The Pokémon Company has announced Pokémon Champions, a brand-new title for the franchise. The new download-only game will be focused entirely on the competitive scene of Pokémon battling, and it’s coming to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, but no release window was provided during Pokémon Presents 2025.
A New Era for the Competitive Scene
Ever since its inception, one important aspect of thePokémonfranchise has been battling other players. On the Game Boy, the series was one of the main reasons to get a Game Link Cable, and once the DS came, it naturally expanded trading and battling to an online format with Diamond and Pearl.
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As the series evolved, so did the combat, adding more elements that significantly changed the meta. For instance, creatures would eventually have extra stats like abilities, mega evolution or tera forms. New games would also introduce formats like Double, Triple and Rotation.
Pokémon Champions is a new game focused more strictly on battles, allowing players to enjoy them on both Nintendo Switch and mobile devices with Android and iOS systems. The Pokémon Works, a joint venture between Pokémon Company and ILCA, is responsible for the development of the new game, which aims to make battles more widespread than ever with cross-platform functionality.
The announcement trailer shows a historical look at how battles have worked in the series so far. It starts with two kids playing the original Game Boy titles with the link cable connecting their devices. Afterward, we see it evolving over time, with Pokémon Stadium, the Game Boy Advance titles, Battle Revolution, 3DS and more recently Scarlet/Violet on Switch.
Pokémon Champions will be compatible with the Pokémon Home app, which allows users to store their creatures from the multiple games in the franchise. This should allow people to create teams with their favorite Pokémon and the ones they have worked hard to raise strategically over the years, but the development team mentions that the game will allow players to partner up with other creatures as well.
Just like the more recent titles on Switch, however, Pokémon Champions will not support all creatures at launch. It’ll only be possible to use a select list of them that will be revealed at a later time. As such, while Pokémon Home covers all creatures from the series so far, those who are not part of the list will not be usable during this initial stage of the game, with support expanding over time.
As far as battle mechanics go, the developers promise familiar features, like abilities, types and moves, will be available and allow players to explore various strategies. The companies, however, haven’t provided more details nor shared a look at the gameplay yet. The video only contains cinematic animations and is not representative of the actual product, but it teases that Double Battles will be part of the game.
Pokémon Champions is a new game focused more strictly on battles, allowing players to enjoy them on both Nintendo Switch and mobile devices with Android and iOS systems.
The new game is still in development with Game Freak, the original company behind the franchise’s creation and mainline game production, collaborating on the project. The companies will reveal more details in the future, with The Pokémon Company handling mobile distribution and Nintendo being responsible for the Switch release.
