A look at how the Pokémon World Championship is being built for 2026: “We know how many people we want at Worlds next year”

The Pokémon World Championships is a tournament that, like any other competition, involves complicated logistics. The event has grown in recent years and is no longer just for competitors, but has become a place where fans and community members can meet. Striking a balance between a franchise that has so many different elements is a complicated task.

During our coverage of the 2025 Pokémon World Championships, we had the opportunity to participate in a roundtable discussion with Chris Brown, Director of Global Esports and Events at The Pokémon Company, to talk about the work that goes into organizing this championship year after year, and to learn about what the future holds.

Changes for future improvement

For this competitive cycle, the Pokémon World Championships underwent a change that reduced the number of competitors but allowed direct qualification for the winners of each tournament. For Chris Brown, this is a change that allows them to improve the logistics of this year’s championship so that it is “optimized for the players’ experience” while, at the same time, allowing them to decide now on the number of competitors for the coming years.

“That was just a point in time change to help our logistics for this event be significantly better,” Brown said. Today I know how many people we want at Worlds next year, and if I wanted to, I could say how many that would be five years from now. I could not do that in the old system, that was a bar. It was very unpredictable and made our operations extremely difficult. We think the new system is now optimized for player experience."

Becoming an even more accessible event

Another aspect Brown is proud of is the event’s accessibility to contestants, with a total of 2,500 competitors across all games, but this is something he believes can be increased.

“We think that’s about the right number. Most likely, it will increase a little bit as markets grow, as the number of people competitively playing at different scenes across the world grows,“ Brown emphasized. ”It’s not a situation where we’re going to sort of take from one market and give to another. I think we’ll probably actually grow it from here, but in a slow kind of controlled manner, respective to how the local markets are growing.”

For now, this Sunday will see the finals of the Pokémon World Championship 2025, and for the first time, it will be held in an arena, promising a new way to experience the different video games, as well as a new learning experience, ahead of the 2026 championship, which will celebrate the franchise’s 30th anniversary.

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