The Sims begins its 25th anniversary celebration next week with a Behind The Sims episode of news and announcements

The Sims series is turning 25 in February, but Maxis is kicking the party off early with a Behind The Sims episode next Tuesday, January 14. The video premiere on YouTube is scheduled for 9am Pacific / 5 pm GMT.

Maxis told players back in September that we could expect an event in January to kick off the anniversary and said at the time that "there’s so much to look forward to in the coming months, and we just can’t help but share some with you now."

Typically during a Behind The Sims episode we get news about the next DLC kits coming to The Sims 4, updates from The Sims Mobile, and some mention of the upcoming Project Rene. Here's what we know The Sims team has in the works right now that it might talk about during the anniversary celebration:

• A Sims movie from Margot Robbie's production company
• Sims 4 creator kits: DLCs designed in partnership with Sims content creators
• The Sims Labs playtests for new game features
• Project Rene, the multiplayer game that isn't going to be The Sims 5

The announcement itself really doesn't give us much clue as to what to expect. The artwork for the event is all green and navy featuring lots of game characters, and there is a sort of nostalgic 2000s pixel and cartoon vibe to it all. But the accompanying text just says "A very special Behind The Sims is coming! ???? ????"

Here's hoping Maxis has something neat up its sleeve.

The Sims pretty notorious celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2020 with an in-game hot tub that fans were rather let down by. At the risk of being disappointed in the same way all over again, hopefully we can expect some grander plans for this milestone birthday given that Maxis has been prepping us to expect this Behind The Sims event since September.

The past two Behind The Sims videos have been about 15 minutes of updates and announcements, though the inaugural Sims Summit a while back was 30. For the 25th series anniversary, maybe we can expect something towards that longer end.