Entertainment

I spent 5 days at the Pokemon World Championships – here’s what Singapore might expect next year

CNA Lifestyle’s Lindsay Jialin attended the recent Pokemon World Championships in San Francisco, and shares what Singapore can look forward to when the event arrives in 2027.

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Lindsay Jialin

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When it was announced that next year’s Pokemon World Championships were heading to Singapore, it felt like I’d won the lottery.

I had just spent five days in San Francisco seeing for myself what happens when thousands of fellow Pokemon fans from around the world take over a city.

This year’s championships were held from Aug 28 to 30 at Moscone Center and Chase Center, with players competing in the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG), Pokemon Go, Pokemon Unite and the Video Game Championships (VGC).

But the competition was only part of the experience – it took place alongside the PokemonXP convention, where fans could shop, play, trade, attend panels and workshops, and generally immerse themselves in all things Pokemon.

Trainers streamed towards the venue wearing character hats, jerseys, plushies and backpacks. Strangers compared pins and traded merch and cards. Phones came out constantly for Pokemon Go, while inside the venue, competitive players battled for world titles. A few halls away, fans shopped, crafted, traded, posed, played – and queued for yet another collectible.

And yes, it’s coming to Singapore in 2027. The event will take place from Aug 13 to 15 at the Singapore Expo, before moving to the Indoor Stadium for the finals. 

So what exactly are we in for? Here’s what I experienced over a few exhilarating days attending the Pokemon World Championships.

DAY 1: GOTTA BUY ‘EM ALL?

The festivities began before the actual competition, and like other fans, I went around soaking up the vibe and exploring the area. 

My initiation began, appropriately, with loot. Collecting the event badge meant collecting the key to the next few days. “Treat this like cash and don’t lose it” was what we were told constantly. Ticket holders received a small package of cards and pins. Competitors received their own Worlds backpack as part of the event kit, a souvenir with considerably more bragging rights than most.

I also visited the pop-up Pokemon Center – where the challenge for my bank account was deciding what not to buy.

There were San Francisco-themed items, Worlds exclusives, XP merchandise and anniversary collectibles. I had never seen such a range gathered in one Pokemon Center. I ended up among the last visitors rushing around trying to see everything before finishing the day by playing, what else, Pokemon Go. 

DAY 2: MY FIRST REAL-LIFE POKEMON BATTLE

I had played the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) digitally before on Pokemon Pocket and TCG Live. But playing against an actual human being across an actual table was different. 

At a pre-event session, we learned to build a deck and battle with it. We had to get to know our cards quickly and decide which ones to play. Decisions suddenly felt public. There was another person sitting opposite me, my opponent from Indonesia, waiting for my move. I was nervous. I wasn’t even sure my psychic type cards from the Pitch Black Build & Battle deck could save me when there wasn’t a single EX in sight. 

And then I won. 

My deck – and particularly Slowpoke and Slowbro – did all the heavy lifting. A trainer guiding me on the side also deserves considerable credit, so I cannot exactly pretend I became a TCG expert overnight. (Pro tip: sleeves make cards much easier to shuffle.)

I also got a glimpse of the PokemonXP space and the enormous installations that awaited fans. 

That evening, Pokemon spilled out of the convention centre and into Oracle Park for the San Francisco Giants’ Pokemon Worlds Night, where baseball fans and Pokemon trainers were part of the same crowd. 

The evening ended with a drone show – and by then, I was beginning to understand the scale of this city-wide event. Pokemon was not going to politely stay inside the convention halls. 

DAY 3: TOO MUCH POKEMON, TOO LITTLE TIME

The next morning, the doors officially opened for the Pokemon World Championships and PokemonXP. At the opening ceremony, huge screens showed Pokemon’s history and took us all down memory lane. A franchise can sell a lot of things but it takes something else to make adults emotional over something they first encountered decades ago. 

The rest of the day was a blur of panels, workshops and some XP activities. I listened to the team behind Pokopia talk about how they developed the game, and attended another session on how some of the most beloved TCG cards were created. Tsunekazu Ishihara, the long-standing president and CEO of The Pokemon Company, also gave a talk about his journey over the past 30 years. 

I was also able to visit Koraidon’s booth and briefly attend a Pichu clay workshop. But there were so many things to do and so little time that I eventually decided to just go with the flow – forget about queuing up and just explore.

