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A Celebration Bigger Than the Badges
The Pokémon franchise has reached a point where its biggest problem may no longer be attracting fans, but finding enough room for all of them.
PokémonXP and the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco have brought roughly 50,000 people together for one of the largest celebrations in the franchise’s history. Yet behind the excitement is a difficult reality: demand has dramatically exceeded the number of people the event can accommodate. More than 130,000 fans entered the process hoping to secure a three-day or single-day PokémonXP badge, meaning tens of thousands were inevitably left disappointed.
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Pokémon’s Popularity Has Become an Event-Planning Problem
The scale of PokémonXP demonstrates just how dramatically the franchise’s live audience has grown.
The Pokémon World Championships themselves have been expanding rapidly. The 2025 championships attracted around 30,000 attendees, more than twice the number recorded in 2024. This year, PokémonXP is taking place alongside Worlds, creating an enormous combined destination for competitive players, collectors, casual fans, families, creators, and longtime Pokémon enthusiasts.
The result is a simple equation that event organizers cannot easily solve: far more people want to attend than the available space can accommodate.
130,000 Fans Wanted Access
According to Chris Brown, Director of Global Esports and Events Producer at The Pokémon Company International, more than 130,000 people entered the interest-list process for PokémonXP passes.
Only around 50,000 people are attending the event, and that figure includes competitors and their families as well as general attendees.
That means the disappointment was not caused by a small technical failure or an unusually unpopular registration system. The fundamental issue was capacity.
Why Pokémon Used a Lottery
Brown explained that when demand dramatically exceeds supply, an interest list followed by a lottery is one of the few practical ways to distribute access.
A first-come, first-served online sale might sound fairer, but it can create another type of chaos.
If tens of thousands of people attempt to purchase limited tickets simultaneously, websites can become overloaded, transactions can fail, and fans with slower connections or technical problems can lose their opportunity.
In that situation, being first does not necessarily mean being luckier.
The Lottery Is Fairer, But Still Painful
The lottery approach removes some of the technical disadvantages of a massive online rush, but it introduces a different emotional problem.
Fans can spend months anticipating an event, register properly, and still receive nothing because the available supply is simply too small.
That creates what Brown described as a “disappointment layer.”
For Pokémon, that is becoming an increasingly important issue. A lottery can distribute scarce opportunities fairly, but it cannot manufacture additional capacity.
The Same Problem Affects Special Activities
Getting into PokémonXP was not the only challenge.
Once inside, fans also faced limited opportunities for special experiences, including autograph sessions, workshops, and artist meet-and-greets.
The Pokémon team expanded the number of these activities compared with previous years, but demand still overwhelmed capacity.
Thousands Competing for Rare Experiences
Brown said a little more than 2,000 people were able to participate in special activities this year.
That number may sound substantial until it is compared with the more than 50,000 people who wanted opportunities to participate.
The imbalance becomes obvious.
For every fan who receives a coveted spot, many others are left watching from the sidelines.
The Autograph Problem
Previous Pokémon events provide an even clearer example.
Brown noted that approximately 300 people had been able to participate in one artist autograph opportunity, representing only a tiny fraction of the overall audience.
The company has continued offering these experiences because they are memorable and valuable to fans.
But the more desirable the activity becomes, the more painful exclusion can feel.
Pokémon Is Considering a Different System
The Pokémon Company International is already thinking about how the process could be improved.
One possibility is asking fans to rank activities according to priority.
Instead of simply entering multiple lotteries, attendees could potentially identify which experiences matter most to them.
That could give organizers more information about actual demand while potentially reducing situations where a fan wins a lower-priority activity but misses the experience they wanted most.
The Real Problem Is Still Capacity
A better registration system can improve the experience, but it cannot solve the underlying issue.
If 50,000 people want an experience designed for 500, the problem is not primarily the lottery.
The problem is that the experience only has 500 available places.
That is why Brown emphasized increasing supply over time.
PokémonXP Has More Than Exclusive Activities
The organizers also designed PokémonXP to provide plenty of things fans could enjoy without winning a limited-capacity lottery.
