Pokémon XP is essentially Comic Con for Pokémon – and we can't wait for the next event

The Pokémon World Championships (aka Pokémon Worlds) have been around since 2004, being the peak of competitive events for fans all over – but have had a slight issue of appeal for those who weren’t necessarily into the competition side. 

That’s where Pokémon XP comes in: the first dedicated fan convention, which debuted right alongside 2026’s Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco. 

Whilst Pokémon Worlds has held plenty of interactive experiences any level of fan could enjoy – a Pokémon Center pop-up, Play Labs which team you with different games, fun attractions and interactive experiences – the idea of Pokémon XP is to add both more of the above and then some to make it an event of its own. 

Following all the excitement at 2025’s Pokémon Worlds in Anaheim, Radio Times Gaming was invited out to San Francisco to find out exactly what a fan event simultaneously held in tandem with the usual World Championships looks like. 

It turns out, Pokémon XP is pretty great – especially thanks to all we got to learn about the upcoming series, Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu. 

What is the Pokémon XP event? 

Whereas activities for fans are usually more on the sidelines compared to World Championship matches, Pokémon XP is all about being an event big enough that even a casual Pokémon fan can have a whole weekend of fun things to do. 

Even bigger attractions, fashion shows, more mascots, pinball machines, Pokémon gaming side events, musical performances, a plethora of special guests, a lavish garden area and more full-on experiences you can take part in, and exclusive panels covering the latest big happenings in any part of the Pokémon fandom. 

The reason for this was driven home by Chris Brown, director of global esports and events at The Pokémon Company International – who was asked in a roundtable interview we attended, during the middle of the first XP, about the advantages of splitting the weekend into two separate shows. 

Brown explained: “One of the things, and why we created sort of a new brand that was Pokémon XP, was about messaging, in particular for sort of more less engaged fans, more casual fans or families.

“You know, you hear the World Championships coming, you might sort of hear, ‘okay, that's a competitive thing, it's not for me’. We wanted there to be something out there that made it more clear that, in fact, this is for just a fan. 

“You don't have to know how to battle. You can just kind of come here with your family. And we have, I believe it's about 10,000 attendees, you know, who have badges from the state of California. And I've met several of them, and they're here with their family, their kids.

“And that's great to see, and that's going very well.”

How does Pokémon XP compare to activities at last year’s Worlds?

For Pokémon lovers who aren’t too big on watching VGC or trading card battles on giant monitors ahead of Sunday’s big finals, there’s also been plenty to do at past Pokémon Worlds without an XP event, but you might have ended up seeing everything there is to see in less than a day. 

Within the confines of San Francisco’s very large Moscone Convention Center, though, the hundreds of staff working within or with The Pokémon Company made plenty of the entire space dedicated to something fun to do or see. 

What was arguably among the most jaw-dropping was walking through the Pokémon-Golden Gate Bridge-style entrance, taking you to the specially designed Rayquaza Road – crafted with attractions to enjoy from the get-go while connecting you to all the other activities inside for both the XP and World Championships. 

Whenever you would feel like a break, though, returning to Rayquaza Road was ideal for bits of respite with a good choice of food and drinks nearby, with fantastic performers playing various Pokémon songs all throughout the day. 

What’s more, despite only being for 20 minutes each day, Rayquaza Road was also the base for the daily Pikachu & Friends parade — which was so adorably wholesome, I hope this makes it into all Pokémon events going forward in at least some form.

The very best part of Pokémon XP

Going even bigger on the type of events and sights that have come with Worlds of the past is great to get more out of the price of your pass, but what’s truly made Pokémon XP stand out is what’s been entirely unique from what came before: its special panels. 

These will of course differ from year to year going forward, but as far as first impressions go, having special panels that fans can attend is a brilliant opportunity to show off whatever amazing creative projects are coming out of a massive multimedia franchise like Pokémon. 

Luckily, as the first Pokémon XP panel ever, we got to attend a sit-down with key members of the team from Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, etc) – to reveal an in-depth first look at their own Pokémon animation, Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu.