And pick up some Pokemon pins when I could. For the Pin Rally, there were 12 characters to collect from different stations, but getting them all was a challenge. By midday, the most coveted ones – including Umbreon and Charizard – had already been snapped up for the day.

DAY 4: MORE THAN WINNING AND LOSING

It seemed like everyone had the same idea of arriving early at the venue to collect more pins. Luckily I managed to snap up an Umbreon before a short meeting with Chris Brown, director of Global Esports and Events Producer from The Pokemon Company International. 

I asked him what he’s learned after watching the Pokemon community for as long as he has. He said that while it was still all about competitive play, winning or losing wasn’t the main thing – it was about building a community and learning from each other.

That was something I had also observed while wandering around: people helping newcomers, comparing collections, posing for strangers, parents supporting young competitors, and opponents showing respect after devastating losses. Yes, there was fierce competition, but it was also an unusually warm community.

After that, I made a point to say hi to Emilio Cruz Cerda, the 10-year-old Singaporean who had taken part in the junior division of the trading card game competition. He was there with his supportive father, Jose, and it was a nice reminder that behind the giant screens and colourful branding were families who had travelled here to support someone they loved.

As for my Pin Rally mission, it was over for the day, with my stash less “gotta catch ’em all” and more “gotta appreciate what I caught” – five out of 12 pins. 

After dinner and another drone show, another exhausting day was done – but the best was yet to come.

DAY 5: THE FULL POKEMON SPECTACLE

Championship Sunday was on a whole different level. After days of tables and stages at Moscone Center, the attention shifted to the Chase Center where Worlds had gone full sports spectacle with its giant suspended screens, a glowing battlefield, thousands of spectators, dramatic lighting and enough pyrotechnics to make a Pokemon attack seem almost plausible.

The finals comprised all four competitive disciplines: Pokemon Unite, Pokemon Go, Pokemon TCG and VGC on Pokemon Champions. Sitting there completely changed how I understood competitive Pokemon. On a phone or laptop, you see the game. In an arena, you see the people watching the game. You hear thousands react to a single decision. You watch a player’s mistake ripple through the building. You see a face on a gigantic screen when the match finally ends.

Pokemon Go produced one of my favourite moments. The arena itself effectively became a giant gathering of Trainers playing together. I joined a mass raid against Mewtwo and caught one with the event background. No shiny. I survived.

Then came the actual Pokemon Go final. After a drawn-out battle, Japan had its first-ever Pokemon Go world champion.

The TCG finals demonstrated a different sort of drama: patient calculation, deck knowledge and decisions that can look insignificant until you understand that one card can dismantle an entire plan.

And finally, Pokemon Champions gave the arena a different energy again. Battles exploded across the floor and screens, complete with those wonderfully satisfying moments when a plan lands and the arena knows immediately. One-hit KO.

Then the giant screens changed. SINGAPORE. And I couldn’t help imagining all of this happening at home. The queues. The pins. The Pokemon Go raids. The competitors. The people. The giant screens. 

The night ended with Ed Sheeran performing the Pokemon anime theme song. Everyone cheered and sang along. It was the perfect way to end the Pokemon World Championships.

SINGAPORE, YOU’RE NEXT

At the heart of Pokemon is the idea of collecting. And 30 years after it began, perhaps the most interesting thing it has collected is, well, people.

Children. Parents. Competitive players. Casual players. Card collectors. Pokemon Go addicts. Cosplayers. Artists. Content creators. People who know the Pokedex by heart and people who simply think Psyduck is funny. Different countries. Different ages. Different languages.

And at Worlds, those differences weren’t obstacles. You could approach somebody because of the plushie hanging from their bag. You could admire a pin and begin a conversation. You could be standing beside someone whose language you did not speak and still understand immediately why both of you had your phones out when a raid appeared. For once, staring at your phone while talking to somebody was practically a sign of friendship.

That may be the part I will remember longest: the strange ease of being surrounded by people who understood.

For five days in San Francisco, somebody built that world for real. It was crowded. It was exhausting. Everyone had come for slightly different reasons, but we all understood why everybody else was there.

Next year, it’ll be in Singapore – and the rest of the Pokemon world will be walking towards us.

CNA Lifestyle was in San Francisco at the invitation of The Pokemon Company.

Source: CNA/mm

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