Partner booths offer activities, while other attractions allow attendees to line up on a first-come, first-served basis.
Meanwhile, the World Championships provide tournament spectators with competitive matches, side events, and other entertainment.
Panels Add Another Layer
The event also includes panels featuring major Pokémon-related guests.
Among them are representatives from Aardman Animations, known for Wallace & Gromit, as well as Pokémon Company President and CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara.
The inclusion of these broader activities reflects an important strategy: make sure the event remains worthwhile even when fans miss the rarest experiences.
The Pin Rally Shows Both Success and Failure
One of the most interesting examples is Pokémon pin trading.
At the 2025 World Championships, pin trading achieved the event’s second-highest Net Promoter Score among activities.
The Pokémon team responded directly to that feedback.
This year, it created 12 pin-trading stations and planned to distribute 300,000 pins for free.
More Supply Created a New Problem
The response worked almost too well.
Huge numbers of attendees wanted to participate, resulting in extremely long lines.
The organizers suddenly faced another capacity problem.
The original article later reported that
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Listening to Fans Is Becoming Essential
The Pokémon Company says attendee feedback plays an important role in deciding what happens next.
After its events, the company uses surveys to calculate a Net Promoter Score, or NPS.
Importantly, Brown said the team reads individual written responses rather than relying exclusively on numerical ratings.
More than 3,000 written responses were reviewed after the 2025 World Championships.
PokémonXP May Be a Learning Experience
The challenges surrounding PokémonXP could ultimately become valuable lessons.
Long lines, oversubscribed activities, badge shortages, and lottery disappointment all provide data about what Pokémon fans actually want.
The question for future events is whether The Pokémon Company can transform that data into additional capacity.
Will PokémonXP Return Next Year?
There is no confirmed answer yet.
Brown said the company intends to evaluate this year’s event, study the feedback, and determine what should come next.
That cautious approach makes sense.
Launching PokémonXP as the
The Bigger Ambition: More Competitive Players
The future of
The Pokémon Company also wants to significantly expand the competitive side of the World Championships.
This year, approximately 3,300 players qualified globally, while around 2,700 actually attended.
The
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Junior and Senior Players Are a Priority
The company is particularly interested in expanding participation among Junior and Senior divisions.
Currently, those age categories are considerably smaller than the Masters division.
Increasing their representation could make the competitive Pokémon ecosystem more balanced and create a stronger pipeline of younger players.
That matters because the long-term health of an esports ecosystem depends on continually bringing in new competitors.
Pokémon Already Learned a Hard Lesson in Honolulu
The company has experienced the dangers of underestimating demand before.
At the 2024 World Championships in Honolulu, organizers underestimated the number of players who would qualify by approximately 1,000.
The resulting event was extremely crowded.
That experience appears to have influenced the decision to use a “Top X” qualification structure rather than simply allowing everyone who reaches a particular points threshold to qualify.
More Players Mean More Infrastructure
Doubling the number of qualified players sounds exciting, but it creates another enormous logistical challenge.
More competitors require more competition space, more staff, more equipment, more seating, more scheduling capacity, and larger venues.
And that is before adding spectators and PokémonXP attendees.
The Host City Problem
Finding suitable cities may become one of
The company needs venues capable of handling the growing audience while also coordinating appropriate dates for both the World Championships and PokémonXP.
Not every city has the necessary infrastructure.
Not every venue has enough space.
And not every location can accommodate the enormous logistical demands of a global Pokémon event.
Worlds Will Continue Moving Around the World
Despite the convenience of holding the World Championships in the United States for several consecutive years, Brown made it clear that Pokémon does not intend to permanently center the competition there.
The World Championships are supposed to represent a global community.
That means moving between international markets is an important part of the event’s future.
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London and Yokohama Set the Example
The championships have already demonstrated this international strategy.
The first World Championships outside North America took place in London in 2022.
The following year, the event moved to Yokohama, Japan.
That history suggests that future World Championships could continue rotating between major Pokémon markets.
