The Pokemon World Championships are supposed to represent the entire world, so it only makes sense that the event itself would move around every once in a while. Pokemon has done exactly that before, taking Worlds to places like Canada, London, and Yokohama, but the event has remained in the United States for the last few years, including two consecutive stops in California. According to The Pokemon Company's Director of Global Esports and Events Chris Brown, though, that isn't something Pokemon wants to become the norm.
Speaking with GameRant during a group Q&A at the 2026 Pokemon World Championships, Brown made it clear that Pokemon intends to look outside the United States again as it plans future editions of Worlds. The problem is that the event has gotten so big that there are only so many places capable of hosting it anymore, and keeping the World Championships moving around could eventually mean Pokemon has to make some compromises regarding just how large each individual event can be.
Pokemon had a reason for keeping Worlds in California for two years in a row. Brown actually explained that doing so was an intentional decision designed to simplify some of the operational challenges involved with an event that has continued to grow considerably over time. "We have been in the US for a couple of years now, and some of that was to help make sure that this event would be successful because it simplified our operations a little bit," Brown stated. "So we're in California two years in a row. That was intentional to help maximize our success this year."
It becomes pretty easy to understand why once you start looking at what Pokemon actually needs to put Worlds together now. Brown said the 2026 event has more than one million square feet of convention space in addition to Chase Center, where 15,000 fans are expected for Championship Sunday. That is a massive amount of space to find in one city before even getting into all the logistical headaches that come with actually using it.
PokemonXP complicates that picture even further this year, although Brown stopped short of saying XP will necessarily happen alongside Worlds every year from this point forward. Pokemon plans to take what it learns from this year's inaugural event and determine how often XP should happen, whether it should always be coupled with Worlds, and how much of what Pokemon is doing this year should be carried forward. What Brown did make clear, however, is that the fan experience surrounding Worlds itself isn't suddenly going away:
I think, you know, the World Championships is always going to have that extra fan layer of experience attached to it. That can't go away just because of how big it is now.
Even without the full PokemonXP experience, Brown doesn't expect Worlds to suddenly become a small event again. "The show is not getting smaller in general, even if we don't sort of have that XP experience," he said. "We're still likely talking, you know, 30,000 attendees, 40,000 attendees, maybe Anaheim, for example, levels."
That size is where the problem starts, though. Pokemon doesn't simply need a large convention center in whatever city it chooses for Worlds. Brown said the company could be looking for something in the neighborhood of 800,000 square feet of convention space along with a basketball arena, and then somehow needs the availability of both venues to perfectly line up. The arena requires around a week for installation and setup, while the convention center needs almost two weeks.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/pokemon-world-championships-future-locations-outside-us-smaller-events/
