Pokemon Makes History With First New Movie in 7 Years – Watch the Trailer

August 31, 2026, 3:00pm

Pokémon has announced that it’s coming back with its first new movie in seven long years, and it’s going a completely different route without Ash as teased by its first look revealed with a new trailer. Pokémon has had a long history of anime feature films under its belt as they took Ash Ketchum on all sorts of new adventures with a bigger scope than the TV series. But now that the TV series has moved on from Ash in the last few years, it’s opened up a new path for the feature films too.

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Pokémon has officially announced that it’s coming back with its first new feature film project since the release of Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle in Japan in 2020, and it’s going a very surprising route. Not only is this the first new anime movie in the franchise without Ash Ketchum in a starring role, but its the first one to focus on the official Pokémon trading card game too. Check out the first look at Pokémon: Wild Card below to see what’s coming our way.

When Does Pokémon: Wild Card Come Out?

Pokémon: Wild Card is scheduled to release sometime in 2027, but has yet to confirm its Japanese or international release date as of the time of this initial announcement. It’s going to be handled by a very surprising production staff too. Story Inc. is working together with The Pokémon Company to produce the film, and Katsuhiko Kitada (who worked on The First Slam Dunk and Attack on Titan) will be directing it for CloverWorks, the same studio behind hits like My Dress-Up Darling, Spy x Family and more.

Pokémon: Wild Card will also feature character designs from Akemi Hayashi, and focuses on the official trading card game for its adventure. It’s teased to be a story about a card game player and Mimikyu, but there are still many details yet to be revealed about what to expect from the new movie project. It’s a major detour from everything that the anime franchise has done to this point given its major focus on the real life trading card game, so we’ll have to see what kind of shape it takes in the future.

What Does This Mean for Pokémon’s Movie Future?

Pokémon: Wild Card is the 24th film in the long running Pokémon anime franchise, but is the first new movie without Ash Ketchum in the starring role. This marks a new shift for the franchise seemingly opening up these new movie adventures to not only new production staffs behind it all (as the movies tended to be made by the same teams as the TV anime before), but all kinds of new settings and ideas. This is going to be huge if it also means that the current TV anime won’t get a film for its own characters in the near future either.

But this likely isn’t the case as Pokémon: Wild Card seems to be such a dramatic detour from the usual norm that it’s hard to believe that a more “traditional” Pokémon movie project isn’t in the works for the Pokémon Horizons franchise characters. With this new movie coming our way next year, it just remains to be seen whether or not this is the start of a whole new era of projects for the franchise moving forward.