Pokémon esports community shocked by new Worlds 2025 pricing

The Pokémon community was finally given the chance to sign up for spectator badges for the Pokémon World Championship, but the prices shocked some fans.

The Pokémon World Championship is set to arrive in Anaheim, California on August 15-17th, 2025. Fans have from now until March 23rd to sign up to be on the Spectator Badge interest list. But some players who clicked on the link to sign up noticed that the prices were higher than ever before.

The Pokémon World Championship 2025 will feature the TCG, VGC, UNITE and GO. Two of these games especially, TCG and VGC, have had a competitive scene for quite some time — but the competitive scene has changed and grown over the past few years.

In the 2010’s, regionals held around the country would often see just 300 to 700 competitors sign up and compete from around the world. But the past few years, the TCG alone has had well over 1,000 people sign up. The most recent international event had over 1,000 for the VGC, the most competitors it has ever had.

With interest in Pokémon picking up the past few years — whether it’s competitors or just fans and collectors — the pricing has increased to go along with it.

While registering to compete has continued to rise in price, the Spectator Badge is the biggest shock. In the past, it was free to get a Spectator Badge to regionals and even Worlds. But the upcoming Worlds had the following prices:

This is clearly a large jump from being free, which wasn’t lost on the Pokémon community. Said one trainer: “I think I paid $10 for London Worlds… That also had 50k attendees though so maybe they’re trying to reduce the amount of people going so it’s not overwhelmed. But also putting more money in their pockets…”

Said another: “$100 is seeming kind of greedy, NGL. Hearing it was only $40 last year doesn’t help.”

If you’re still interested in checking out the growing Pokemon esports scene at Worlds 2025, check out the Spectator Badge information here.