Pokémon World Championships 2024 – Is The Competitive Event At A Turning Point?
It has been 20 years since the first Pokémon World Championships took place in Orlando and in what may be a move to celebrate, the Pokémon World Championships returned to a place where it has frequently been held: Hawai’i. However, this time rather than being on the big island, it went to the island of O’ahu and the city of Honolulu.
Following the World Championships in Yokohama last year is a Herculean task with many arguing it could have been the best one ever. So the question remains, did it manage to top last year?
What was there to do?
Last year, there was so much around the event that it basically took over Yokohama, so in that regard, Hawai’i 2024 definitely feels like this was a bit of a step back. However, that doesn’t mean that there was nothing to do.
Inside the event
The event was split between two venues. In the Hawai’i Convention Center, you had the main event which needed a pass to get into. Upstairs there were many activities: a Pokémon Worlds Museum which showcased the history of the Pokémon World Championships; a gallery to showcase the Top 100 entries in the recent Pokémon TCG Illustration Contest; a merchant corner where local game stores could sell Pokémon-related merchandise as well as a Collect & Trade corner to allow for you to trade cards. There was also a playable demo of the coming game Pokémon TCG Pocket.
New to the World Championships this year was Pokémon Talks, a group of panels you could attend that covered a variety of elements within the Pokémon franchise. There was a panel with the TCG artists, another discussing the implementation of the dub & localisation of the anime, and one featuring previous World Champions. These added a nice spin to the event and made it feel like Worlds is expanding beyond just a competitive event and becoming a full celebration of Pokémon.
Trainer Town
Located in the Hilton Hawai’ian Village resort just ten minutes down the road from the Championships was the Pokémon Worlds Trainer Town. The Trainer Town was fully accessible to everyone regardless of whether they had entry to the main World Championships and was akin to Matsuri Park last year and the Worlds Village in the London World Championships.
There were many small activities like lawn bowling and surfboard decoration alongside show screenings and Pokémon meet and greets! The Pokémon Play Lab also returned for 2024: This teaches people how to play the Pokémon TCG, Video Games and (new for this year) Pokémon Unite.
Drone Show
The Pokémon drone show at the Hilton Hawai’ian Village on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday was spectacular. This was completely different from last year and showcased a variety of Pokémon that matched the Worlds theme including a Pikachu riding the waves on a Mantyke. The drone shows are always top quality and we hope it’ll continue to be a mainstay.
Other
As always, there was also a local Pokémon GO event which featured increased spawns of various battle-focused Pokémon, all flowers variations of Flabébé, Scuba Pikachu with a unique catch card and increased spawns of the Hawai’i-exclusive Pokémon, Comfey.
Pokémon Center
As expected, the Pokémon Center was also at the event and packed full of merchandise. This time, the store primarily focused on apparel and TCG accessories, but there was of course plush, the usual Bear Walker skateboard and a Ukulele, which was one of the most desired items. Other exclusive merch included the main Worlds artwork and two different Hawai’i-themed lines: Alolan Exeggutor and a Pikachu & Munchlax line.
One nice, new touch to the Pokémon Center in Hawai’i was that there was live music. And, not only was there a musician playing in the Pokémon Center itself, but there were frequently dancers outside dancing to traditional Hawai’ian music.
Now, we can’t mention the Pokémon Center without mentioning the issues, and unfortunately, the scalpers descended on it again; some even immediately tried reselling stuff literally outside the Pokémon Center. This was an abhorrent practice, especially as it meant that people who got slots later in the day couldn’t necessarily get what they wanted. This is something we hope The Pokémon Company International clamps down on in future events.
The Championships
The Pokémon World Championships is primarily a competitive event and the culmination of the best of the best. This year, over 3,000 players from 53 countries and regions, across four games and three age divisions qualified and competed in the World Championships; that’s an impressive amount of players, especially as almost 2,000 of them were in the TCG and 1,000 in the VGC, which focused on Scarlet & Violet.
This year featured a change where the top players for each game in each region weren’t given a bye for the first day of battles; now, they only get to skip the first round, which opened everything up entirely. No longer were these players guaranteed to be amongst the top of the top at Worlds but had to fight their way through it even more.
Pokémon UNITE
Pokémon UNITE was the first game to wrap up this year. The big story was that, after two years of winning, Luminosity dropped out of contention pretty early on; this meant the stage was set for some new World Champions. This year featured a change in the format as well: Instead of being double elimination for the finals, it was a standard bracket with best-of-three matches culminating in the final that was best-of-five.
