The Pokémon Company Addresses High Demand and Future Plans for PokémonXP and World Championships

Understanding the Ticket Demand and Lottery System

More than 130,000 people signed up for the interest list for 3-day passes to PokémonXP, the first official Pokémon fan convention. Registration for passes opened on April 2, 2026, roughly seven months after organizers announced the event during the closing ceremonies of the 2025 Pokémon World Championships. By comparison, the 2025 World Championships drew 30,000 attendees, which was more than double the attendance of the 2024 event. Because demand heavily outweighed available supply for the San Francisco gathering, organizers utilized an interest list feeding into a lottery system.

The public is unaware of the level of demand, and so, unfortunately, 50,000 people are coming, [but] more than that number get the disappointment of [not being] able to sign up.

Chris Brown, Director, Global Esports and Events Producer at The Pokémon Company International Brown noted that an open, first-come, first-serve online purchasing system would likely crash under such traffic, reducing the experience to random server errors. Organizers stated that increasing supply over time remains the only viable long-term strategy for managing the imbalance.

Managing Access to Special Activities and Workshops

Beyond convention badges, special activities such as artist autograph sessions and workshops also relied on interest lists and lottery distribution. Approximately 2,000 people secured spots for these premium experiences out of tens of thousands who applied. That figure represents roughly the same percentage of participants able to access specialized workshops—such as clay Pokémon sculpting sessions with Trading Card Game artist Yuka Morii—as previous iterations of the World Championships. Organizers are evaluating whether to incorporate priority preference settings into future lottery systems to mitigate widespread attendee disappointment.

There are some obvious things we can probably do to make it better, but, there's a philosophical problem, though, of just the supply is below what the demand level is. How do you manage that?

Chris Brown To balance out limited-capacity workshops, the event offers numerous first-come, first-serve partner booths, side events for the video game and TCG tournaments, and panels featuring guests such as Tsunekazu Ishihara, President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, and representatives from Aardman Animations.

Pin Trading Popularity and Future Event Expansion

Fan feedback surveys gathered by The Pokémon Company International continue to drive operational adjustments. Following pin trading activities that earned the second-highest Net Promoter Score during the 2025 World Championships, organizers deployed 12 pin trading stations and 300,000 free pins for the San Francisco convention. However, intense demand generated exceptionally long lines, leading organizers to cancel the scheduled Sunday Pin Rally through the official PokémonEvents app. Future decisions regarding a recurring PokémonXP event depend heavily on comprehensive survey feedback collected after the weekend concludes. In the competitive sector, organizers set a goal to double the number of globally qualified players over the next five years. Roughly 3,300 players qualified globally for the current competition, with about 2,700 attending in person. Brown explained that future locations for the Pokémon World Championships will actively rotate outside the United States. Following past international tournaments held in London in 2022 and Yokohama in 2023, leadership intends to keep moving the global event across international markets to serve players worldwide.