The Pokémon Company International announces changes to 2025 Pokémon Championship Series — qualifications, schedules, and more

Earlier today, The Pokémon Company International unveiled a host of changes to the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG), Video Game (VGC) and Pokémon GO Championships (VGC) in the lead up to the 2024-2025 Championship series. These changes comprise qualifications for the World Championships, event names for VGC, booster packs and cash prizing, travel prizes for International Championships, adjustments to the Swiss Tournament Format and Top Cut, at-home competitions, as well as schedules for the Regional Championships, Special Champions, and International Championships.

In contrast to the previous season, the 2025 Championship Series will now invite a fixed number of players from each rating zone, age division, and game to the World Championships based on their Championship Points leaderboard standings, instead of reaching a threshold number of points in order to qualify for Worlds. Top performers from major events will also earn automatic invitations to the World Championships. Invitations will be given to Regional and Special Championships as well as the top four finishers of each International Championships. These invitations will not count against the total invitation slots for that player's rating zone. Check out the number of invitations allocated for each division and game here.

The Midseason Showdown and Premier Challenge will be renamed in 2025. The former is now called the Video Game League Cup, while the latter is now named the Video Game League Challenge, in alignment with their TCG and GO equivalents.

Pokémon also confirmed that more online VGC tournaments will be introduced in the upcoming season, and will count towards championship points rankings. More online tournaments for UNITE will be announced with the rest of the UNITE Championship Series updates after the World Championships in August.

The schedule for Regional, Special, and International Championships were also included in the announcement. The first Regional will kick off in Baltimore on September 13 to 15 of this year, while the first Special Championship will be conducted in Peru from October 5 to 6.

The Latin America International Championships will happen in Brazil on November 15 to 17. On the other hand, the Europe International Championships will take place in London from February 21 to 23, 2025, while the North America International Championships will be conducted on June 13 to 15, 2025 in New Orleans.

Read the full list of changes and updates here.