How to delete your Nintendo account permanently

By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed 24 August 2026 · What this means

Every digital game goes with the account. Purchases are licences bound to the Nintendo Account, not the console. Deleting means losing them with no refund and no transfer — and cloud save data goes too.

Before you delete

Nintendo states deletion loses all data associated with the account, including digital content you purchased or redeemed, save data for apps linked to it, and your mission status, points and rewards in My Nintendo.

• Spend your account balance — it is forfeited.
• Cancel Nintendo Switch Online, especially if set to auto-renew.
• Back up save data locally where the game allows it; cloud saves die with the account.
• Child accounts you manage are deleted with you — but older family members are not. See below, because the line falls in a specific place.

Delete your account

1. Open the Nintendo Account deactivation and deletion page and sign in.
2. Read the on-screen information, then click Deactivate and Delete.
3. Confirm your identity — by password, passkey, or a verification code emailed to you.
4. If you use 2-step verification, enter the code from your authenticator app.
5. Click Confirm Account Deletion.

What happens to your family group depends on age

Nintendo draws the line precisely, and it is worth knowing before you frighten yourself:

• Child accounts you manage are deleted too. Nintendo says any accounts for children managed by the account you delete go as part of the same process — their games and save data included.
• Family members aged 13 and over are not deleted. If a family group admin deletes their account, those accounts survive. They simply stop being connected as a family group, and any of the remaining owners can create a new one and add the others back.

So deleting your account will not wipe your teenager's library, but it will wipe a younger child's if their account is one you manage. Move a child account out of your management first if that is not what you want.

Your Nintendo Network ID survives as well — the legacy Wii U and 3DS identity is not deleted with the Nintendo Account, and neither are any linked third-party or social media accounts.

You have 30 days to reactivate

The account can be reactivated within 30 days. After that it is permanently deleted. That window is the only safety net, and Nintendo does not remind you before it closes.

Consider deregistering the console as your primary system first if you plan to keep using it with another account.

Nothing is refundable, so the wallet balance is a deadline

Nintendo's position on money is unusually blunt: payments made through Nintendo Account services, including pre-purchases and subscription payments, are final and non-refundable. There is no goodwill route on closure and no partial credit back.

So the account balance is not savings — it is a voucher with your account's lifetime as its expiry date. Before you delete:

• Spend the balance down to as close to zero as the store allows. Buying something you half-want beats forfeiting the money entirely.
• Cancel Switch Online before it renews, rather than expecting a pro-rata refund for the unused part. There is not one.
• Check for a pre-purchase you have forgotten. Money already committed to an unreleased game is money you will not see again, and the game will not arrive in an account that no longer exists.

Your library was never as permanent as it felt

It is worth being honest about a thing most guides skip, because it changes how you weigh this decision. Deleting your account destroys your digital library — but keeping your account is not an absolute guarantee of it either.

Nintendo has closed digital storefronts before: the Wii U and 3DS eShops shut down, ending new purchases and leaving previously bought titles dependent on redownload services with their own lifespans. Titles are also delisted routinely when licensing deals expire, which removes them from sale and can complicate access later.

The practical lesson is not to panic — it is to download. Anything you genuinely care about should exist on the console's own storage rather than only as an entitlement on a server. That protects you against delisting, storefront closure and your own future change of mind, all at once.

This is also the honest answer to "should I delete or just walk away?" If the library has real value, neither deleting nor abandoning is a plan. Downloading what matters, cancelling the subscriptions and removing the payment method is.

Steps checked against Nintendo’s “How to Delete a Nintendo Account” article.