Pokemon Day 2026 announcements to last 25 minutes — What should you expect?

The upcoming Pokémon Presents, celebrating the series' 30th anniversary, is confirmed to feature 25 minutes of brand-new announcements from all across the franchise—from mobile game updates to the highly-anticipated Generation 10 titles. But what should you specifically expect to see from all of these trailers and new reveals?

Generation 10​

In the same manner as the reveal of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet in February 2022, the announcement for the next main-series games should take up approximately 3–4 minutes of the runtime and appear at the end of the presentation. This reveal trailer is likely to feature...

Brand-new Starter Pokémon​

The Grass-, Fire-, and Water-type First Partner Pokémon are expected to be revealed within the reveal trailer. This will likely include only their first forms, and not any of their evolutions. Further information about these new Pokémon will be uploaded to official Pokémon websites, likely detailing their names, types, characteristics, and more.

Game Footage​

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet's announcement trailer revealed in-game footage of various locations around the Paldea region, as well as the default player characters, Juliana and Florian. This trailer didn't include any new Pokémon, except for the games' First Partner Pokémon. It did, however, feature a lot of symbols, logos, and themes relating to the upcoming games hidden in plain sight. You see a clock's hands rapidly moving back-and-forth, as well as an hourglass and numerous other clocks later in the trailer, hinting at the games' focus on the past and future; there's a bag full of gold and jewellery to allude to the games' theme of finding "treasure"; and there are details as small as sandwiches sitting on the side to represent the, well, sandwiches in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, as well as logos representing the Naranja and Uva Academies, the antagonistic Team Star, and even Cortondo's Bug-type Gym.

This reveal will also, unsurprisingly, reveal the titles of the upcoming Generation 10 games. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet's logos both subtly hinted at the games' main theme: Scarlet's logo features many rounded serifs to evoke a more classic style of writing, whereas Violet's logo features sans serif characters to make it sharp, modern, and more "digital" in nature.

All of this is to say that, while the trailer won't explicitly reveal much outside of the Starter Pokémon and the games themselves, it may feature a plethora of hints and secrets teasing parts of the game yet to be revealed.

Release Date​

With the releases of Pokémon Sun & Moon, Sword & Shield, and Scarlet & Violet all taking place in November, it's likely that the new Generation 10 games will follow suit. However, the upcoming announcement trailer will likely give a less specific release date, along the lines of "Late 2026".

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet's next trailer released in June 2022, revealing various new Pokémon and characters, including the games' Legendary Pokémon in Koraidon and Miraidon. It's possible that the new Generation 10 games will, again, follow this trend, so fans should expect to see the second trailer sometime from June-July 2026.

Pokémon Legends Z-A​

With Legends Z-A being the most recently released Pokémon game, it's almost guaranteed that it will receive some form of update announced at Pokémon Day.

Spoiler: Datamined Spoilers for Legends Z-A

Alongside the release of Legends Z-A's Mega Dimension DLC, a brand-new Mega Stone was added to the game that is currently unavailable: the Garchompite Z. As described on Bulbapedia, this new Mega Stone will likely be distributed through a Mystery Gift, and will result in a battle with a Rogue Mega Garchomp Z.

HOME Compatibility​

Pokémon Legends: Z-A is confirmed to be receiving connectivity with Pokémon HOME sometime in 2026. This could also line up with the release of a rare Shiny Pokémon as a reward for completing Legends Z-A's Pokédexes in HOME, in a similar fashion to Shiny Meloetta being received as a reward for completing Pokémon Scarlet & Violet's Pokédexes. Top contenders could include currently Shiny-locked Pokémon, like Eternal Flower Floette, Hoopa, Volcanion, or Magearna.

Upcoming Ranked Seasons​

Ranked Season 7 is the current format for Legends Z-A's online Ranked Battles, and runs until 12 March 2026, distributing Blaziken's Mega Stone as a reward. With no news regarding the rewards for upcoming Ranked Seasons, fans online have begun speculating that they could relate to new Mega Evolutions announced at Pokémon Day.

Pokémon Champions​

Pokémon Champions is expected to release soon, and there's still a lot that needs to be revealed. For example...

Mega Dimension Compatibility​

At the 2025 World Championships, a trailer was shown for Pokémon Champions that confirmed Mega Dragonite's appearance in the game from Day 1, assumably along with every other Mega Evolution introduced in Pokémon Legends Z-A. No new trailer has been released since then, and no clarification has been given on if the new Mega Evolutions introduced in the Mega Dimension DLC, such as Mega Raichu X and Y, will be present on Day 1 too.

In-game Purchases​

Pokémon Champions' website confirms that while its main currency, Victory Points (VP), aren't directly available to purchase, "optional in-game items" will be available to purchase instead. There's no confirmation on what this means, although many Pokémon fans have theorised that this could relate to customising your favourite Pokémon—possibly in a similar fashion to either Pokémon UNITE's Holowear, or Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum's Visual Competition from the Super Contests.