Joined by Phil Rynda, the Pokémon Company’s director of original animation, were Aardman’s director of the show Tom Parkinson, creative director Natalie McKay, and model making creative lead James Young. 

Not only did they give us an early look at the trailer below, but also some of the finer details on how they brought their distinct expertise in claymation-style, stop-motion animation to the Pokémon world – starring the titular Sirfetch’d and Pichu adventuring around the Galar region as knight and squire, meeting and having humorous encounters with various other Pokémon along the way. 

View oEmbed on the source website

This sort of showcase is exactly the kind of thing we’d love to see more of at future Pokémon XPs: passionate creatives who love their work and want to take up the chance to give it the best spotlight it deserves, showing it off to those keen to attend. 

Objectively, sure, not everything that gets a panel in the future might be groundbreaking, but when it’s through artists like those at Aardman, we immediately got the sense that this has been the birth of a very special collaboration with TCPi. 

Radio Times Gaming especially got that because we attended a round table with the Aardman team later that day – getting to ask more about said partnership with the Pokémon Company and other details. 

After all, when the biggest media IP on Earth like Pokémon starts working with a very uniquely styled company like Aardman, it’s easy to feel at least initially concerned that the final product might have lost some of the latter’s shine that makes it so special in translation. 

Jordan Middler of Video Games Chronicle, pointing out the hilarious picture of Pichu with the iconic Aardman-style teeth, asked for more on how much freedom the animation studio was given by Pokémon to make it its own.

Rynda answered: “I think that the incredible thing about working with Aardman is that they have really put in extraordinary levels of effort and energy to be accurate to [Pokémon’s] characters in our worlds...

“Looking at animation, looking at frames, looking at really character-specific things that might only show up in one game, in a cycle in a video game, that shows up in every frame of the show. Almost every frame.

“We wouldn't be working with Aardman if we weren't fans of what Aardman did, and we didn't feel like we could give them the licence to tell jokes.”

Honing in on the fine line of such a collaboration, we asked ourselves if any material made the cutting room floor, in the event it suited neither team. 

Parkinson explained that is definitely the case, but is quite standard – elaborating: “It's a script-driven show, so we all know what's happening in an episode. But then those scripts get taken to storyboard. And in storyboard, we always seek to do really fun... we push things, don't we? And there's definitely occasions where one of the storyboard artists has come up with a gag or something…

“And we all laugh but then go ‘maybe that goes a little too far’ and just pull it out, but that's normal for most shows. I think we're really happy with the way that we're getting ideas over the line, and you guys seem very happy [addressing Rynda] with the way we're approaching things, but yeah, those moments do come up.”

Rynda added: “We discuss it. The process is iterative also... So, we want to see ideas that push a little further.”

Parkinson also mentioned how the collaborative process has appropriately evolved over time, saying: “It's fun challenging the preconceptions. In the early days, we used to go, 'I don't know if they'll like this. I don't know if this will fly.'

“But the more we've done, obviously, we now understand what might get over the line and what not. But it's a fun challenge trying to get it.” 

McKay poignantly noted: “It's a collaboration, isn't it?

“I guess early on, we spent a lot of time just really making sure... I mean it's built on mutual respect, which really helps. And so it is just the creative process, like for all projects really.

“So, that back and forth has really helped make this show feel very specific to both Pokémon & Aardman.”

Even more interactive fun at Pokémon XP

Aardman’s contribution to Pokémon XP didn’t just stop at talking about The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu; we got to join a workshop to try to make a clay model replica of said Pichu, too. 

Granted, we had just over an hour to try to replicate a puppet that an Aardman professional spent many more perfecting, but it was one of the funniest arts & crafts-style projects you can take part in when you’re in a group. 

Another big Pokémon collab that was a part of XP was with Lego. Along with getting to learn more about the latest and upcoming Pokémon Smart Play Lego toys in a panel of their own, we got to sample XP’s own Lego booth for a ‘Lego Pokémon Experience’, a hands-on demonstration of how these sets’ intuitive tech makes for a new, interesting way to battle Pokémon in real life.

