Pokémon: Wild Card

Quick menu: Story so far · Characters · The TCG connection · Teaser · Timeline · Posters & Art · Trivia · Still to come

Pokémon: Wild Card is a new feature-length animated Pokémon film, and the first ever to be built around the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The Pokémon Company’s president, Tsunekazu Ishihara, announced it on 30 August 2026 at the closing ceremony of the Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco – an audience of card and video-game players – and a teaser went up on the official Pokémon YouTube channels the same night. It is due in Japanese cinemas in 2027, with the rest of the world to follow in a rolling release “beginning in 2027”.

Its hero is not Ash Ketchum but an aspiring card player, named in Japan as Mikiya, and his partner, the Disguise Pokémon Mimikyu. Everything about the production is new to Pokémon films: it is directed by Katsuhiko Kitada, with character designs by Akemi Hayashi (Banana Fish, Fruits Basket), animated by CloverWorks – the studio behind Spy × Family and Bocchi the Rock! – and planned and produced by STORY inc. It will be the first animated Pokémon film since Secrets of the Jungle in 2020, and the first not made by OLM, the studio behind all 23 of the anime films.

Very little else has been revealed yet – there is no exact release date, no voice cast, no writer or composer, and no word on whether the film will reach cinemas or streaming services outside Japan. This page collects everything that has been officially confirmed, and will grow into a full guide as the film approaches release.

Where it fits
Pokémon films have so far come in two kinds: the 23 anime films, from Pokémon: The First Movie (1998) to Secrets of the Jungle (2020), all tied to the TV series and starring Ash and Pikachu, and the live-action Detective Pikachu (2019). Wild Card is neither. Like Detective Pikachu it is a standalone story with its own lead, but it is Japanese hand-drawn animation rather than Hollywood live action, and its subject is the card game rather than the video games or the TV anime. Fan sites and Wikipedia sometimes call it the 24th animated Pokémon film; The Pokémon Company has not numbered it, and neither do we. Its closest relative is Pokémon: Path to the Peak, the four-part animated miniseries about a young card player that The Pokémon Company released on YouTube during the 2023 World Championships.

The story so far

The only plot so far is the official synopsis above and a few lines from the announcement. The Pokémon Company’s press release describes a story that “follows an aspiring Pokémon Trading Card Game player and Mimikyu, the Disguise Pokémon”; the Japanese announcement, carried by Toho, puts it more simply – the stars of the story are the player, and Mimikyu. On stage in San Francisco, Ishihara told the Worlds audience that the hero is a card player who, like many of them, keeps taking on challenges in pursuit of becoming a champion, and that the film will portray the passion players all over the world share for the game.

The teaser shows almost nothing of the story. With no dialogue and the familiar Pokémon theme playing, it shows Mimikyu standing on a bridge railing above a city at night and ends on Mikiya in his yellow hood. Press coverage noted that the second “O” of the Pokémon logo is redrawn as Mimikyu’s jagged grin, and that the cards on screen look like real Japanese Pokémon cards – suggesting a world where the Trading Card Game exists as a game in its own right, as it did in Path to the Peak.

Characters

Mikiya (ミキヤ) is the film’s protagonist, a Pokémon TCG player who wears a yellow hood modelled on Mimikyu’s disguise. So far he has been named only in Japanese; the English announcement calls him simply “a Pokémon TCG player”, and his English name, if it differs, has not been revealed.

Mimikyu is his partner. A Ghost- and Fairy-type Pokémon first seen in Pokémon Sun and Moon (2016), it hides under a ragged home-made Pikachu costume, and its Disguise Ability lets the costume absorb a hit in battle – a fitting partner for a film called Wild Card. No other characters, human or Pokémon, have been announced.

• Mimikyu#0778 · Mikiya’s partner

The Trading Card Game connection

Wild Card is the first Pokémon film to take the card game as its subject, and its announcement was explicitly tied to the TCG’s 30th anniversary: the game was launched in Japan on 20 October 1996, and the Japanese announcement presents the film as Japan’s top creators coming together to make a new Pokémon film about it. The setting of the reveal – the closing ceremony of the World Championships – and Ishihara’s description of a hero chasing a championship both point to a story about competitive play.

No cards, decks or expansions have yet been tied to the film, and no cinema promo has been announced. Japanese Pokémon films have traditionally come with a promo card for ticket buyers, and the anime films’ cards are collected on each of our movie pages; once the Wild Card promos are revealed they will appear here, alongside every set in our Trading Card Game section.

Teaser

The official English teaser, released on The Official Pokémon YouTube channel on 30 August 2026.

The Japanese teaser (特報), released by The Pokémon Company in Japan on 31 August 2026 with the “super teaser visual” and the official site.

Announcement timeline

• 30 August 2026 – Tsunekazu Ishihara announces Pokémon: Wild Card at the closing ceremony of the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco, held alongside the first PokémonXP. The English teaser and a news post on Pokémon.com follow the same evening.
• 31 August 2026 – The Japanese reveal (already 31 August in Japan when the ceremony took place): the Japanese teaser, the super teaser visual, the official Japanese website and the staff list. Toho’s official film account posts the announcement and names Mikiya. The Pokémon Company’s press release on its 30th-anniversary announcements is dated the same day.
• 1 September 2026 – Japanese film sites list the film, with Toho as its Japanese distributor.
• Early September 2026 – The textless key visual appears on the official Japanese site.
• 11 October 2026 – No further news so far: no release date, cast or full trailer.

Posters & Artwork

The official artwork released so far: the English and Japanese teaser posters, and the English and Japanese logos. The key visual is shown above.

• 
• 
• 
• 

Trivia & Facts

• It will be the first animated Pokémon film since Secrets of the Jungle in December 2020 – a gap of seven years.
• It is the first animated Pokémon film not animated by OLM, and the first not produced by the “Pikachu Project” committee behind the anime films.
• It is the first animated Pokémon film whose lead is not Ash Ketchum; only the live-action Detective Pikachu had done without him before.
• It is the first Pokémon film based on the Trading Card Game, announced in the run-up to the TCG’s 30th anniversary on 20 October 2026.
• The film was revealed at the same ceremony as Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu, a stop-motion series from Aardman Animations.
• The copyright line credits a new production committee, the “Pokémon: Wild Card Project”.

Still to come

As of 11 October 2026 the following have not been announced, and will be added here when they are: the exact release dates in Japan, the UK, the US, Australia and Europe, and whether the film will be shown in cinemas or streamed outside Japan; the writer, composer, theme song and voice cast in Japanese and English; a full trailer and synopsis; any cinema promo cards or tie-in TCG products; and, once it is released, the full story, Pokémon appearances, box office and reviews.

Last updated: 11 October 2026. Sources: The Pokémon Company press release (31 August 2026), Pokémon.com, Toho, Famitsu, Cinemacafe, eiga.com and Bulbapedia.