now respect this setting too. Here’s how to do it:

Go to the world configuration page.
Click the Social configuration tab.
Find the “Social Media Sharing Widgets” option and disable it.

This will remove the “Share to Reddit” and “Share to X” buttons from both your world and all Manuscripts created under that world.

➡️ What’s next in World Anvil development?

On March 16th, during Worldbuilding Con, Janet and Dimitris talked about the history of World Anvil, and also what’s next! We have so many amazing upgrades and new features planned for World Anvil, and we can’t wait to share them in full with you. For now, watch the video to catch up on the latest information about future developments!

Check out the Changelog page on World Anvil for the full changelog.

🗓️ April events

We have some awesome events this month, to inspire you and help you achieve your goals!

🏆 5th Worldbuilding Awards Ceremony: On April 5th, join our live Awards Ceremony for the World Anvil Worldbuilding Awards! Take part in stream raffles, learn about the winners first, and chat with our special guests.
🪷 Rituals of Renewal Challenge: This month, we’re celebrating spring! Write about a tradition in your world focused on renewal, rebirth, or rejuvenation, and get this JOYOUS Badge for your profile! Check the challenge page for more details!
✨ Community Day: this month’s World Anvil Community Day will be on April 26th! Here’s the programme:
- 🎓 Sage Masterclass (5pm UK/9am Pacific): This month, Janet & Dimitris take a look at the world of “New Genesis: Legacy of Imagination” by Sage_ngloi. They’ll share feedback on how to help new readers fall in love with and dive deep into your own world! Find the link in the Professional Portal (Sages only).
- 🙌 Other people exploring your world: Adventure April (6pm UK/10am Pacific): In this month’s community stream, we’ll chat with EvanBlairArt, creator of Eldara, and Barron and Ademal, creators of Ethnis, about the best tips to create epic adventures for your players!
- ☕ Inner Sanctum Coffee: if you’re a member of the Inner Sanctum, join the bi-monthly Coffee, at 10am UK/2am Pacific and 4pm UK/8am Pacific! The link will be shared on the Discord channel on the day.

🪐 Worldbuilding Con videos

Thousands of people joined us for Worldbuilding Con to get advice from some of the best worldbuilders, writers, and game designers on the planet! And now, you can watch all of this amazing content on our YouTube channel:

Day 1 VOD – with a keynote by Mary Robinette Kowal, and panels about character building, worldbuilding cities, and worldbuilding while neurodivergent.
Day 2 VOD – with a fireside chat with World Anvil founders Janet & Dimitris, and panels about cozy fantasy, how to name things, and creating gods.

We had a cast of over 20 amazing guests, including Gail Carriger, Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman, Celeste Connowitch, Scott Lynch, Andy Law, and many more. So check the videos out and power up your worldbuilding!

And of course, we’re already planning next year’s Worldbuilding Con, for March 2026! Get reminders about that by signing up to the email list at www.worldbuildingcon.com.

🌟 Community highlight

What’s your favorite part about World Anvil? For many, it’s the community (that’s you!), and nothing showcases this better than this month’s highlight. The Peculiar Adventures of Ellen is a short story written collaboratively by 17 Anvilites! Every participant had 48 hours to write their segment after reading the story up to that point. Here’s what Imagica (aka Make lore, not war), the organizer of this project, had to say:

For over a decade, Kena’an lived in my mind and in dusty notes, a world waiting to take shape. When I joined World Anvil, I hoped for a way to organize the chaos—but what I found was so much more. My husband jokes that I’ve found my tribe here, and he’s absolutely right. This incredible community has given me joy, collaboration, and unwavering support. It even inspired Let’s Make a Story!, the unofficial challenge that brought so many creators together to craft The Peculiar Adventures of Ellen—and I’m thrilled to say it will return as an annual tradition. In the months that I am here, my world has grown in ways I never expected, but more importantly, I’ve found friends, inspiration, and a place where creativity thrives. Honestly, at this point, I’m starting to suspect World Anvil isn’t just a website—it might actually be magic.

Want to see some of this magic for yourself? Check out the The Peculiar Adventures of Ellen now!