Amped up with a Pikachu DJ preroll and sporting one of the longest runtimes seen in the history of the event, the July 2025 Pokémon Presents landed last night with a strange mix of announcements both not very and super effective, depending on which corner of Pokémon’s vast empire you call home. From a fresh look at the upcoming Switch title Pokémon Legends: ZA, to new animated series and mobile apps, all the way to Pokémon TCG and irl championships, the 20-odd minute livestream skittishly moved from announcement to announcement, leaving fans somewhat mixed on how good a showing it really was.
While it would be easy to look at the lineup of trailers and reveals from the event and assume the new Mega Evolutions or theme park should be the headliners from the show, the most exciting part of the Presents was actually nestled neatly in the middle in the unassuming trailer for the long-awaited Pokémon Champions. A new title slated for release in 2026 for both Switch consoles and mobile devices, Champions was initially unveiled back in February, giving us a brief look at the vaguely Stadium-inspired focus on raw battle mechanics. You’ll be able to engage in single and double battles, with friends or other players across the globe in private and ranked battles.
Last night, however, Champions blew expectations for the game wide open as it revealed that trainers would be able to effectively manually adjust a Pokémon’s stats and nature, fundamentally shaking up the foundations of competitive play. No longer will meta-perfected monsters be accessible only to the most avid breeders; instead, the system-rich depth of Pokémon’s battle system will ostensibly be made approachable to a whole host of new players. This degree of granular control is something Pokémon players have been chasing for years, frequently retreating to unofficial battle simulators to achieve similar access to the systems GameFreak so heavily guards.
Exactly how this will all work remains to be seen, with an official statement from the company alluding to the use of Victory Points (VP) to engage in this in-depth Pokémon training. While we’re unsure if the game will be a free-to-play title, the most likely avenue for earning VP (outside of Ranked Battles) will be daily log-in rewards and similar gameplay loops found in other Pokémon apps and titles. Still, for now, it’s just nice to see a step in a player-friendly direction, Champions also allowing players to pull in their own teams from Pokémon Home or hire out trial ones in-game to get a better grasp on the battle system. All of this comes packaged in a…fine enough UI, but the animations and general fidelity of the title speak to an effort to craft what could potentially be the ideal Pokémon battle sim.
Elsewhere, Pokémon Legends: ZA got a shiny new trailer showcasing the game’s supporting cast, plot, and new Mega Evolutions ahead of its October 16th launch. The presentation largely focused on the many characters who will be populating ZA’s revamped Lumiose City, including a short look at our potential antagonist and the members of Team MZ, a fashionably collective of trainers dedicated to the lofty (and undefined) goal of protecting the city. Protecting it from what? Who could say. In theory, this could follow on nicely* from Pokémon X and Y‘s loose relationship with the protection of beauty in life, given that was the last time we saw the Paris standing location, but in the meantime, we at least got confirmation that trainer customisation is back on the menu.
The trailer lent heavily into the fashion capital of the Pokeworld schtick, giving us a solid look into the depth of options available for player customisation, including different colour swatches for outfits and even highlights for your hair. These concepts aren’t exactly fresh in the RPG genre, but as Pokémon continues to pull itself up alongside contemporaries, and especially following Pokémon Scarlet and Violet‘s disastrous lack of clothing options, the renewed effort is appreciated.
No matter your look, you’ll be spending your time roaming the city and battling your way through the Z-A Royale with increasingly difficult encounters, or you’re free to find a chill spot to simply hang out with your party, chase up side-quests, and more. Alongside the fashion, Mega Evolutions are returning from X and Y, the trailer highlighting the…audacious Mega-Dragonite, but we’re likely to see many more of these suped-up evolutions in the final game. The leap to Switch 2 seems to have stabilised the title too, with animations looking generally far cleaner and the whole game looking to run at a smoother frame rate and higher definition.
There’s a good deal of anticipation mounting for Legends: ZA in the community, the potential for the new active battle system and a more refined approach to open-world RPG staples making it a (hopefully) exciting move forward for the series, but we’ll know more in a few months either way. Nintendo is also bundling the game with the Switch 2 console, like the Mario Kart World bundle before it, a move that will undoubtedly sure up Legends: ZA as a holiday hit and continue the new console’s momentum in the market as families begin to migrate systems.
If the traditional games aren’t your preferred Pokémon delivery system, then the Presents still had plenty on offer. Given the massive reach of the series, it’s not all that surprising that there’s a whole host of mobile games and apps available globally, and last night’s presentation added one more to the growing library of time-killers. Pokémon Friends shadowdropped just before the live stream, a new puzzle app for mobile devices and Switch consoles that sees you solving over a thousand relatively simple puzzles to unlock remarkably high-fidelity yarn models of popular Pokémon to arrange in a digital living space. It’s quaint enough, though the disparity in pricing across platforms has left some players confused, as the console version requires an upfront cost while the app is free but with daily play limits.
Elsewhere on mobile, Pokémon GO Fest 2025: Max Finale brings Gigantamax mons to the game in August; Pokémon Masters EX is adding new content at the end of the month; Pokémon Cafe Remix is getting some new outfits and decorations; the three legendary dogs are barking into Pokémon Sleep in September; and Pokémon Unite is celebrating its fourth anniversary with Ruby and Sapphire content. Like I said, there’s a lot. And without much of a foothold in these titles, it’s difficult to tell you exactly what you should be keen on here, so go with Arceus if these are for you.
But, most importantly, Pokémon Concierge is back for the second half of its first season, and there’s a new Aardman animated show on the horizon in the form of Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d and Pichu. Concierge is something of a miracle project coordinated between Netflix and The Pokémon Company; a stop-motion animated show that is painstakingly crafted and features arguably the single best Pokémon aesthetic we’ve ever seen. The charming show first premiered back in late 2023 and is now returning this September to round out the season. This experiment seems to have opened TPC up to other avenues of storytelling for the franchise, as now renowned studio Aardman (the British fellows behind Wallace & Gromit) has revealed its work on a new show set in the Galar region (because of course it is).
And we haven’t even touched on the return of Mega Evolutions to the Pokémon Trading Card Game, Yomiuriland amusement park opening an attraction themed around cohabitation with giant plastic Pokémon called PokéPark Kanto in 2026, or the details surrounding the Pokémon World Championships 2025, which will be returning to Anaheim, California. It was, relatively speaking, a stacked event but one that has seen a variety of responses from fans, landing somewhere on the neutrally positive as a whole.
I, for one, am still thinking about that giant fluffy Arcanine in Pokémon Concierge, and maybe that’s enough.
Did you enjoy the Pokémon Presents presentation? Be sure to let us know in the comments below and on social media.
One part pretentious academic and one part goofy dickhead, James is often found defending strange games and frowning at the popular ones, but he's happy to play just about everything in between. An unbridled love for FromSoftware's pantheon, a keen eye for vibes first experiences, and an insistence on the Oxford comma have marked his time in the industry.
