Pokémon Champions wants to be the next evolution of battling, coming to mobile and Nintendo Switch

The Official Pokémon YouTube channel just aired Pokémon Presents 2025. In other words, today is Pokémon Day, and we just learned that there is a new title coming to mobile, as well as the Nintendo Switch, known as Pokémon Champions. It’s being developed in collaboration by Game Freak and The Pokémon Works, and today we get our first look at Pokémon Champions with the arrival of an announcement trailer.

Battles it out in Pokémon Champions

The announcement trailer is here

The trailer for Pokémon Champions starts with two young children battling over a Link Cable connecting the original Pokémon Green and Red games, with the video preceding to evolve through the generations of battling Pokémon, from the GBA to the Switch. And then we land on someone playing a game on their phone, and just like the previous generations, this person is battling Pokémon, with fancy modern smartphone graphics. Then we see that this person is battling someone a continent away playing the same game but on their Nintendo Switch. Clearly, the point of all of this is to communicate that the next evolution of Pokémon battling is soon coming to our phones and the Nintendo Switch.

Sadly, nothing in the trailer is actual gameplay, we still don’t know what the game looks like. At least the video’s description reveals a few tidbits. It states that Pokémon Champions will be a battle-focused game, and will offer familiar mechanics, like “types, Abilities, and moves.” It’s also confirmed Pokémon HOME will be supported, so you can bring all of your favorites to battle it out in Pokémon Champions. A variety of modes are also expected.

Plenty more still needs to be revealed

What isn’t mentioned in the description (or trailer) is whether Pokémon Champions will launch as a free game or a paid release. With cross-play available for mobile, one has to wonder what the monetization of the game will be, as it’s very unlikely to launch as a $60 game on the Play Store. Free-to-play sounds a lot more likely for a title like this, which could mean aggressive monetization. The good news is that unlike other mobile Pokémon titles (like how Unite is developed by TiMi Studio, a subsidiary of Tencent), Pokémon Champions is being co-developed by Game Freak and The Pokémon Works, and so far, neither has a reputation for free-to-play gacha games.

Overall, the verdict is still out on what we’ll actually get whenever Pokémon Champions lands, which is another thing that still needs to be revealed: the release date. So expect to hear more about Pokémon Champions as it works its way towards release. For now, we have a fresh trailer to watch as we wait in anticipation of its launch across mobile and the Nintendo Switch.