The battles were tough but in the end, the Japanese team FENNEL managed to continually hold their own and completely control the field of play racking up high scores with major differences against their opponents, XoraTigersGaming and ended up winning the finals 3-0.
Winner
Pokémon GO
On Championship Sunday, it all kicked off with Pokémon GO. While this division had that many format changes over the past year, several new Pokémon have crept in and have become useful in the format such as Annihilape and Clodsire, and they showed up in the grand finals.
In the finals, Yekai managed to control things very easily and took a quick lead with his team which included Shadow Quagsire, Annihilape, Charjabug, Lickitung, Skarmory and Altaria. While Inadequance managed to take one win in the best-of-five format, in the final match it became obvious who was destined for victory and when Inadequance only had his Giratina left while Yekai had his Lickitung, Inadequance realized that he did not have a chance and relented, crowning Yekai as the 2024 Pokémon GO World Champion
Winner
- Yip Kai Cheng “Yekai0904”
Pokémon TCG
The 2024 World Championships marked the first event where the Shrouded Fable set was legal in a competitive environment; that threw a lot of things up in the air with several cards in the format becoming used commonly, such as Fezandipiti ex.
There was a bit of controversy which caused the winner of a Top 8 match to be disqualified for “unsportsmanlike conduct”, which meant his opponent got to go through to the Top 4. his opponent to go through to Top 4. That opponent was Fernando Cifuentes, who then managed to win his Top 4 match and make it to the finals and, eventually, the whole thing.
The finals ended up being a match of Paradox Pokémon, Future versus Ancient. You had an Iron Thorns ex deck run by Fernando against a Roaring Moon deck run by Seinosuke Shiokawa. These matches were tough and could go either way — both players won one match each. There was so much back and forth in this game and both Fernando and Seinosuke were evenly matched, but in the end, Fernando managed to gain the upper hand, knocking out Seinosuke’s Roaring Moon ex and becoming the first ever Pokémon TCG World Champion from Chile. the crowd erupted in a way you don’t normally expect for the Pokémon TCG.
Winners
- Juniors: Sakuya Ota (Japan)
- Seniors: Evan Pavelski (US)
- Masters: Fernando Cifuentes (Chile)
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet has been running the Regulation G format since the start of June 2024; this format allows you to bring in one Restricted Pokémon such as Mewtwo, Miraidon and so forth.
The finals came to a head with Yuta Ishigaki, who a team primarily built around Trick Room with Ice Rider Calyrex as his restricted, and used Pokémon such as Iron Valiant (which hasn’t seen much play), against Luca Ceribelli who ran a Miraidon alongside Iron Hands and Ogerpon.
Early on, Miraidon showed its true power and how it can do some massive damage with relative ease and Luca managed to pilot it in such a way. The battles came to one win each and the final battle saw Luca not Terastallizing his Miraidon, but rather his Ogerpon to get a decent boost in the Attack stat and take out Yuta’s team, causing Yuta to remain with just his Pelipper and ending the match.
Winners
- Juniors: Kevin Han (US)
- Seniors: Ray Yamanaka (Japan)
- Masters: Luca Ceribelli (Italy)
Coming Soon…
For the first time in Pokémon World Championships history, not one but two future years were revealed. In 2025, the Pokémon World Championships will return to Anaheim, California at the Anaheim Convention Center, where it last took place in 2017. In 2026, we’ll be heading to San Fransisco, where the Worlds last took place in 2016.
While two California-based World Championships in quick succession may be questionable to those who like to travel, having the dates meant that people can plan ahead.
Was it better than last year’s?
It’s really hard to say whether the Pokémon World Championships in Hawai’i were better than in Yokohama. There was so much to do at the 2023 event, but much of it was tied to lottery tickets so people couldn’t really attend everything.
In Hawai’i, there was less to do but it was more open to attendees. Overall, the event was fun and there was still enough to do, and other than the issues with stock at the Pokémon Center, everyone I spoke to had an absolute blast going to Hawai’i to celebrate. It truly was a good time for all people.
A turning point?
The Pokémon World Championships seem to be at a turning point. The competitive circuit is rapidly growing rapidly with the recent European International Championships and North America International Championships both being the biggest events of all time for Pokémon, but with the changes to the next season, it means that rather than over 3,000 people qualifying, it seems like less than half of that will qualify with only around 400 VG slots and less than 1000 TCG places across all age divisions.
If this means the World Championships are contracting as a whole, or if they’re becoming more of a celebration, we need to wait and see.
