The Pokémon Company closed out its biggest weekend of the year in San Francisco, crowning new world champions across four competitive titles while launching PokémonXP, the franchise’s first-ever standalone fan convention, alongside the 2026 Pokémon World Championships from August 28-30. The 2026 Pokémon World Championships took place over three exciting match-filled days in San Francisco, California, from August 28–30, 2026, featuring heated matches between competitors from across the world in the Pokémon Video Game Championships (VGC), Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG), Pokémon GO, and Pokémon UNITE. The dual event pulled in a scale of crowd the franchise’s competitive scene has never seen.
PokémonXP Draws Over 50,000 to Moscone Center for Its First-Ever Run
PokémonXP marked the first time The Pokémon Company has run a dedicated, Comic-Con-style convention for its fanbase, running in parallel with Worlds inside San Francisco’s Moscone Center. It’s also the first-ever XP fan convention, a type of “Comic-Con” for Pokémon fans, and Pokémon officials say that it was 10 years ago that the championships were last held in San Francisco, when there were about a few 1,000 fans in a ballroom, but this time tens of thousands of fans took over Moscone Center and an entire block of the city. ABC7 San Francisco separately reported that 54,000 tickets were sold for the Pokémon events, surpassing attendance for the Dreamforce conference, a notable benchmark for a city used to hosting major tech gatherings.
Demand for the convention itself was extraordinary. According to Chris Brown, Director of Global Esports and Events at The Pokémon Company International, more than 130,000 people signed up for the PokémonXP pass interest list months before the event, with tickets ultimately allocated by lottery. Attendees who got in queued for meet-and-greets, artist workshops and a Pokémon museum, while the streets around Moscone were transformed with murals and a Rayquaza-themed road closure for the weekend.
Takuma Yamazaki Ends 15-Year Wait to Win the VGC Masters Crown
On the competitive side, the Pokémon Video Game Championships Masters Division delivered one of the weekend’s biggest storylines. The Video Game Championships division featured 395 trainers battling in Pokémon Champions for the chance to become the 2026 Pokémon World Champion, and the event concluded with Takuma Yamazaki winning against Hiroshi Onishi in the finals, taking home the title alongside a team built around Mega Floette, Mega Dragonite, Kingambit, Sneasler, Basculegion and Garchomp. Sportskeeda noted that Yamazaki has been competing in VGC tournaments for over 15 years, but had never won a major tournament before this result.
The win also cemented a piece of competitive history: with Takuma Yamazaki’s victory in the finals, Garchomp becomes the second-ever pseudo-legendary Pokémon to win the World Championships three times, preceded by Salamence’s three victories in 2009, 2018, and 2019. In the younger age brackets, Vikram Thiagarajan triumphed in the Senior Division alongside Mega Swampert and Mega Charizard Y, while Kazuki Kage won the Junior Division with Mega Froslass and Mega Scovillain. This year’s VGC finals were also historic on a technical level, since it was the first time VGC will be played on Pokemon Champions at Worlds rather than the mainline Scarlet and Violet games.
Sold-Out Chase Center Hosts TCG, GO and a Farewell for UNITE
Championship Sunday’s finals were broadcast from a venue befitting the crowd size: this year’s Pokémon Championship Sunday was broadcast live from Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors, the biggest arena to ever hold a Pokémon tournament, which was completely sold out. In the Trading Card Game, Andrew Hedrick piloted a Dragapult ex deck, the best deck in the format, to become the 2026 TCG Master’s Division World Champion, while Jake Ng used an Alakazam from the Mega Evolution expansion to win the Senior’s Division, and Yuta Araki overcame a Dragapult ex mirror match against Luke Giffen to take the Junior title.
Pokémon GO crowned a new champion as well, with Bulbapedia confirming Ved “Beelzeboy” Bamb, the defending champion, was knocked out in the Top 12, and Hiroki “GGs489hiromaru” Yamauchi became the new Pokémon GO World Champion. Pokémon UNITE, meanwhile, closed out its Worlds run for good after the 2026 finals, with Zeta Division defeating Komai in what marks the final Pokémon Unite appearance at the World Championships. The Pokémon Company has confirmed UNITE’s regional qualification system is also changing heading into 2027, moving away from Championship Points toward newly introduced Regional League tournaments.
Worlds 2027 Packs Its Bags for Singapore
Before the lights went down at Chase Center, organisers revealed where the roadshow heads next. The 2026 Pokémon World Championships have come and gone, but fans can already look forward to the 2027 Pokémon World Championships in Singapore, with the location revealed during the closing ceremonies alongside announcements about the Pokémon TCG and Pokémon TCG Pocket. Coverage from attendees at the show pinned the exact window as August 13-15, 2027 at the Singapore Expo in Tampines, Singapore.
For Trainers across Australia and New Zealand, an Asia-based Worlds should mean a far friendlier time zone than the Pacific-Daylight schedule that defined this year’s PDT-timed streams and broadcasts. Oceania’s competitive scene has typically fed players into Worlds through regional and international championships across the year, and a Singapore venue puts the franchise’s biggest stage closer to home turf for the region’s next wave of qualifiers.
Beyond the trophies, the debut of PokémonXP looks set to become a fixture of the calendar rather than a one-off experiment. With The Pokémon Company already fielding lottery demand several times larger than the tickets available, the format built in San Francisco is likely to travel with Worlds to Singapore next year, even as the company works out the kinks that came with its first attempt at running a convention on this scale.
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