Enable events on ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Survival Evolved ran seasonal events such as Winter Wonderland, and a dedicated server can switch one on by hand with a launch option. On your ARK: Survival Evolved server that option goes in one field of the Startup tab. One event is still reliable, and this guide says which.

Checked against ARK: Survival Evolved 361.8, October 2026.

Which events work

ARK's wiki lists these values for -ActiveEvent=: ark7th, ARKaeology, birthday, Easter, FearEvolved, ExtinctionChronicles, PAX, Summer, TurkeyTrial, vday, WinterWonderland and None. Only one can be active at a time.

Most of that list is no longer fully working. The wiki's Events page says that in ARK: Survival Evolved all the themed events have ceased, apart from Winter Wonderland, and the Server configuration page agrees that only WinterWonderland is still fully working. Studio Wildcard's announcement for the Winter Wonderland 5 event gave the way to turn Winter Wonderland on by hand: "This event can be manually activated with the server arg parameter: -ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland". Use that one. The wiki adds that for ark7th, ARKaeology, birthday and ExtinctionChronicles the events "no longer even apply the colour modifications".

Turn the event on

1. Open the Startup tab.
2. In Additional Arguments, type -ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland. If something is already there, add a space before it and keep the rest, for example -NoTransferFromFiltering -ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland.
3. Press Save.
4. Press Restart now in the alert. The server reads launch arguments only when it starts.
5. Join the server and check the event is running.

The text field takes up to 1,024 characters, so there is room for several options.

Turn it off

Delete -ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland from Additional Arguments, press Save and restart.

Common problems

1. Nothing changed after a restart: check the spelling and capitals in Additional Arguments, and that you pressed Save before restarting.
2. You tried another event: the wiki says only Winter Wonderland is still fully working. Switch to -ActiveEvent=WinterWonderland.
3. The server will not start after the change: remove the argument, save and restart to confirm that was the cause. Then copy the lines from the Console tab's Errors tab into your support ticket.