Pokémon Closes Its 30th Anniversary Worlds With Films, Cards, and Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran opened the closing ceremony of the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco with a surprise performance of "Celestial" and an acoustic take on the original Pokémon anime theme, capping a weekend that doubled as the franchise's 30th anniversary celebration (Eurogamer, 31 August 2026).
The three-day event ran from 28 to 30 August at the Moscone Center, held alongside the inaugural PokémonXP fan event. The Pokémon Company used the closing stage to announce a slate of new animation, game updates, and trading-card releases spanning the franchise's main pillars (Pokémon Company press release, 31 August 2026).
On the animation front, a new film is coming. Pokémon: Wild Card, produced by Story Inc. and CloverWorks (the studio behind Spy x Family), follows an aspiring Pokémon Trading Card Game player alongside Mimikyu — a character best known for disguising itself as Pikachu. It is set for release in 2027. Also arriving that year on Disney+ is Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch'd & Pichu, a stop-motion series from Aardman, the British studio behind Wallace & Gromit. A teaser trailer debuted during a behind-the-scenes panel featuring Aardman's Tom Parkinson, Nat McKay and James Young alongside Pokémon's director of original animation Phil Rynda.
The games got their share of reveals. Pokémon Champions — a competitive spin-off focused on battles — will add "Z Mega Evolutions" on 9 September, a new variant of the franchise's temporary super-powered forms. Mega Lucario Z, Mega Garchomp Z and Mega Absol Z join the roster, alongside Baxcalibur and Rillaboom. Pokémon Go, which celebrated its own 10th anniversary over the Worlds weekend, announced that eligible Mega-Evolved Pokémon will gain a third Charged Attack and become usable at every level of the Go Battle League from the next season. Armoured Mewtwo is also set to return to the mobile game. Pokémon Unite, the franchise's multiplayer online battle arena, is adding four new playable characters: Morpeko, Toxtricity, Jolteon and Flareon.
For the trading card crowd, the Pokémon TCG is getting Mega attack rare cards including Mega Rayquaza ex, Mega Darkrai ex, Mega Greninja ex and Mega Zygarde ex, plus a new ex★ Series featuring the legendary beasts Raikou, Entei and Suicune. Pokémon TCG Pocket, the mobile version of the card game, will introduce dual-type Pokémon from October. Five new Lego Pokémon creatures were teased for 2027, with no further details.
In competition results, the UK's Vikram Thiagarajan won gold in the Video Game Senior Division. The next Pokémon World Championships will be held in Singapore, and the North America International Championships will move to Chicago in 2027 — the 2026 edition having taken place in New Orleans in June, following the Europe International Championships in London in February.
For a franchise that began as a pair of Game Boy role-playing games in 1996, thirty years on, the Worlds stage now spans film studios, toy brickmakers, mobile platforms, a baseball stadium (the San Francisco Giants hosted a Pokémon Worlds Night on 28 May), and one of pop music's biggest names — all under a single brand that, by its own accounting, shows no sign of slowing its spread.
