Pokémon Champions is ushering in a new era of competitive play when it comes to Switch tomorrow, April 8. The battle simulator is going to become the platform for official competitive play moving forward. It’s meant to make playing Pokémon like a pro easier for newcomers who have long been intimidated by the game’s more complex under-the-hood systems.
So if you aren’t among the competitive players already building teams in your head, you might be wondering what the game is all about. Well, here’s a quick rundown of things to know before Pokémon Champions launches.
The spin-off isn’t a traditional Pokémon RPG. Instead, it’s a free-to-play battle simulator that lets you import Pokémon from other games and create teams to take into online battles. Ideally, this will expand into an all-encompassing, generation-spanning tool for competitive players, allowing everyone from the greenest trainee to the most seasoned veteran to customize rulesets, playstyles, and teams to their liking.
But Champions will have a few notable restrictions at launch. It will only feature fully evolved versions of each monster, so if you have a strategy or team that uses pre-evolved forms, you’re out of luck for now (though Pikachu seems to be a notable exception to this restriction). Champions is also rolling out battle gimmicks over time, so you’ll be able to use Mega Evolved monsters but Z-Moves, Dynamax transformations, and other rulesets won’t be available until later down the line.
There will be multiple modes of play, including ranked matches, casual matches, and private matches for playing directly with friends.
There are two ways to build your team in Champions. The first is by using the game’s recruitment tools. This allows you to pick between a rotating group of Pokémon each day using Victory Points, which are earned in ranked battles. You can recruit monsters for a seven-day trial period, or pay VP to recruit them permanently. There will be ways to speed up the rotating roster, such as using in-game items called Quick Coupons, which are unlocked through missions. Once you’ve recruited a Pokémon, you can alter their stat distribution to your liking and swap out their attacks using VP or an item called a Training Ticket.
That’s probably the simplest way to get Pokémon, but you will be beholden to the whims of the rotation. If you want to bring in Pokémon you’ve captured in games like Scarlet and Violet, Go, or the Legends games, you’ll have to use the Pokémon Home storage app on Switch or mobile.
If you’ve never used it before, Home is essentially a place to stash your Pokémon from multiple games across different generations that lets you transfer them to other compatible games if they’re featured in that game’s Pokédex. So if you have a team you want to transfer from the main games, you can do so by sending them to Home first.
The app is compatible with the following games:
Home compatibility is coming to the Switch ports for Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen in the future as well. A free version of the app is available that stores up to 30 Pokémon, but that number increases drastically to 6,000 with the Premium Plan. The subscription is relatively inexpensive, but if you’re transferring multiple Pokémon across games, you can get them to Champions without expanding your storage. It might just take a little longer. The Premium Plan costs $3 for one month, $5 for three months, and $16 for a year.
The free version of Pokémon Champions has the same 30-Pokémon storage limit as Home, but if you want to buy into a Premium Membership, you’ll get additional storage in your box, be able to create more teams, and unlock membership-exclusive missions and music.
A cheaper Starter Pack will also be available for a one-time purchase of $7, which will add 50 storage slots and give you 30 Teammate Tickets and 50 Training Tickets.
Champions will also include Battle Passes, with both a free and paid premium track available. Some items, such as Mega Stones and some cosmetics, will be locked behind the premium pass. This does mean that if you want to use certain Mega Evolutions, you’ll have to fork up some cash.
Right now, we still don’t know how much these will cost in America, but the Japanese price breakdown is as follows, according to Serebii:
Obviously, this isn’t a definitive confirmation of what it will cost for those paying in USD, but that’s probably in the ball park.
Right now we only know that Pokémon Champions is coming to mobile devices some time in 2026, though the Korean Pokémon website seems to have leaked that you’ll be able to play the game on phones and tablets in June.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have been saying Pokémon Champions launches tomorrow, April 8, but because it’s getting a worldwide release the timing isn’t quite exact. Some territories will actually get the game a few hours early just because of time zones. If you’re here in America, Champions will launch at 11 p.m. Eastern Time, 8 p.m. Pacific.
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