Alternate costume (SSBU)

Each character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a set of alternate costumes that feature different colors or designs. Due to the presence of 8-Player Smash, all characters have eight costumes except for the 3 Mii Fighters, which have a variety of costume options.

Some characters possess certain alternate costumes with more drastic design differences, and are not merely recolors of their standard outfits. ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , and  have different outfits available; 's costumes represent different protagonists across the  series; , , , , , , , and  all have male and female variants; and , , and  have model swaps that change them into different characters with different names, complete with corresponding voice and announcer clips, though like all other alternate costumes, they bear no gameplay differences.

In Ultimate, the game loads default costume character portraits on the character selection screen first, and then loads alternate costume portraits in fighter number order, with the exceptions of transformation characters, who are loaded first. This can result in characters' alternate costume portraits not being displayed for several seconds, as the game is still loading them.

Half of Byleth's costumes are male, while the other half are female.

The Mii Fighters' various costume options are distinct from how other characters' alternate costumes work. Unlike in SSB4, the colors of Mii Fighters' outfits are now customizable.

Trivia

 * In demo versions of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, several characters had differences in their available costumes and associated portraits compared to the final game:
 * The s' character select portraits always showed Popo in front, although the stock icons changed to reflect which costumes let the player control Nana.
 * Two of 's alternate colors and one of 's alternate colors had a lighter skin tone compared to the versions used in the final game.
 * did not have his Meta Ridley costumes available; instead, two palette swaps were present that used the same colors as the Meta Ridley costumes. These costumes are not used in the final game.
 * ,, and  used images of their in-game models for character select portraits instead of their official renders.
 * Coincidentally, all four of these characters were playable in the Smash 3DS demo.
 * 's 4th alternate costume used a pale blue shade of fur rather than white fur like in the previous game. This was changed back for the final release of the game.
 * The stock icon of 's 5th alternate costume had a lighter skin tone, despite being darker skinned in-game.
 * Some costumes that were shared through pre-release screenshots on the Ultimate site are slightly different from their appearances in the final build.
 * On 's purple costume, the "L" on his cap was green in screenshots but is purple in the final build.
 * On 's yellow overall costume, the buttons on his suspenders were gold in screenshots but are white in the final build.
 * On 's default costume, his jacket and gloves are dark purple, the straps behind his right shin guard are white, and the soles of his boots are red compared to his color scheme in the final build.
 * Ultimate is the first game where every character has the same amount of alternate costumes, 8. This does not include Pokémon Trainer and Pyra/Mythra having multiple costumes per player or costumes.
 * ,, , , , and  are the only characters with an alternative design for half their costumes who do not have a unique render pose for the alternate design.
 * is the only character with other characters as alternate costumes not to have the same amount of costumes for each character. Characters with gender swaps have four costumes per gender (excluding ), and Alph each have four costumes,  and each Koopaling have one costume, and each  has two costumes. Steve and Alex have three costumes while Zombie and Enderman only have one.
 * Masahiro Sakurai stated in a YouTube video that he created a game called "Find the Enderman" where he would take a screenshot that the Enderman was hidden somewhere in for the development team to find. This was done to make sure that the Enderman costume is not too dark and is clearly visible no matter the background.
 * Sakurai also revealed that Pyra's P2 costume was intially too dark and its colors were brightened to be more in line with.