Pride Celebration returns to Overwatch 2 for June

The Overwatch 2 team has taken to celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride in-game every June, so they’ve announced their offerings for 2025. Mirroring the real-life celebration of Pride, which commemorates the Stonewall Uprising which occurred on June 28 – July 3, 1969 in Greenwich Village, Overwatch 2 gives players a chance to celebrate in-game, turning the Midtown map into a Pride parade.

Players who log in between May 30 and June 30 will earn a new Soldier: 76 skin, “Resilient,” and an emote featuring a pride-colored smoke bomb. During that time, you can also play the Midtown Pride map both as a random map draw, and as a specific choice within the Arcade. The Toronto New Queen Street map, which was also Pride-themed in past years, wasn’t mentioned as returning for this year. Also, these rewards are not available in all regions and localizations.

And the celebration doesn’t stop with the game. There is a new short story featuring Soldier: 76 to read, called “Futures Past.” If you’re the artistic type, they’re putting out an open call for Overwatch 2 pride art, which will be collected and displayed on the Blizzard campus in Irvine. I’m not quite sure what to think on that last point. I want to make it clear that LGBTQ+ art is a great form of expression, and can serve as a protest in its own right — just like Pride is — but it seems like bait to ask this particular community for LGBTQ+ art, given the community’s love of rule 34. Here’s hoping the person who drafted this PR mailer knows what they’re getting the interns sorting out the mail into. If you’d like to contribute, you can send either digital art or physical art, but if you’re doing the latter make sure your mail will arrive before June 30 if you’d like for it to be included. And if you’re not the best artist, there are also line art illustrations you can print out to color yourself.