Release Date​

All we know about Pokémon Champions' release date is that it's currently planned for release in 2026. The Video Game Championships' (VGC) current ruleset, Regulation Set F, runs until 31 March 2026, so if we assume that the next format takes place in Pokémon Champions, this suggests that the game could release in February–March. This could pave the way for a "shadow drop", or unexpected release of the game with no build-up, on Pokémon Day itself, shortly after the Pokémon Presents presentation ends. However, February–March is already packed full of Pokémon game releases, with the Nintendo Switch ports of FireRed and LeafGreen releasing on 27 February, and Pokopia releasing on 5 March.

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet​

The ninth Generation of Pokémon is very clearly beginning to wrap up, with the Online Competition Terastal Crescendo held in October 2025 seeming to mark the beginning of the end. The Pokémon Presents that announced the release of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet didn't contain any news relating to Pokémon Sword & Shield, so it's possible that this year's Pokémon Day could similarly skip over Scarlet & Violet in favour of other games. However, if this isn't the case, and we do see news relating to Scarlet & Violet, what could it be?

Special Events​

Following the release of Shiny Wo-Chien, Chien-Pao, Ting-Lu, and Chi-Yu in 2025, we could see more Shiny-locked Pokémon distributed this year too. Currently Shiny-locked Pokémon introduced in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet include Bloodmoon Ursaluna, Walking Wake, Iron Leaves, the Loyal Three, Ogerpon, Gouging Fire, Raging Bolt, Iron Boulder, Iron Crown, Terapagos, and Pecharunt; however, Terapagos' Shiny form is likely to be released sometime in September–November 2026 in the run-up to the release of the aforementioned Generation 10 games.

More Classic Games​

Shortly before the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, it was confirmed that GameCube titles would be making their way to the console via Nintendo Switch Online, a service that allows members to play over 150 classic games from Nintendo consoles from 1983's NES to 2001's Game Boy Advance and GameCube, with both Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness confirmed as two playable titles. With almost ten months having passed since this announcement and no news on their release, it seems likely that these two classic titles will be released on Pokémon Day.

It was recently announced that the Generation 3 games Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen will be released as download-exclusive titles on the Nintendo Switch eShop, likely avoiding Nintendo Switch Online due to its "Rewind" feature. This could finally pave the way for more classic Pokémon games to be released, as many fans have spent the past eight years begging for—although it's not guaranteed that these will be announced at Pokémon Day, or even announced this year.

With FireRed and LeafGreen releasing so soon, it would also be nice to get some confirmation on more of its features, especially whether or not the games' event distributions will be available—in a similar manner to Celebi being available in the 3DS Virtual Console release of Pokémon Crystal. This could give players access to the MysticTicket item to catch Lugia and Ho-Oh, as well as the AuroraTicket item to catch the Mythical Pokémon Deoxys.

 

give me a new pmd game I don't care about anything else

 

please shiggy make gen 10 switch 1 compatible and I will forever be in your debt

 

please shiggy make gen 10 switch 1 compatible and I will forever be in your debt

there's absolutely no way that'll happen imo. pokemon tends to migrate to the new system a year or two into its life, and if gen 10 comes out this holiday we will be in that timeframe (gens 4, 6 and 8 all came out two-ish years into their system's life, while gen 3 came out a year into the GBA's life. if gen 10 comes out in november of 2026, that'll be a year and a half into the switch 2's life). On top of that, the Switch 1 already ran into performance issues with gen 9. The Switch 1 is too limiting for Pokémon to work properly while continuing to grow (especially since Game Freak isn't the best at optimizing).

 

please shiggy make gen 10 switch 1 compatible and I will forever be in your debt

I'm so with you on this. But, I don't think it'll happen.

 

welp

 

We have to admit it was a below average Presents. All the announcements were predictable and we got zero animation news.

Champions' mobile version being released later and Gen X being delayed (I don't think ZA DLC would have released in December if that wasn't the case) gives merit to my theory that Champions has had issues with its development.

 

While I did enjoy the Presents, I do think it was a bit disappointing for a 30th anniversary celebration. I was so hyped up for it and I think that backfired. I thought we'd get a couple of bigger reveals than we would, maybe even another spin-off game. I thought that they'd go all out for this milestone anniversary, so going for a pretty standard Presents made it feel a bit more disappointing than it probably would have if this was a regular year for the franchise. Although, I forgot that Pokopia comes out next week, so maybe it was expecting too much for them to announce another spin-off game.

I'm really disappointed on the lack of Pokemon Home news for Legends Z-A. I've been waiting for that to have more room in my boxes and to work on another Home Pokedex completion reward. Getting Mega Garchomp Z is cool, but I wish that we got at least some kind of date for the Home connection.

I remember people complaining about Legends Z-A's DLC being announced before it came out. I didn't mind that partly because I figured they wanted to get the DLC out before generation ten was announced. Now that Winds/Waves won't come out until next year, it really makes this decision to rush out the DLC all the more baffling to me. If they had saved the DLC for early this year or spring, that would have made more sense and potentially avoided a bit of the backlash. It also would have given players some new main series content while waiting for the new games. Maybe they were initially going to have Winds/Waves for this year, but I feel like they probably would have known if that was going to be the case by last September. It's possible that they didn't think having DLC would fit with the 30th anniversary celebrations for the year, but it just seems like such a strange choice in retrospect.