What Happened to Anakin's Lightsaber?

Obi-Wan took it. After beating Anakin on Mustafar, he picked up his old apprentice's blue lightsaber and kept it for nearly twenty years, then gave it to Luke. Luke lost it at Cloud City, and it resurfaced in the sequel trilogy, where it ended up buried on Tatooine. (Revenge of the Sith; A New Hope; The Empire Strikes Back; The Rise of Skywalker)

There were actually two#

Anakin's first lightsaber is the one Obi-Wan nags him about in Attack of the Clones. When Anakin drops it chasing an assassin over Coruscant, Obi-Wan catches it and hands it back: "This weapon is your life." On Geonosis it gets sliced in half by machinery in the droid factory. "Not again," Anakin groans. "Obi-Wan's gonna kill me." (Attack of the Clones)

He builds a replacement during the Clone Wars, and that's the lightsaber everyone means. It's the blade he carries in Revenge of the Sith, and the one Vader ignites in the Jedi Temple and uses on Mustafar. (Revenge of the Sith)

Obi-Wan's years with it#

When the duel on Mustafar ends, Obi-Wan picks up Anakin's lightsaber from the black sand and leaves him by the lava. (Revenge of the Sith)

The canon series Obi-Wan Kenobi shows where it went next. Obi-Wan keeps both sabers, his own and Anakin's, buried in a box in the Tatooine desert, and digs them up when Bail Organa asks him to rescue Leia. (Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Part I")

In A New Hope he finally hands it over. "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it," he tells Luke, and calls it the weapon of a Jedi Knight. He doesn't mention that he took it from Luke's father after leaving him to burn. (A New Hope)

Lost at Cloud City#

Luke carries it through the Rebellion. At Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader cuts off Luke's hand, and the hand and the lightsaber fall down the reactor shaft together. Luke builds a green lightsaber of his own for Return of the Jedi. (The Empire Strikes Back; Return of the Jedi)

Maz Kanata's castle#

The saber is next seen in The Force Awakens, in a chest in the basement of Maz Kanata's castle. It calls to Rey, and when she touches it she has a terrifying vision. Maz tells her, "That lightsaber was Luke's. And his father's before him." Han asks Maz where she got it, and she answers, "A good question, for another time." No film has answered it since. (The Force Awakens)

Finn uses it against stormtroopers, then against Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base. When Kylo tries to pull it to himself, it flies past him to Rey, who beats him. At the end of the film she holds it out to Luke on his island. (The Force Awakens)

Broken and mended#

In The Last Jedi, Luke takes it from Rey and tosses it over his shoulder. Later, after Snoke's death, Rey and Kylo both reach for it with the Force in Snoke's throne room, and it tears in two. (The Last Jedi)

Rey mends it in The Rise of Skywalker. When she tries to throw it into a fire on Ahch-To, Luke's spirit catches it and tells her, "A Jedi's weapon deserves more respect." On Exegol she passes it through the Force to Ben Solo, who fights the Knights of Ren with it. (The Rise of Skywalker)

Where it rests#

In the final scenes of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey goes to the abandoned Lars homestead on Tatooine, where Luke grew up. She wraps Anakin's lightsaber together with Leia's and buries them in the sand, then ignites her own, yellow-bladed saber. (The Rise of Skywalker)

So the blade Anakin built in the Clone Wars ends up home, on the planet where he was born a slave. This trail is all from the canon films and Obi-Wan Kenobi. (The Rise of Skywalker; Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Part I")

Read more#

Lightsaber covers how the weapons work, and lightsaber crystals what makes the blue blade blue. The people who carried it are covered at Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker and Rey. Related questions: how Anakin lost his hand and why Luke used a Sith lightsaber crystal.