The next Splatfest inSplatoon 3has officially been announced, and fans of the colorful third-person shooter only have a few weeks to prepare before it begins on July 11. This time around,Splatoon 3is giving its Splatfest a summer vacation theme, and players will be splitting up into teams based on their favorite forms of summer travel.
Splatfests in theSplatoonserieshave been around nearly as long as the games themselves. The regularly held events occur multiple times a year, splitting players up into teams to fight for supremacy over personal preferences that seem to have no real association to the games themselves, like cats versus dogs andPokemon RedversusPokemon Blue. In the first-ever Splatfest, which was only open to players in Japan and was held roughly two weeks afterSplatoon’s launch, rice defeated bread as the best breakfast food.
Now, developers are getting ready to launch the 48-hour-long Summer Nights Splatfest, which is set to kick off on July 17, 2025, at 3 PM EST / 6 PM PST. Unlike the head-to-head choices in the first two games,Splatoon 3utilizes three-team Splatfests. In the spirit of summer, players this time around will be divided up depending on their preferred method of summer travel: Land, Sea, or Air.
Splatoon 3 Summer Nights Splatfest 2025 Event Dates & Times
Along with letting players unite in a three-way team competition, the special event inSplatoon 3will bring back some fan-favoritegear fromSplatoon 2. Four returning pieces of headgear — The Hivemind Antenna glasses, Eye of Justice helmet, Jetflame Crest helmet, and Fierce Fishskull helmet — have all been revealed on the game’s official social media channels. All four of these items were originally introduced in June 2019 as promotional items for the Chaos vs. Order Splatfest, and players will be able to pick them up through a Splatoon 3 News article on their Nintendo Switch devices.
This event will be the first Splatfest following thegraphical downgrade toSplatoon 3that was implemented on the original Switch earlier in June. With the Nintendo Switch 2 now out and able to run the game, the developers had to sacrifice a little bit of graphical fidelity on the original Switch to ensure consistent frame rates in multiplayer action between the two consoles. The changes are minor and don’t affect all game modes, but some players who have been taking a break fromSplatoon 3while awaiting the arrival of the next Splatfest may notice some slight differences.
