Overwatch Summer Games 2021 Begins Today, New Skins Debuted

The Overwatch Summer Games event is beginning today, July 20. As usual, Blizzard has started to tease some of the limited-time cosmetics you'll be able to earn during the event. These items don't typically appear again after the event--at least not for several months--so you won't want to miss your chance to grab them. [Update: The event is now live.]

In the announcement posted to Twitter, we can see new skins featuring Symmetra as a mermaid, Ashe and Bob in casual beachwear, and Mei as a '50s-era ice cream parlor worker. A series of follow-up tweet showed off more of the skins and gave them names: Mermaid Symmetra, Poolside Ashe, and Sprinkles Mei. Each is a Legendary skin.

The annual event is also near-guaranteed to bring back Lucioball, the exclusive brawl that has been paired with the Summer Games event every year since it started in 2016. That 3v3 mode is loosely based on soccer, and the 2020 games introduced a variant called Lucioball Remix.

The original Overwatch Summer Games coincided with the 2016 Rio Olympics, and many of the cosmetics were the Overwatch crew representing their home countries. That raised questions of whether the event was specifically limited to the Olympic Games, but they've been running every year since, and the skins have transitioned to being themed after more general summertime activities.

Given that the Tokyo Summer Olympics were postponed last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, this will be the first year since the original in which the Overwatch Summer Games roughly coincides with the summer Olympics. The opening ceremonies in Tokyo will be held this Friday.