Pokemon Champions is picking up Z Mega Evolutions next month. The Pokemon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara announced the update at the 2026 Pokemon World Championships closing ceremony in San Francisco, and it lands on September 9, 2026, Japan time.
It’s the first real roster jolt the free-to-play Switch and mobile battler has had in a while. Champions already runs Mega Evolutions. This patch is the debut of the Z Mega forms that have been hanging over the franchise since Legends: Z-A, and it pairs them with a new ranked window called Regulation Set M-C. That format starts the same day as the update and runs through December 2.
The confirmed Z Mega trio is Mega Lucario Z, Mega Garchomp Z, and Mega Absol Z. Mega Lucario Z gets Aura Break, which halves damage from contact attacks. Mega Absol Z gets Sharpness, boosting cutting moves by 1.5 times. Mega Garchomp Z gets Levitate, so Ground moves miss and hazards like Stealth Rock, Toxic Spikes, and Sticky Web stop applying. Those abilities are going to change how people build around them immediately. Lucario Z wants to sit in and take hits that used to chunk it. Absol Z wants to swing cutting STAB as hard as possible. Garchomp Z can ignore a chunk of the usual entry-hazard tax that has always followed it around.
Rillaboom and Baxcalibur are coming in with them. Both have been regulars in the Championship Series, so this is less a surprise debut and more the game catching up to what competitive players already know how to use. A Mega Heatran form showed up at the end of the trailer. It has not been fully confirmed for M-C the way the other three Z Megas have. More details were promised later.
Champions is The Pokemon Company’s dedicated battle client: types, abilities, moves, and ranked formats on Nintendo Switch through the eShop and on phones. No overworld. No gyms. Just teams. That is why a format change and three new Mega kits matter more here than a new town or a new starter would. The game lives or dies on whether the next regulation feels worth queuing.
Worlds also came with freebies for people already in the client. The code ENJ0YW0RLDS26 unlocks a themed hat and t-shirt. An Incineroar was handed out through the official Twitch stream.
September 9 is just around the quarter and less than two weeks away. Current Regulation M-B is winding down first. Then M-C opens with the new mons and the Z Mega ruleset. If you have been sitting on Champions since the last dry stretch, that is the date to check whether the ladder actually moved.
Will you be jumping into Pokemon Champions on September 9 for the Z Megas, or waiting to see how the meta shakes out? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.