The Future Could Mean Bigger Events or More Events
There are two obvious ways to deal with growing demand.
The first is to make the flagship event significantly larger.
The second is to distribute the demand across more events throughout the year.
The Pokémon Company could eventually need a combination of both.
Bigger
There is an important danger in simply expanding everything.
Massive conventions can become difficult to navigate.
Long queues can consume hours.
Limited activities can feel even more exclusive.
And if the number of attendees grows faster than the quality of the experience, the event can become less enjoyable despite technically being more successful.
Pokémon Faces a Good Problem
From a business perspective, these difficulties are also evidence of extraordinary demand.
An event attracting 50,000 people while another 130,000-plus fans want access is not a sign that Pokémon has lost relevance.
It is almost the opposite.
The franchise has created a community so large that traditional event models are struggling to contain it.
The Challenge Is Turning Popularity Into Experience
Pokémon’s next challenge is therefore not simply attracting more fans.
It is converting that demand into a better experience.
That means larger venues, better queue management, more activity slots, smarter registration systems, improved scheduling, and potentially more regional events.
The lottery may remain necessary for the rarest experiences.
But the number of experiences requiring a lottery could eventually be reduced.
What Undercode Say:
- Pokémon Has Outgrown the Traditional Convention Model
The most important takeaway is that
2. Demand Is Now the Central Problem
More than 130,000 people seeking PokémonXP access demonstrates that the franchise has an extraordinary level of event demand.
3. The Lottery Is Not the Enemy
Criticism of lotteries is understandable, but a first-come-first-served system could easily create even more frustration.
4. Supply Is the Real Battle
The Pokémon Company cannot make every fan happy through software alone.
It needs more physical capacity.
5. Special Experiences Are Particularly Difficult
Autographs, workshops, and meet-and-greets naturally have limited capacity.
That makes them almost impossible to scale at the same speed as the audience.
6. Scarcity Creates Emotional Value
Limited experiences feel special partly because they are difficult to obtain.
Eliminating scarcity completely could make them less meaningful.
7. But Excessive Scarcity Creates Resentment
When tens of thousands of people compete for a few hundred places, disappointment can overwhelm the excitement.
8. Priority-Based Registration Makes Sense
Asking fans to rank activities could give Pokémon a much clearer picture of what people actually value.
9. The Pin Trading Experiment Is Important
The pin program demonstrates that Pokémon is willing to respond to feedback rather than simply repeat last year’s formula.
10. But Feedback Creates New Demand
The success of pin trading produced enormous lines.
That is a perfect example of how solving one problem can create another.
11. Queue Management May Become More Important
At events this large, managing lines is no longer a minor operational detail.
It directly affects how fans perceive the entire convention.
12. Free
Even when an activity costs nothing, the time required to access it has a real value.
- Pokémon Needs to Measure Time, Not Just Attendance
A successful convention should not only measure how many people entered.
It should measure how long they waited, how many activities they completed, and how much time they spent unable to participate.
- NPS Alone Cannot Tell the Whole Story
Net Promoter Score is useful, but it should be combined with operational data.
15. Written Feedback Is Especially Valuable
Reading thousands of individual comments can reveal problems that numerical ratings hide.
16. Pokémon Is Building a Feedback Loop
The pin-trading example shows the company responding to previous feedback and changing the following event.
17. That Process Should Continue
The next step should be connecting feedback to measurable changes in capacity and scheduling.
- Competitive Pokémon Has Its Own Capacity Crisis
Doubling qualified players will require much more than changing qualification rules.
19. Younger Divisions Could Transform the Scene
Greater Junior and Senior participation could strengthen the competitive ecosystem for years.
20. More Competitors Mean More Fans
Every competitive player can potentially bring friends, family members, and spectators.
21. That Multiplies Attendance
The true audience of the championships is therefore larger than the number of registered competitors.
22. Venue Selection Is Becoming Strategic
The location of Worlds will increasingly determine the scale and quality of the event.
