Anno 117 wants you to design a banner for its new chariot races

Ubisoft is holding a "Craft Your Banner" contest that will put player-designed artwork into Anno 117: Pax Romana. Fans have until July 8 to submit their designs on the Anno Union website, and the winning entries will appear during the inaugural chariot race in the game's next expansion.

The contest ties into The Hippodrome, the second major DLC for the historical city builder. Arriving in August 2026, the expansion adds the famous Roman racing venue to the Latium region as a massive monument project. Building it requires moving through five distinct construction phases and hoarding a massive amount of resources like Albion granite and timber.

Once finished, the arena is an entertainment hub for the city. Players can host chariot races to keep the local population happy and attract elite specialists from across the empire. The completed structure dwarfs most other buildings in the game. It completely dominates the skyline of any province it sits in.

Building the track

The Anno series usually relies on multi-stage monument projects for its late-game goals. The Hippodrome fits exactly into that mold. Unlocking the building requires reaching the Patrician population tier. From there, it becomes an economic sink that tests how well your supply chains are actually running.

The governor's advisor lays out the stakes clearly. The emperor expects an illustrious city full of theaters and bathhouses, but the arena demands an entirely different scale of investment. Countless suns will rise and set before the final stone is laid.

The reward for all that effort is a functional racetrack. Chariots and horses line up in the sand before each race. The visual feedback of the roaring crowd provides a payoff for the logistical headache of getting the stones in place. It brings dynamic life to the city center instead of just being a static stat boost.

Expanding the empire

Anno 117: Pax Romana launched in November 2025 and introduced a dual-culture system. Players manage both the traditional Roman heartland of Latium and the Celtic territories of Albion. The game forces governors to decide whether to enforce Roman assimilation or preserve local traditions.

The Hippodrome is the second piece of the game's Year 1 Pass. It follows the Prophecies of Ash expansion from April, which introduced a massive volcanic island and a new obsidian resource. The development team will wrap up the first year of post-launch support in November with Dawn of the Delta. That final pack will open up an entirely new Egyptian province with its own unique population tiers and deities.

How to enter the contest

Anyone interested in submitting a banner design needs to head over to the Anno Union community hub. The submission window is tight. The development team will stop accepting entries on July 8.

A jury of developers will judge the submissions based on creativity and how well they fit into the historical setting. The winning banners will then be patched into the game to hang over the racetrack.

The Hippodrome DLC launches in August for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. I am curious to see how much space this arena actually takes up on a standard Latium island. Finding flat real estate in this game is already a puzzle. Squeezing a full-scale Circus Maximus clone between my aqueducts and patrician villas sounds like a nightmare for my city layout.