In 2026, there will be no bigger celebration than Pokémon's 30th anniversary on February 27, exactly 30 years to the day since the original Pokémon Red and Green were released in Japan.
Among the franchises celebrating major anniversaries in 2026: Persona is celebrating its 30th anniversary, Xbox is celebrating its 25th anniversary with Castlevania (40th anniversary), Resident Evil (30th anniversary), and The Legend of Zelda (40th anniversary), among other titles, franchises, and companies.
To help kick off the celebrations, The Pokemon Company's official Japanese social media account shared a short 19-second video with none other than “Fat” Pikachu in the lead.
The post reads, through machine translation, “This year will be the best year ever.” “Please stay tuned!”
The video ends with the official 30th anniversary logo, featuring a slimmer, happier Pikachu next to a Poké Ball.
Interestingly enough, this isn't the only anniversary-related product with the “fat” Pikachu front and center, as Uniqlo's recently revealed line of merchandise also includes the OG Pikachu front and center.
Perhaps even more interesting is that the Pikachu model featured in the 30th Anniversary logo is very similar to the leaked Gen 10 model that made headlines in early October during the massive Game Freak leak.
It's been 25 years since the best Pokémon game took the world by storm.
Game Freak still hasn't surpassed the excellence of Pokémon Gold and Silver.
Barring another major leak, we probably won't find out what The Pokemon Company's plans are until at least February 27th, assuming everything regarding gifts remains the same. Nonetheless, for now there is plenty of good information about what to expect in 2026.
Let's hope Pokémon's 30th anniversary is a record-breaking one.
To start, we know from last year's Pokemon giveaway that Pokemon Champions is in development. Additionally, information from Pokemon's own website suggests that Champions will serve as the VGC platform for the 2026 Pokemon World Championships.
From Beyond Champions, we know that Pokémon will be getting a cozy life sim spinoff called Pokopia, which will be released at some point in 2026. Lastly, we also have information regarding Gen 10 leaks that will either materialize in 2026 or be pushed to 2027.
Beyond that, fans are still waiting for Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness, which were already revealed in the massively explosive Switch 2 Direct, to make their way to the Nintendo GameCube Classics library.
And of course, fans are still holding out hope that Nintendo will bring out all the classic Pokemon titles that are tied to old hardware and are too expensive to collect.
“If they don't port older games to the Switch for the 30th anniversary, I'm pretty sure it'll never happen,” one Reddit user wrote after the 30th anniversary teaser.
Yes, we are right there. It's anyone's guess whether that will happen, or whether there will be a TCG update and the aforementioned champions and Pokopia due to so much merchandise. But if there was ever a year that could have achieved more than that, it is the 30th anniversary celebration.
- release date
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1997 – 2023
- network
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TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TVh, TVQ, TSC
- move
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Shigeru Omachi, Koji Ogawa, Fumihiro Ueno, Hideki Hiroshima, Maki Kodaira, Makoto Oga, Ayumi Moriyama, Keitaro Motonaga, Shigeru Ueda, Fumihiro Yoshimura, Minoru Ohara, Yoshitaka Makino, Kiyoshi Egami, Makoto Sokuza, Heuser Biyane, Naoki Murata, Kenichi Nishida, Tomoe Makino, Masahiko Watanabe, Hiroaki Takagi, Tazumi Mukaiyama, Ryohei Horiuchi, Yoshihiro Oda, Hiromichi Matano
- author
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Junki Takegami, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hideki Sonoda, Yukiyoshi Ohashi, Yuka Miyata, Takeshi Shudo, Shoji Yonemura, Shinzo Fujita, Michihiro Tsuchiya, Deko Akao, Reiko Yoshida, Aya Matsui, Junichi Fujisaku
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Rika Matsumoto
Satoshi (voice)
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Ikue Otani
Pikachu (voice)
Asking Santa for a Pokémon game makes me feel like a kid again
Trying to convince Santa to let you catch everything for Christmas has a nostalgic feel to it.