23. Infrastructure Will Limit Growth
Not every attractive tourist destination can host an event of this size.
24. Pokémon Cannot Ignore International Fans
Moving Worlds between markets helps make the competition feel genuinely global.
25. London and Yokohama Were Important Signals
Those events demonstrated that Pokémon can successfully take its biggest competitive event across borders.
26. Rotation Creates Excitement
Fans may become more interested when they believe the championship could eventually come to their region.
27. But Rotation Also Creates Inequality
Travel costs can make international attendance difficult for many fans.
28. Regional Events Could Help
More large-scale regional conventions could distribute demand and reduce pressure on PokémonXP.
29. Pokémon Could Build a Convention Ecosystem
Instead of one enormous annual fan event, the company could eventually operate several major experiences around the world.
30. Digital Events Could Complement Physical Ones
Virtual workshops, panels, competitions, and creator experiences could give excluded fans alternative access.
31. Physical Experiences Still Matter
However, digital alternatives cannot fully reproduce the excitement of being surrounded by thousands of other Pokémon fans.
32. Scarcity Should Be Managed, Not Eliminated
The goal should not be making every activity unlimited.
The goal should be making the overall experience satisfying even when some activities remain exclusive.
33. The First PokémonXP Is Valuable Data
The inaugural event gives Pokémon something more useful than simple publicity.
It gives the company real-world evidence about what its fans want.
34. Mistakes Can Become Infrastructure Lessons
Every long queue and failed registration attempt provides information for future planning.
35. Growth Must Be Sustainable
Doubling attendance without improving logistics could simply double the problems.
36. Bigger Venues Are Only One Solution
Technology, scheduling, regional distribution, reservation systems, and better crowd management can all increase effective capacity.
- The Event Should Feel Bigger Without Feeling More Crowded
That may ultimately be
38. The Community Is
The extraordinary demand exists because fans still want to gather around the franchise in person.
39. Pokémon Has a Rare Opportunity
Few entertainment brands have this level of global community demand.
- The Next Step Is Turning Demand Into Better Memories
PokémonXP has demonstrated the size of the audience.
The next edition, if it happens, will need to demonstrate that Pokémon has learned how to serve it.
Deep Analysis
Registration Systems
For extremely high-demand events, the basic registration architecture should be designed around controlled traffic rather than unrestricted purchasing.
A simplified queue architecture might look like:
Fan
|
v
Registration Portal
|
v
Virtual Waiting Room
|
v
Randomized Allocation
|
v
Ticket Inventory
|
v
Confirmation
Rate Limiting
Systems should prevent massive bursts of requests from overwhelming the ticketing backend.
A conceptual configuration could look like:
Nginx
limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=tickets:10m rate=5r/s;
server {
location /tickets {
limit_req zone=tickets burst=20 nodelay; } }
The exact configuration would depend on the production environment, but the principle is simple: protect the inventory system from uncontrolled request spikes.
Queue Tokens
A better architecture can issue temporary queue tokens before allowing users to access ticket inventory.
REQUEST
|
v
QUEUE TOKEN
|
v
ELIGIBILITY CHECK
|
v
RANDOM SELECTION
|
v
PURCHASE WINDOW
|
v
PAYMENT
This prevents millions of users from simultaneously interacting with the most sensitive backend components.
Activity Allocation
The same architecture could be applied to limited PokémonXP activities.
For example:
Fan selects:
1. Autograph
2. Workshop
3. Artist session
4. Backup activity
The system could then optimize allocations based on capacity and fan priorities.
Avoiding Double Bookings
Limited activities also require strict reservation controls.
A database transaction might conceptually use:
BEGIN;
SELECT available_slots
FROM activities
WHERE activity_id = 101
FOR UPDATE;
UPDATE activities
SET available_slots = available_slots – 1
WHERE activity_id = 101
AND available_slots > 0;
COMMIT;
The purpose is to prevent two simultaneous requests from claiming the same remaining place.
Queue Monitoring
Large events should monitor operational metrics in real time.
