Leaks reveal that the Pokemon World Championships could become PokeCon

Looks like a recent change to convert pokemon The World Championships, which has become a more general Pokemon convention, is taking the next steps, at least according to a leak about the upcoming event.

As part of the ongoing Game Freak Teraleaks, some details about upcoming Pokemon World Championship events were detected early. This includes promo art for PWC 2025 coming to Anaheim could confirm Pokémon Legends: ZA Startersas well as a list of plans for a 2026 event that will dramatically change things for Pokémon as a brand.

Since 2004, the Pokémon World Championships has been the venue for The Pokémon Company, hosting the best players in the franchise’s various games, starting with the Pokémon TCG and expanding to additional games such as Pokémon UNITE and Pokémon Go. In recent years, even though Pokémon Worlds has focused on the competitive side of things, there has been a growing interest in the event from a casual perspective, and it looks like that interest exists internally as well.

It appears that for the 2026 Pokemon World Championships, TPC and its partners will simultaneously host a larger event that will bring more attention to the general Pokemon audience. By translation from the source of the documentationexpansion takes place within the Mistral project. It’s billed as “an event that brings together all things Pokémon, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pokémon and the recent rise of the Pokémon World Championships.”

Very few details have been included beyond the general plans, but TPC is clearly keen to run both events as complementary to each other, mentioning that the promotional art for each should be separate but connected, as they will act as “two events tied together “. It’s not a new staple in the big-brand events space, as Wizards of the Coast recently did something similar with Magic the Gathering’s MagicCon, and Evo is slowly growing from a purely tournament series to a centerpiece of fighting game culture.

According to TPC in this leaked document, the current style of using location-inspired themes will change to a Project Mistral event design theme, while the World Championship will take on a more “eSports” style.

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As always with Pokémon leaks, none of this information has been confirmed and should be taken lightly until The Pokémon Company makes an official announcement before the next World Championship events. Also, the shared document is likely a machine translation, so if any context is misrepresented, this article will be updated to reflect that.