Pokemon Day Reveals New Champions Game, Z-A Starters

Each year brings a new Pokemon Day filled with exciting announcements, and 2025 is no exception. This year, fans finally got a look at Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which was announced during last year’s Pokemon Day presentation and then followed up by radio silence.

But it’s not just Legends: Z-A news, including the first look at its starter Pokemon, that got revealed: a new game, Pokemon Champions, was also announced, and it may be a real game-changer for competitive play moving forward. 

In the 2025 Pokemon Day Presents livestream, which lasted just under 20 minutes, fans got to learn about upcoming events and updates for a variety of Pokemon games, including the physical TCG and TCG Pocket, Pokemon UNITE, Pokemon Cafe ReMix, Pokemon Masters EX, and even Pokemon Sleep. But in the midst of these announcements was the reveal of an all-new title, Pokemon Champions. 

The Champions trailer focuses on the series’s history of players battling together, both in the mainline games as well as in battle-focused spin-offs such as Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Battle Revolution. Pokemon Champions seems to follow in the latter’s footsteps, as two players battle against each other in a VGC-style double battle. The trailer, as well as the follow-up information in the longer presentation, confirm that Champions will include cross-play, with players able to battle using their Switch (and likely the upcoming Switch 2) or their mobile device. 

The most interesting detail, however, is the in-game battle showcasing a Terastalized Dondozo squared off against a Mega Charizard X, combining two battle “gimmicks” that are normally not in the same games. What this means for the future of official competitive play has yet to be seen, but if Champions becomes the default game for VGC play and influences VGC’s regulations, we may be in for some interesting match-ups in the future. 

At the end of the presentation, fans finally got a glimpse at Legends: Z-A. The game takes place some unknown amount of time after X and Y, and exclusively in Lumiose City. The city is being redeveloped, and is split into boroughs or wards, each with their own “wild area.” Within these wild areas, which are comparable to the zones in Legends: Arceus, players can battle and capture wild Pokemon. 

Also at long last, the game’s three starter Pokemon were confirmed to be Chikorita, Tepig, and Totodile. While it’s unclear if their evolutions will receive regional variants like in Legends: Arceus or Mega Evolutions, Meganium, and Emboar are two of the Pokemon we most hope to get a regional variant. Fans can also glimpse in the trailer Chikorita with the Fairy-type move Disarming Voice, a move it previously couldn’t learn. This may hint at a Fairy-type Meganium or Mega Meganium down the line, although anything is possible at this point. Fairy-type or not, we’re excited to get to revisit Lumiose City in Legends: Z-A “in late 2025,” as the presentation confirms.