The Pokémon Company and Niantic have announced a new addition to the upcoming 2019 Pokémon World Championships: the first-ever Pokémon Go Invitational tournament. Following the opening ceremonies on Friday, August 16, competitive Pokémon Go Trainer Battles will be on display live at the event and streamed on the official Pokémon Twitch channel.
Unlike the other competitions happening throughout the weekend, the Pokémon Go Invitational will include a few high-profile competitors rather than elite players who battled their way up through different levels of competition. There will be eight competitors total in this tournament, seven of whom have already been announced. The line-up includes Game Freak director Junichi Masuda and game designer Shigeki Morimoto, as well as YouTubers (“PokéTubers”) UnlistedLeaf, Strawburry17, Yamada, Poké AK, and Pogo Kieng. The eighth player will be “one lucky fan”, who will be randomly selected from a pool of players who entered a sweepstakes for the spot through the Pokémon website.
The match will be commentated by Aaron “Cybertron” Zheng and Trainer Tips. Each match will be best-of-five and take place in Pokémon Go’s Great League tier, which allows players to use Pokémon with a CP of 1500 or less. Ahead of battling, the players will select a team of six Pokémon to use for the entire tournament without swapping out. None of the six Pokémon on their team can be of the same species. The tournament will be double-elimination, meaning the players must lose two matches to be eliminated from the bracket.
This year, the 2019 Pokémon World Championships will be held in Washington, D.C. from August 16 through 18. Aside from Pokémon Go, players from all over the world will come together to compete in the franchise’s trading card game and video game after battling their way through regional competitions. This will be the first official Pokémon Go tournament, so depending on how it goes, it may become a regular part of future Pokémon World Championships.