Pokemon is holding its first ever fan convention in San Francisco
PokemonXP runs alongside the 2026 World Championships, with talks about Pokemon news and about how the Pokemon world gets made.
The Pokemon Company has released the official trailer for PokemonXP, described in the video as the first-ever official Pokemon fan convention, running alongside the 2026 Pokemon World Championships in San Francisco.
This is a structural change to what Worlds is. For two decades the World Championships has been a competition with a spectator area attached. PokemonXP turns the surrounding space into a programmed event in its own right, with panels covering the latest Pokemon news and, per the trailer, background on how the Pokemon world is built.
What a first-party convention signals
Fan conventions for Pokemon have always existed — they were just run by other people. Bringing one in-house does a few things for The Pokemon Company:
- It creates a first-party stage for announcements outside the Pokemon Presents format
- It gives non-competitive fans a reason to buy a ticket to Worlds week
- It builds a repeatable annual property that is not dependent on tournament results
The panel format is the detail worth noting. "Backstories about shaping the Pokemon world" is developer-talk programming — the kind of content that historically only surfaced in Japanese interviews and Game Freak retrospectives.
The soundtrack is already out
The Champions official soundtrack for the 2026 World Championships is available now. Worlds soundtracks have become a small tradition of their own; this year's arrives ahead of the event rather than after it, which fits the wider pattern of treating Worlds week as a season finale with its own build-up.
The competitive side
The 2026 season concludes in San Francisco with the top trainers from around the world. As at every Worlds, three age divisions compete across the video game and trading card game championships, with the finals drawing the largest live audience of the Pokemon competitive calendar.
For anyone planning to watch rather than attend: official streams carry the main stages, and the finals are the block worth clearing an afternoon for.