Pokopia at Worlds? The Coziest Pokémon Game Is Crashing the Biggest Esports Stage

Okay, this pairing makes me smile. The Pokémon World Championships - the one week a year when the sharpest trainers on the planet battle for a world title - is apparently making room for Pokopia, the game where the most stressful decision is where to put your flower beds.

According to an official post about the Worlds "Preview Show", we can look forward to a "special" announcement for Pokémon Pokopia, the cozy Switch 2 exclusive. The Preview Show airs on 21 August on the official Pokémon Twitch channel and the Play! Pokémon YouTube channel, ahead of the Championships themselves in San Francisco from 28 to 30 August.

What the announcement actually is? Nobody's saying. Pokopia recently rolled out its big 2.0 update alongside the first wave of its Bubbly Basin expansion content, with more parts already on the roadmap - so my guess is we'll hear something about what's next on that front, or maybe a Worlds-themed in-game event. But that's me speculating from my sofa, not anything confirmed.

Honestly, I love that this game gets a slot at Worlds at all. Pokopia is the Pokémon game I hand to people who bounce off battling entirely - my nephew and I have sunk shameful hours into it - and it's clearly found its audience, with millions of copies sold since launch. Seeing the franchise's chillest corner celebrated at its most competitive event feels like Pokémon quietly admitting what a lot of us already knew: not everyone wants to grind ranked, and that's fine.

So yes, I'll be watching a competitive preview show for the least competitive reason imaginable. See you on the 21st.

Image: Captain Galaxy / CC BY 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entrance_of_the_2022_London_Pok%C3%A9mon_World_Championships_-_August_2022.jpg