Beyond The Summit officially announced on Sunday that the Smash Summit 11 tournament will take place in Los Angeles on July 15-18, 2021.

As the name implies, this invitational will be the eleventh Smash Summit tournament since the first Smash Summit that took place in November of 2015. This year's event will be themed after the Olympics.

Smash Summit 11 will be a notable return of Super Smash Bros. Melee to offline competition, for the first time in over a year. The last offline major tournament to take place in Melee was Smash Summit 9 in February of 2020, right before the pandemic lockdowns began in America. 

A number of SSBM tournaments took place online in the last year, but those events saw a lot of suppression from Nintendo. Nintendo objected to Melee tournaments using a mod called Slippi which allowed Melee players to compete online during the pandemic. Nintendo argued that the mod violated their copyright on Melee, so they sent cease and desist letters to tournament organizers like The Big House Online, ordering them not to feature Melee competition at their events.

Nintendo's actions to block online Melee competition prompted significant community backlash, with many Smash enthusiasts using #FreeMelee and #SaveSmash to demand that Nintendo reverse their decision. Melee players also received verbal support from other Nintendo communities, including the Splatoon community, during this time. 

While the last year has been hard for the Melee circuit, at least after today's announcement Melee fans have an offline major invitational to look forward to once again.