Pokémon Bank Will Shut Down in February 2027 — Players Urged to Move Their Creatures to Pokémon Home
The Pokémon Company will end service for Pokémon Bank on 25 February 2027 at 7:00 p.m. PST (10:00 p.m. ET), and any Pokémon left in the cloud storage app after that moment will be gone for good. The company is advising players to transfer their stored creatures to Pokémon Home, the newer app that replaced Bank in 2020 and runs on Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. (VGC)
Pokémon Bank launched on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 as a paid cloud storage service, letting players hold up to 3,000 Pokémon online and move them between games. It connected a wide stretch of the series — Black & White, Black & White 2, X & Y, Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, and Sun & Moon — giving trainers a way to carry their collected creatures forward across generations of games. (VGC)
The app's long retirement began in March 2023, when Nintendo shut down the 3DS eShop and Bank was delisted — meaning it could no longer be downloaded by new users. The Pokémon Company kept the servers running at no cost, and when Nintendo ended online connectivity support for the 3DS family in April 2024, Bank stayed online and free. At the time the service went free, The Pokémon Company stated that no end date was planned. (VGC; Pokémon.com)
That open-ended run now has a firm close. Once Bank goes offline, transferring Pokémon from Bank to Pokémon Home will no longer be possible, and the company has warned that creatures remaining in Bank accounts will be permanently lost. The transfer to Home is one-way — players can move Pokémon from Bank into Home, but not back again. (VGC)
Pokémon Bank is not currently available for download, so only those who already have it installed on a 3DS can still access the service and move their Pokémon before the deadline. (VGC)
For anyone who has been holding onto a collection from the 3DS era, the message is straightforward: open Bank, transfer to Home, and do it well before February 2027. After that, the vault closes for good.