Useful metrics include:
average_wait_time
maximum_wait_time
queue_length
activity_capacity
attendance_rate
no_show_rate
registration_errors
cancellation_rate
These measurements can reveal problems before they become major fan-experience failures.
Capacity Forecasting
Historical attendance data could also help Pokémon forecast demand.
A basic model could compare:
Previous Attendance
+
Registration Demand
+
Search Interest
+
Historical Growth
+
Regional Population
=
Estimated Demand
The resulting forecast could then influence venue selection and staffing.
Crowd Density
Crowd management should also consider physical density.
If one attraction becomes disproportionately popular, organizers could dynamically redirect visitors toward other experiences.
Digital signage and the official event app could display:
PIN TRADING
Current wait: 95 minutes
WORKSHOP A
Current wait: 15 minutes
PANEL B
Seats available
That would allow fans to make better decisions instead of discovering queues after walking across the venue.
The Bigger Technical Lesson
PokémonXP demonstrates that scaling a live event is partly a software problem and partly a physical infrastructure problem.
Cloud infrastructure can scale quickly.
A convention hall cannot.
That distinction is critical.
Digital Capacity vs Physical Capacity
A company can potentially serve millions of online users.
It cannot place millions of people inside one convention center.
Therefore, technology should be used to distribute demand rather than merely process it.
The Best Future Model
The strongest model could combine:
Global Pokémon Event
|
+- PokémonXP
|
+- Regional Fan Events
|
+- World Championships
|
+- Digital Experiences
|
+- Local Competitive Events
That structure would allow Pokémon to preserve a massive flagship event while giving more fans opportunities to participate throughout the year.
✅ The Event Had Enormous Demand
The source states that more than 130,000 people entered the interest-list process for PokémonXP passes, while around 50,000 people were attending.
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✅ Pokémon Is Planning to Expand Competitive Qualification
Chris Brown said the company intends to try to double the number of globally qualified competitive players over the next five years.
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✅ Pokémon Uses Fan Feedback to Shape Events
The company surveys attendees, calculates NPS, and reviews written responses. The pin-trading expansion was specifically described as a response to strong feedback from the previous World Championships.
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❌ A Better Lottery Can Completely Solve the Problem
The source itself makes clear that the fundamental difficulty is supply being below demand. Improving the registration process may reduce frustration, but it cannot guarantee everyone access to scarce activities.
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❌ PokémonXP’s 2027 Return Was Confirmed
The source does not confirm another PokémonXP for the following year. Brown said the company would first evaluate this year’s event and its feedback before deciding what comes next.
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Prediction
(+1) Pokémon Will Increase Event Capacity
The clearest likely direction is continued investment in larger venues, more activities, and better infrastructure as Pokémon’s live audience continues to expand.
(+1) Activity Registration Will Become More Sophisticated
Priority-based selections, improved lotteries, waitlists, and dynamic scheduling are logical ways to reduce the frustration surrounding extremely limited experiences.
(+1) Junior and Senior Competitive Participation Will Grow
The stated five-year goal of doubling qualified players creates a strong incentive to expand younger competitive divisions.
(+1) Worlds Will Continue Its International Rotation
The Pokémon World Championships are intended to serve a global audience, making future events outside the United States highly likely.
(-1) Some Exclusive Activities Will Remain Difficult to Access
Even with better planning, the most popular autograph sessions, workshops, and special experiences will probably continue to have more demand than available capacity.
(-1) Larger Events Could Create Longer Queues
If Pokémon expands attendance faster than physical infrastructure, the company could face increasingly difficult crowd-management problems.
(+1) PokémonXP Could Become a Major Global Convention Brand
If the company successfully learns from the first event, PokémonXP could evolve into a recurring flagship convention capable of rivaling the largest entertainment fan gatherings.
(+1) Fan Feedback Will Shape the Next Generation of Pokémon Events
The biggest advantage Pokémon has after this event is the enormous amount of real-world feedback it can analyze. The success of future conventions may depend less on whether Pokémon can attract fans and more on how effectively it listens to them.
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