Published Aug 31, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT
Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream.
You may know him as the former Managing/Reviews Editor of Destructoid, where he published hundreds of game reviews across every genre, including MMOs, sports games, and Metroidvanias.
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The Pokémon World Championships (also known as "Worlds") have come a long way since 2004, when Pokémon was just starting to gain momentum. Originally taking place in a small hotel in Orlando, Florida, the event has since expanded to major venues like the Vancouver Convention Center, the Music City Center, and, in 2027, the Singapore Expo.
Worlds has evolved quite a bit, both in the games added to the roster, like Pokémon Go, and in those being removed, such as Pokémon Unite, which hosted its last year at Worlds in 2026. It's also evolved in the sense that it's added a whole extra convention on top in the form of Pokémon XP, which is meant to add more activities to the mix compared to previous years.
During Worlds 2026 live in San Francisco, California, we had the chance to chat with one of the minds behind the event(s), Director of Global Esports and Events at The Pokémon Company International, Chris Brown.
How Pokemon XP Came To Be
Kicking things off, Brown talks a bit about how Pokémon XP came to be, and why Worlds isn't always enough:
I think for the events in general, we've always been trying to expand the product map to be more than just the competition component. For a long time, we've been adding elements that are beyond the competition, whether that's things you can participate in side events or photo opportunities, or even some booths and things.
So we've been doing that for a long time. This year with Pokémon XP, we sort of ramped that up to 11. Plus we added that panel stage with a lot of premium content and experiences that we felt were really worth an actual standalone sort of brand being built.
Brown explains that in the future, they're going to try to support fans who come out and attend with competitive players but aren't neccesarily competing. Because of that need, Pokémon XP was born:
I think for us, it was thinking through what the non-competitive sort of side of our fandom would want to come and see, and some of the joys, I'd say, were just some of the new experiences we're doing for the very first time here. So we've actually not really done a parade before at an event like this; we did that for the first time yesterday. We've not really done a sort of Pikachu dance show. We did that for the first time in our markets outside of Japan. A lot of these costume characters you're seeing actually for the very first time this weekend.
Given that Worlds 2026 is in the US and a lot of the products are produced in Japan, that creates logistical issues, which require unique solutions:
To do that, we actually had to work with the manufacturer that's in Japan, going back like two years ago, and saying these are the characters we think are going to be important. Like let's order them. They have to get made and shipped and so on. And so just bringing that all together for the fans so that they can experience some of the things that have been overseas was really special and I think hopefully meaningful for the fans too. For the first time ever at the show, they'll be meeting some of these characters. These costume characters for the first time. Other elements were just kind of fun. So we're taking over a Downtown Street in San Francisco. That's a major population center. And we've closed an entire block for a week."
Logistically, Worlds Is A Big Ask
In case you haven't noticed, Pokémon is also massive, as seen in just about every sector of the franchise, especially when it comes to Trading Card Game distribution. Brown says that the supply can far exceed the demand, but they're always looking at feedback, which is their top metric:
We've got 50,000 fans here this weekend. There's immense challenges all over the place. We're running a very, very large fan convention. We're running the largest world championships in gaming. 2700 competitors are here this weekend to give you a rough size. That's nearly the same number of athletes that the Winter Olympics has. We have that playing simultaneously over three days, while we're also doing 50,000 fans for Pokémon XP, while hosting the World Championships. And on Sunday we have the Chase Center finals. 15,000 people will be there. While we're also doing that, probably about 30,000 will be here on site for the convention. Doing that simultaneously...That's really hard to do.
If any number of fans could attend, theoretically, it would be far higher than 50,000 for the weekend. Brown explains that there's always a push and pull when it comes to demand:
So when we go back to Worlds, historically, for a few years we're about, say, 10,000 attendees, and we always had this autograph component. And in the autographs, we were doing, I think, about 300-ish people could get an autograph out of, say, 10,000. It was about like 0.03% of attendees. This year we added more people to do autographs. We added some workshops, everything. We have a total capacity of a little over 2,000. As a percentage, it's about the same that we've been historically. People don't know how rare it is, and so a lot of people sign up. A lot of people then see they can't do it, and then there's that disappointment layer. And so, in my mind, I'm wondering can I greatly increase that supply? And it's really challenging, though, because like autographs is a one-to-one thing, and the workshop, like clay modeling, is not quite one-to-one, but it's going to be a limited capacity type situation.
What Does The Future Of Worlds Hold?
We now know that Worlds 2027 will be held in Singapore. But what will future events look like as a whole, logistically? Brown explains:
"We need to take back our learnings from this year, and then we're going to sort of think about the future. But the show is not getting smaller in general. Even if we don't sort of have that XP experience, we're still likely talking. 30,000 attendees, 40,000 attendees, maybe Anaheim, for example, levels, and that does constrain things quite a bit. So this year we've got over a million square feet of convention space, plus the Chase Center, which will have 15,000 fans on Sunday. We want to keep the arenas going, but trying to say find, let's say, 800,000 square feet plus a basketball arena. For the arena, we need a week of install and setup. For the convention center, we need almost two weeks, and these need to be date-aligned. And we do that on a global scale. It's actually incredibly hard."
He expands:
"There's only so many [cities] that have that infrastructure, but the dates aligning between these two things, and so there will be years that may not be as large as others because, long-term lens, the World Championships. Our intent is to move it around. We have been in the U.S. 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, not needing to plan for different markets. So we're in California two years in a row. That was intentional to help maximize our success this year. We were in Yokohama. We were in London a decade plus ago. We were in Canada. we are going to look outside the U.S. Obviously, we have to, because the World Championships is meant to serve the world, and for it to do that most effectively, it needs to move around between markets so that fans anywhere know and players anywhere know that there's a chance Worlds could be getting close to them at some point."
When we sat down with Chris Brown about Pokémon Worlds and XP, Singapore hadn't been announced yet. Now that we know the venue for the next big Pokémon event will likely be huge, we could see a repeat of 2026's massive attendance.
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