Tokyo 2020 Mascots Miraitowa and Someity to Promote ‘Make the Beat!’

The Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games on Thursday (20 February) announced that Paralympic mascot Someity and Olympic mascot Miraitowa will travel to six cities throughout Europe to promote the Tokyo 2020 ‘Make the Beat!’ cheering project.

The mascots will depart Japan on 25 February and travel to Barcelona, Paris, Bonn, Athens, London and Lausanne. This will be the first time the Tokyo 2020 mascots have visited Europe.

The tour destinations include four Summer Olympic and Paralympic host cities – Barcelona (1992), Paris (1900, 1924, 2024), Athens (1896, 2004), and London (1908, 1948, 2012) – as well as the home of the International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, and home of the International Paralympic Committee, Bonn.

At each stop, the mascots will participate in events and promotions to raise awareness and engagement with ‘Make the Beat!’, a unique cheering project that will engage fans all over the world via social media, introducing them to the Tokyo 2020beat, a melodic rhythm that spectators can dance or clap along to.

In the leadup to the Games, fans are invited to post videos of themselves performing the 2020beat to social media using the hashtag #2020beat. During the Tokyo 2020 Games, a selection of the submitted material will be displayed inside venues and at Live Sites as a compilation generated using Alibaba Cloud technology.

In this way, fans who will not be able to attend events at the venues can still participate in the Tokyo 2020 Games and cheer on the athletes to the sound of the beat.

Fans can post their #2020beat videos to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Videos will be stored and compiled from March onwards. Full participation guidelines as well as terms and conditions can be found on the official Make the Beat! website.

Tokyo 2020 ‘Make The Beat!’ Tour Schedule
Destination Dates
Barcelona, Spain: 25 Febuary -1 March
Paris, France:  2 - 8 March
Bonn, Germany: 9 - 15 March
Athens, Greece:  16 - 20 March
London, United Kingdom:  21- 26 March
Lausanne, Switzerland:  27-31 March

About the 2020 beat
The official Tokyo 2020 beat was created from a range of 1,000 different sound samples reflecting the themes of ‘sports’, ‘Japanese culture’, ‘daily lives’ and ‘nature’; five different rhythms were compiled from these using Olympic World-Wide Partner Intel Corporation’s AI technology. Tokyo 2020 Paralympic mascot Someity and Olympic mascot Miraitowa oversaw the sampling and creation of the shortlist. Tsukuba University researchers then contributed to the final selection of the Tokyo 2020 official beat.