Plus, I got to use Charizard, so that was already a win for me. 

One major area for improvement 

Despite how amazing the debut of Pokémon XP has been, any first year of a fan convention is bound to have some growing pains. 

Even back when we asked Chris Brown in his aforementioned roundtable if Pokémon XP could end up being its own thing (instead of being held in tandem with Worlds), he made it clear that the plan was to ‘see how this year goes’. That’s especially since the idea of doing a separate event instead of a combined one, as Brown put it, “doubles the logistical challenge”.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of instances where some of the logistics had issues. 

The biggest was with XP’s Pin Rally – where fans could venture around Worlds/XP to collect 12 distinct pins scattered across the Moscone venue. However, SFGate reported that, versus the roughly 50,000 attendees, there were only around 8,000 pins to hand out each day. 

View Green Video on the source website

As a result, we did witness firsthand the chaotic overcrowding that took place around some of these stations. On the Saturday, some pins’ stock was completely wiped out by the end of the morning; that evening, we were notified that Sunday’s Pin Rally was cancelled altogether – disappointing many who were hoping to collect more during the World Championship’s finals at the Chase Center. 

The other was that some of those same kind of long lines were abundant at some of Pokémon XP’s other attractions as well – most notably the preview of the TCG’s 30th Celebration set preview and the anticipated Pokémon Museum – where the latter’s queue had a roughly two-hour wait at the longest.

This meant that I had to skip some things to fit my schedule. Yet, even without said schedule, if having multiple days free, I would have almost definitely not been able to see everything. 

Pokémon has already taken the feedback on board

Be that as it may, Chris Brown was already aware of these problems after experiencing the first couple of days of the event. Back in his roundtable, the Pokémon Worlds/XP boss noted: 

“You know, the key to any good show management is, you do your best to plan. But then when 50,000 people have come and actually experienced things, there's going to be things that don't work out.

“There's some stuff we're going to try to fix in the moment, you know, make some rearrangement, move things around. There's other things that it's like ‘we just didn't get it right’. And we're going to have to figure out, you know, ‘how do we fix that in the future?’”

He added: “I think for this year, pin trading has been both very successful but also has created massive queues. You know, we made 300,000 pins across the 12 pin stations. So there's enough for everybody to get several pins.

View Riddle on the source website

“But you know, we had this choice management of like, ‘Do you literally do one-to-one? Well, then there's probably waste because not everyone's actually going to want to get all the pins’.

“And so,  I think for us, we're going to take back and look at the pin trading and like, ‘OK, what's that next evolution for [Pin Rally]?’ Because obviously those big queues do create some problems.

“But not every station has the big queues. Many of the other characters have not as big a queue. So like, if your goal is to get a pin, plenty of opportunity. If your goal is to get the Charizard one, there's a long line. So you know, ‘where do we put these? Do we want popular characters?’ Maybe the intent is really just that everyone gets a pin that's gonna be special for the event.

“So that one we're definitely going to take back and think about the future and how we want to evolve the experience.”

Will there be a Pokémon XP in 2027?

At the time of writing, only the next Pokémon World Championships in Singapore (August 13-15) have been announced — with currently no plans for an accompanying XP event to take place alongside it like San Francisco.

Was the first Pokémon XP good?

For a first-time fan convention with massively scaled-up logistics fitting in with a long-running world championships series, Pokémon XP was still an absolutely fantastic companion event any lover of Pokémon could enjoy. 

Yes, some improvements can be made, but the many, many more things that worked so well more than make up for them. The attractions, workshops, panels, entertainment and all the attention to detail were so well put together – adding XP into the Pokémon Worlds mix is more than worth a trip. 

If Pokémon XP does indeed end up taking a year off, skipping Singapore’s Worlds in 2027 to reassess and improve for an eventual return, the next Pokémon XP may be the best event the franchise has ever seen. 

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