Habbo Hotel: from room tours
to a return to 2005

Habbo's June 2001 homepage is a narrow page on a dark gray background. Its yellow HABBO HOTEL sign hangs over the illustrated lobby; the hotel exterior and a pool sit underneath, while a separate column holds news. The visitor can look inside before registering, but the small print below the rooms adds a technical condition: the hotel needs Macromedia's Director Shockwave plug-in, with a download link for anyone who does not have it yet. By May 2002, that same tilted sign and arrangement of rooms remain in our selected capture.

The hotel began as a hobby. In 1999 Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä built Mobiles Disco, a graphical chat for a band their friends played in, and Sulake's tenth-anniversary account says it quickly drew users from Finland and abroad.^[1] There were people to meet before there was a hotel to decorate.

A snowball fight came next: Lumisota, made for a Radiolinja campaign in February 2000. The Finnish hotel followed as Hotelli Kultakala, and the first international hotel opened in Britain in early 2001.^[1] These .com screenshots start in 2001; they do not show the Finnish game's launch page.

Habbo's June 2003 homepage has a turquoise background, a yellow central panel and a short, horizontal HABBO wordmark. The tilted two-line HABBO HOTEL sign from our 2001 and 2002 captures has gone. Room pictures still run across the top, but the news now shares one bright panel with the welcome text. A small column of advertisements sits outside it.

The October 2005 capture is headed Habbo Hotel USA, where the yellow panel has grown much taller. Under the room banner, community news and safety information share the yellow panel with room pictures and promotions, while a separate column on the left carries the login box and more advertising, keeping the account controls outside the long stream of updates. The page offers plenty to read while the hotel itself remains one click away.

The safety section gives the hotel opening hours of a different kind. The 2003 UK page says moderation runs between 9am and midnight BST, seven days a week; the 2005 US page says it runs 24 hours a day. Both put that promise among the instructions for entering and decorating a room.

Habbo's June 2006 homepage spreads into blue columns beneath yellow navigation, with green patterned wallpaper around the page. The room artwork becomes a featured story. Smaller panels below it divide the community into news, activities and help, so the visitor can browse a busy website before going into a room.

The June 2007 capture puts a prepaid-card promotion in the large feature panel. Underneath, a Habbo Classifieds box and lists of activities compete with the welcome and shop panels. The page now has places for both the hotel's own announcements and its community's contributions.

That card promotion explains how a free hotel could have a shop. Habbo's help describes Credits as a way to buy virtual furniture and other extras.^[2] The screenshot puts a real-world way of paying beside the pixel rooms the payment would furnish. Registration, news, spending and community activities all fit into the same compact page, with no single invitation occupying the whole screen.

Habbo's September 2010 homepage clears the columns away. Against black, a large hotel illustration sits beside Join now and for Free; above it, the page says Chat, make friends and hang out. A login form stays at the top and a few lines of small print sit below the illustration. The header wordmark is missing in this capture.

All chat was suspended on June 12, 2012, after a Channel 4 investigation into sexual conversations involving children. BBC News reported the suspension the next day.^[3] The thing the 2010 page had invited visitors to do was temporarily unavailable across the service.

To regain chat, users reportedly had to pass a responsible-use test. TechCrunch's June 25 account described a questionnaire and acceptance of new terms as chat began returning in selected countries.^[4] Our usable screenshots do not cover that interruption; the account comes from the reporting linked here.

Habbo's June 2018 homepage puts the hotel against a blue circle and gives JOIN FOR FREE! a green button. Beneath the illustration, a pale navigation bar lists HOME, COMMUNITY, SHOP and PLAYING HABBO. The news begins below that bar, led by HABBO IS IN THE HOUSE! and a date in May 2018.

The next four archived pages retain that older news panel. The archive kept serving the same saved copy of that panel, so the May 2018 item says nothing about the news in 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022.

Behind that invitation, the old game client returned. Sulake's help article says Flash was retired in January 2021 and acknowledges that its Unity replacement was incomplete and unsatisfactory. The old client was repackaged as a downloadable AIR application; the launcher offered Modern for Unity and Classic for AIR.^[6] These homepage captures show the entrance to Habbo, not the change inside its game client.

Habbo's June 2023 homepage adds social sign-in options beside the hotel and a HABBO NFTS item to the navigation. In June 2024, that menu item reads COLLECTIBLES. The blue layout still puts a free-join button above the news; small SAFETY TIPS and PARENTS' GUIDE panels sit to the right.

The world of 2005 returned for adults in 2024. Azerion's half-year results describe Habbo Hotel: Origins as a recreation of that version aimed at people aged 18 and over.^[7] The grown-up audience could go back to the old hotel, through a separate product.

Origins also promised to leave out NFTs and cryptocurrency. Its June 17 FAQ said none would be present at launch and there were no plans to add them.^[8] The promise belonged to Origins: the main Habbo homepage in our June 15 capture still had its COLLECTIBLES link.

The two dates matter. This 2024 screenshot precedes the FAQ, so its news card is not evidence of an Origins launch announcement. It shows the main hotel's invitation and menu just before that promise about the separate return to 2005.

Habbo's live homepage on October 17, 2026 dresses the hotel in dark Halloween colors. The green join button survives, with login choices beside the building and a news card for HABBOWEEN 2026: THE FIRST WING below. Farther down, safety and parents' information still accompany the invitation to play.

The Collectibles link leads to another use for the furniture. Habbo's 2025–2026 roadmap describes letting players move old furni onto the Immutable blockchain as Relics.^[9] Alongside Origins' return to an earlier hotel, this part of Habbo proposes a new destination for its objects.

In 2001, the homepage let visitors look into a lobby and a swimming pool. In 2026, the hotel still supplies the picture, now lit for Halloween, while the page asks visitors to join. The room tour has become an invitation beside a building. Which version of the hotel to enter comes afterward.