The Sims 4 Seasons

The Sims 4 Seasons Expansion Pack

The Sims 4: Seasons is the fifth expansion pack for The Sims 4, released on June 22, 2018. Developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, Seasons arrived nearly four years after the base game’s original 2014 launch, at a point when the community had been asking for weather and seasonal change more than almost any other feature. Drawing inspiration from The Sims 2: Seasons and The Sims 3: Seasons, the expansion introduced dynamic weather, a rotating calendar of the four seasons, a customizable holiday system, and a new gardening career — all without adding a brand-new world, making it one of the more unusual expansions in the lineup. Despite skipping a new destination, Seasons is frequently cited as one of the most transformative packs ever released for The Sims 4, since it touches nearly every existing world and reshapes how Sims live day to day.

The Sims 4 Seasons at a Glance

• New Systems: Weather, seasons, temperature, calendar, holidays
• New Career: Gardener (Florist or Botanist branch)
• New Skill: Flower Arranging
• New Activity: Beekeeping, Scouting (for Children & Teens)
• New Object: Weather Machine, thermostat, Patchy the Scarecrow
• New Holidays: Love Day, Harvestfest, Winterfest, New Year’s, plus fully custom holidays

New Features in The Sims 4 Seasons Expansion Pack

Seasons’ central theme is bringing the passage of time and the rhythm of the natural world into The Sims 4. Rather than adding a single new destination, the expansion reaches into every world Sims already own, layering weather, climate, and a full calendar year on top of them.

Weather and the Four Seasons

Seasons introduces spring, summer, fall, and winter as a repeating cycle that players can set to last 7, 14, or 28 days each. Every existing world — from Willow Creek to Oasis Springs — gets its own climate profile, so a snowy winter in one world might stay mild in another. Rain and thunderstorms are common in spring and fall, snow takes over in winter, and summer brings heatwaves alongside the occasional storm. Weather has real, visible consequences: puddles form after rain (and Sims can jump in them or shower outdoors to save on utility bills), lightning can strike a Sim during a thunderstorm, and snow piles up on roofs, lawns, and furniture, ready for a snowball fight or a freshly built snowman.

Temperature: A New Survival Mechanic

Alongside weather, Seasons introduces temperature as a system Sims genuinely have to manage. A weather-and-temperature readout sits at the bottom of the screen, and the in-game calendar offers a seven-day forecast so players can plan ahead. Dressing appropriately — hot-weather outfits in summer, cold-weather gear in winter — helps Sims stay comfortable, while a home thermostat lets players control indoor climate (at the cost of a higher utility bill if it’s mismanaged). Left unprepared, Sims can overheat during a heatwave or freeze during a cold snap, and in extreme cases temperature exposure can even be fatal, adding real stakes to the seasonal cycle.

How Holidays and Traditions Work

Holidays in Seasons are one of the pack’s most replayed features. The expansion ships with several premade holidays — including Love Day, Harvestfest, Winterfest, and New Year’s — each built from a set of up to five customizable traditions, such as sharing a grand meal, exchanging gifts, or throwing a party. Players aren’t limited to the premade options, either: holidays can be freely edited, deleted, or created from scratch and will repeat automatically every in-game year. A holiday runs from 6:00 am until 2:00 am the next day, and depending on how many traditions a Sim completes, they’ll end the day with a happy or a disappointed moodlet. The game will even surprise players with quirky occasional holidays, like Talk Like a Pirate Day, that pop up on the calendar a few days in advance.

The Gardening Career, Beekeeping & Flower Arranging

Seasons finally gives dedicated gardeners a career to match their hobby. The new Gardener career can be worked from home, similar to the career style introduced in City Living, and splits around its midpoint into two branches: Florist, which leans into selling floral arrangements (and pairs nicely with a Get to Work retail business), and Botanist, which focuses on the science and scale of growing plants. Alongside the career, the expansion adds beekeeping as a passive income and gardening boost — bees pollinate nearby plants for a fertilizer-like effect — and a brand-new Flower Arranging skill, usable at a dedicated crafting table regardless of which gardening career branch a Sim chooses. Children and teens get their own seasonal activity too, in the form of an unpaid but skill-rich Scouting after-school program.

The Weather Machine and Other Additions

For players who’d rather control the elements than adapt to them, Seasons includes a purchasable Weather Machine capable of overriding the current forecast — clearing up a rained-out birthday party, or, if a player prefers chaos, dropping a blizzard into the middle of summer. Several upgrades improve its reliability over time. Another fan-favorite addition is Patchy the Scarecrow, a buildable scarecrow who can be befriended and put to work tending a garden, occasionally turning up seeds in his pockets. Umbrellas, seasonal clothing, ice skating, roller skating, sprinklers, and raking leaves round out the pack’s day-to-day activities, and the expansion also integrates with several other packs — snow shoveling and leaf raking can build the Responsibility trait from the Parenthood game pack, and pets react to puddles and snow if Cats & Dogs is installed.

The Sims 4 Seasons – All New Build Mode Items

Seasons adds roughly 180 new items to Build/Buy mode, a relatively modest haul compared to some later expansions, but one that’s tightly focused on its theme: thermostats, holiday decoration sets accessible through the Attic Stack Decoration Box, outdoor sprinklers and swing sets, ice rinks, and gardening stations all make an appearance, alongside general new furniture and décor pieces suited to a seasonal, year-round home.

The Sims 4 Seasons – All New CAS Items

The Create-a-Sim catalog gets a similarly themed boost, with over 180 new items spanning toddlers, children, and adults. The headline addition here is the introduction of two dedicated outerwear categories — Hot Weather and Cold Weather — so Sims automatically dress for the season, from sweaters and scarves in winter to lighter, breathable outfits in summer, alongside holiday-appropriate looks for Love Day, Harvestfest, and Winterfest celebrations.

The Sims 4 Seasons Reviews & Player Feedback

On Metacritic, The Sims 4: Seasons received a score of 81/100, indicating “generally favorable reviews.” Hardcore Gamer praised the expansion for adding a tremendous amount of depth to the base game. Twinfinite’s review was similarly positive about the new systems Seasons introduced, though it did note disappointment that the pack didn’t include a new world alongside its other additions. Even with that caveat, the Clubs-style depth of the holiday and weather systems is often held up as some of the most ambitious world-building The Sims 4 has ever attempted without an actual new map, and the pack remains a frequent pick among players choosing just one or two expansions to own.

Is The Sims 4 Seasons Worth Buying?

For players who want their game world to feel alive year-round — snow drifting over rooftops in winter, thunderstorms rolling through a summer barbecue, a calendar full of holidays their Sims actually look forward to — Seasons is one of the most consistently recommended expansions in the entire Sims 4 lineup. Because it touches every world rather than adding just one, its impact on everyday gameplay is broader than almost any other pack, and its gardening career, weather system, and holiday tools continue to pair well with expansions released years later. For anyone trying to decide which single expansion to buy first, Seasons is very often the answer.