Pokemon is getting a new theatrical movie. Pokemon: Wild Card was announced at the closing ceremony of the 2026 Pokemon World Championships in San Francisco, with a worldwide release slated for 2027 and a short teaser built around a trading card game player and Mimikyu.
It’s about time the movies came back. The last full Pokemon film was Pokemon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle in 2020, which played Japanese theaters and then landed on Netflix worldwide in 2021. The last one that actually went into theaters outside Japan was 2018’s Pokemon the Movie: The Power of Us, and even that had a limited Fathom Events run. Seven years is a long gap for a franchise that otherwise never leaves the calendar.
The Pokemon Company president and CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara framed the project around the crowd in the building. "For the first time in seven years, a new Pokemon movie is on its way," he said, and pointed out that the lead is a Pokemon TCG player "battling and striving to be a champion," same as the competitors who had just finished Worlds. That is the part that makes Wild Card feel different from the usual Ash-and-Pikachu travelogue. The teaser puts a card player in a yellow hoodie that matches Mimikyu’s disguise with an after shot of what seems to be Mimikyu's eyes.
Mimikyu is an interesting mascot choice on paper and a smart one in practice. It was built to look like Pikachu and fail at it. Putting that Pokemon next to a TCG protagonist tells you the movie is leaning into fandom, costume, and the card game’s own theater rather than another gym-badge road trip. The plot is still thin, which matches what was shown. A mysterious card player. Mimikyu. A 2027 window. Ishihara’s line about the movie arriving "starting in 2027" and "beyond" also leaves room for more than one wave of releases, though no sequel or companion project has been named.
The crew that is working on this anime film is a step up from the standard TV-movie handoff. They brought in some big anime names and studios. Katsuhiko Kitada is directing after work on The First Slam Dunk, Attack on Titan, and Naruto: Shippuden. Akemi Hayashi is handling character design, with credits that include Banana Fish and Lazarus. CloverWorks is producing, the studio behind Spy x Family and Bocchi the Rock. That combination is going to get anime fans in the door even if they have not touched a booster box in years. Kitada’s sports-film work in particular fits a story about a player chasing a championship rather than a ten-year-old wandering into tall grass.
For an anime audience, the names of who is working on it matter more than the Worlds setting. Slam Dunk already proved Kitada can stage competition so it reads on a big screen. Hayashi’s character work on Banana Fish and Lazarus leans sharper and more specific than the usual Pokemon house style. CloverWorks has the range to handle both a bright commercial property and smaller, stranger character moments. Wild Card needs that mix if a movie about sleeved cards is going to feel like a feature and not a long commercial.
Worlds seemed like the perfect place for that announcement. The 2026 championships were already a 30th anniversary stage, and next year the video games move on to Winds and Waves, the 10th generation. A movie about a card-game champion landing in that same window ties the TCG, the games, and the anime back together without pretending they are the same hobby. Plenty of people who grind ranked on the video games never sleeve a deck. Plenty of TCG players have not finished a mainline story in a decade. Wild Card is aimed at the overlap, and at anyone who just likes Mimikyu enough to sit through a feature.
Details that usually come with a movie launch are still missing. No exact day in 2027. No full voice cast. No distributor list for the worldwide theatrical run. No confirmation that this replaces the old annual movie pipeline or that it is a one-off. Those answers will show up when the marketing machine actually needs them. For now the company wanted the image: a kid in a Mimikyu hoodie, a ghost under a Pikachu cloth, and a championship speech in San Francisco.
One of the hard things compared to other Pokemon films that they will face is that Kitada has to make card battles readable on a big screen, which is harder than it sounds. The TCG is already a performance. If the film just films players slapping cards on a table, it will feel small. If it finds a way to make those turns as tense as a gym battle, Wild Card has a real shot at being the first Pokemon movie in years that does not play like a recap episode with extra lighting.
2027 is also going to be crowded for the brand. New mainline games. Anniversary leftovers. Whatever "beyond" means in Ishihara’s wording. The movie has to stand next to all of that and still feel like an event. Announcing it at Worlds at least puts it in front of the people most likely to care on day one.
Are you more excited for a TCG-centered Pokemon movie, or do you want something different? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.