The urgent need for the development of carbon-neutral energy conversion schemes has inspired chemists worldwide to investigate catalytic water splitting using sunlight as the energy source. A key component for the preparation of devices employing this process is the water oxidation catalyst (WOC), and understanding the factors that govern its catalytic performance is among the major challenges. Beyond the well-established WOCs based on ruthenium, catalysts containing abundant first-row transition metals are a desirable target but require a deeper understanding before their large-scale application is viable. Along these lines, this work focusses on both the in-depth analysis of diruthenium WOCs, as well as the search for new catalysts based on copper and cobalt. A glance is also cast at dioxygen activation by dicopper complexes, which is not only of interest on its own but can additionally provide insight into intermediates that are relevant to water oxidation. emphasizes the necessity for oxidatively robust ligand systems. In addition to the analysis of the electrocatalytic water oxidation ability, magnetic susceptibility measurements were conducted for several of the dicopper and dicobalt complexes bearing the pyrazolate/tacn hybrid ligands, viz. 7 MeCN , 5 HCO2 and its acetate-bridged congener 5 OAc as well as the (L 2b ) − -ligated dicobalt analogs 8 HCO2 and 8 OAc . Interestingly, 8 HCO2 and 8 OAc feature slow relaxation of magnetization with relaxation times τ0 of 7.7•10 −6 s −1 and 3.7•10 −6 s −1 , as well as energy barriers Ueff of 8.9 and 6.0 cm −1 , respectively, and thus belong to a very small circle of homodinuclear cobalt(II) complexes with SMM behavior.5 OAc and 5 HCO2 were further investigated in regard to dioxygen activation following the strategy: (i) reduction of the dicopper(II) complex for the in situ generation of a dicopper(I) species (5 I/I ) and (ii) addition of dry O2 to 5 I/I for copper-oxygen adduct formation. Surprisingly, reduction of 5 OAc to 5 I/I affords a mixed-valent Cu I Cu II intermediate (5 I/II ), characterized both by UV/vis and EPR spectroscopy. This observation is unprecedented for dinuclear copper complexes bearing pyrazolate/tacn hybrid ligands and is attributed to the acetate unit in the bimetallic pocket, which is proposed to change its coordination mode from bridging to chelating upon one-electron reduction in order to stabilize the Cu II site. Addition of molecular oxygen to 5 I/II monitored by time-resolved UV/vis spectroscopy in a stopped-flow setup at −40 °C results in a superoxo species (5 S ) as primary Cu II 2O2 adduct, in line with a 1e − reduction of the dioxygen. The generated 5 S rapidly converts to a µ-1,2-peroxo compound (5 P ), distinguished by its characteristic UV/vis-spectroscopic features, by reduction with either an additional 5 I/II species or a second 5 S compound. On the other hand, 5 P is directly formed when exposing 5 I/I to O2, and can be electrochemically oxidized at −0.55 V vs. Fc +/0 (O2 2− /O2 •− redox couple) at −45 °C in MeCN. The low st...