As Nintendo says goodbye to regular Splatoon 3 updates, players come together to settle the score on who the series’ best musical group is

As many fans assumed, Splatoon 3’s Grand Festival was its final Splatfest, so regular updates for the game are coming to an end.

Over the weekend, Splatoon 3 held a big Grand Festival, heavily implied to be the finale of the last two years of Splatfests. Now, as announced on the official North America Splatoon Twitter, it’s been confirmed that regular updates are wrapping up, though that doesn’t mean support for the game is ending. “After 2 INK-credible years of Splatoon 3, regular updates will come to a close,” reads the announcement tweet. “Don’t worry! Splatoween, Frosty Fest, Spring Fest, and Summer Nights will continue with some returning themes! Updates for weapon adjustments will be released as needed. Big Run, Eggstra Work, and Monthly Challenges will continue for the time being.”

If you weren’t aware, this final Splatfest was themed around Past, Present, and Future, with the first game’s Callie and Marie representing Past, the second game’s Pearl and Marina representing Present, and the third game’s Deep Cut representing Future. Unfortunately for Deep Cut, Future walked away with zero points total, putting it in dead last. Present, i.e. Pearl and Marina, came second with 370 points, leaving Past, i.e. Callie and Marie, in first place with 500 points. Important to note here is that the final Splatfests of the first and second games had a small influence on how the subsequent games’ story played out. So if Splatoon 4 is in the works, it’ll be interesting to see how Past winning affects it.

The Japanese Nintendo channel also released a very cute video showing off the Grand Festival in action, which you can check out above, alongside various bits of art that were released alongside Splatfest over the past couple of years, and their respective winners (though if you don’t recognise some that’s because Japan and the West occasionally had differing themes).

With Splatoon 3 now wrapped up, it’ll likely be a while until we get a new one, especially as the specific dev team has a lot of overlap with Animal Crossing – and with a Switch 2 announcement coming potentially any day now, that seems like the perfect platform to launch on.