No Ash, no gym badges: New Pokémon film follows a card player and Mimikyu, the first film in seven years
Wild Card follows a card game player and Mimikyu, with a worldwide release set for 2027
Dubai: Pokémon is going back to the big screen. Pokémon: Wild Card was unveiled on Sunday night during the closing ceremony of the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco, which landed Monday morning UAE time, with a worldwide release set for 2027.
Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and chief executive of the Pokémon Company, told the room that a new Pokémon film was on its way for the first time in seven years.
A card player, not a trainer
The bigger news is what the film is about. Wild Card follows a Pokémon Trading Card Game player chasing a championship, partnered with Mimikyu, the Ghost and Fairy type that has been hiding under a ragged Pikachu costume since Sun and Moon.
That is a departure. Pokémon films have historically followed the journey structure of the games and the television series, and this one leaves it behind entirely. Neither Ash nor the cast of the recent Pokémon Horizons storyline appear in the first footage.
The teaser leans heavily on the card game rather than a cross-country trek to collect gym badges, and carried the line "coming 2027 and beyond", which suggests the studio has more than one film in mind.
Who is making it
Katsuhiko Kitada directs, with character design by Akemi Hayashi. STORY inc. handles planning and production, and CloverWorks is animating.
CloverWorks is another notable name here. The studio's recent work sits well outside the family-animation bracket Pokémon films usually occupy, and the teaser's colour palette and character design reflect that.
No premiere date or regional distribution schedule has been confirmed, and the Pokémon Company says those details will follow.
Also coming in 2027
The film is not the only thing on the slate. A stop-motion series, Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch'd and Pichu, arrives on Disney+ worldwide in 2027, and on Disney XD. It follows Pokémon Concierge, the stop-motion series that launched on Netflix in December 2023.
About that seven-year gap
The arithmetic depends on how you count. The last full theatrical release was Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us in 2018, which reached limited markets through Fathom Events. Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle followed in 2020, going straight to Netflix and reaching a global audience in 2021.
So seven years is right if you are counting cinema releases, which is what the Pokémon Company means. Fans measuring from the last film of any kind will make it closer to five.
