Pokemon Europe International Championships 2024

I remember back in the year 1999, the buzz and build-up for the original Pokemon games releasing in Europe was something to behold. The anime had already been released, and kids everywhere were as hyped as if Jurassic Park and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had combined and spawned pure gold in the form of a Game Boy cartridge.

The anime while weird to parents, was colorful, fun, and included collecting small creatures. As an eight-year-old, I was as keen as any kid to get involved. Fast forward over twenty years, and in 2024, I’ve just returned from what is, in essence, a Pokemon festival, with the same colors, hype, and buzz as back when the original phenomenon landed in 1999. This 2024 event is a Pokemon tournament where the video games are center stage, but there are also trading card tournaments, trading card sales (and swaps), video games to play, and even a pop-up Pokemon center. This article gives a brief review of the event and investigates whether Pokemon is still the same as it always has been.

As you come out of Custom House Docklands Light Railway Station, there is a long walkway leading up to the entrance of the Excel Center, the London venue for Pokemon Europe International Championship 2024. The early morning spring sunshine glimmers off the building in the distance, and you can already see banners advertising the event and displaying some of the newer generations of Pokemon. In my opinion, it seems that a disproportionate amount of the core Pokemon used in advertising by Nintendo and the Pokemon company tend to be the original 151. However, the same cannot be said of which Pokemon are used in competitive play.

Many of the Pokemon used in battle tend to be newer ones. I’ve arrived at the event to support a friend. He’s competing and attends these tournaments regularly. A competitor ticket is around £25, and nets competitors a bonus cool goodie bags with novel Pokemon goods. A Spectator ticket is £20, and includes no goodie bag.

The games that are the focus of the tournament are the recently released Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. These Switch games are the ninth generation of Pokemon games. That’s an awful lot of games that have been released since I first picked up a Game Boy with generation one’s Blue Version.

The are around 900 competitors at the event. On the first day, Friday, the first few rounds occur. Then, as the days move on, the number of competitors grows smaller and smaller. By midday Saturday, my friend has withdrawn, due to not being in a position to advance to the next stage. In the later stages, some of the competitor’s battles are streamed on massive screens towards the back of the Excel Center. It is near the back of the Excel (far from the entrance) where the video game competitors have been playing all weekend.

There’s a stage and seating for spectators. The seating area is vast, and as a spectator, I can tell this event is in another league in terms of spectacle and size compared to events like the London Anime and Gaming Convention. Other parts of the venue are taken up by other activities. There are booths where people are playing Nintendo Switch games. The games that I saw being played were Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (I assume with people using their own, personal saves), and Pokken Tournament (the Tekken-inspired Pokemon fighter). However, much of the floor space is taken up by activities related to Pokemon trading cards.

The Pokemon trading card scene kicked off at around the same time as the anime — 1999 — and as a European who received the actual games quite late (Europe used to be one of the last areas to officially get Nintendo games), I and my childhood school friends focused on collecting the cards (and using them for matches, trying and failing to follow the rules).

This part of the Pokemon universe is still a core part of the scene. At the 2024 Pokemon Europe International championships, there were many stalls involving the Pokemon Trading Card game. Some stalls could value your card collection, so were set up to play the game, and some just displayed and sold rare cards. Interestingly, most older cards weren’t used in the official matches.

As you move further into the venue, there is an area on the left where Pokken Tournament games are played. Pokken Tournament used to be an official competitive game at the Championship before it was removed in 2023 for no official reason. It’s possible the event was lacking in popularity. As I moved further into the hall, a huge Pikachu inflatable was positioned below the ceiling, above me. This was a magnificent portrayal of the power of Pokemon, and how the series has become a juggernaut within the gaming industry. The card game presence was a close rival to the video game presence at the event.

At the event, before you enter the main area where the trading card game and video game activities are occurring, you pass a pop-up Pokemon Center. This was fully booked when I attended. I assume it would be a similar experience to attending other Pokemon Centers across Europe. I saw people exit the Center covered in Pokemon-branded apparel and cuddly toys. For me, it would be the video games in the Center that would excite me, but Pokemon fever is all-encompassing, and the vibe of the whole event was more akin to Pokemon mania precisely because the pop-up Pokemon Center was located there.

At the Pokemon European Championships 2024, when attendees weren’t playing Pokemon video games or Pokemon card games, they were also preparing for future battles. I’d say preparation takes up a lot of a competitor’s time at these events. My friend, who was competing, spent a lot of time in the lead up to the event getting his squad ready in terms of the “meta” game. The “meta” game could be described as what goes on under the hood of the game. The numbers that crunch each time two Pokemon battle each other. However, the “meta game” doesn’t really come into the outward, direct appearance of the competition as a spectator.

What was once thought (mainly by our parents in the 90s) to be a strange, illogical, and odd video game franchise from deepest depths of Japan, now has proven itself to be a gaming trendsetter that captures the essence of collecting and distills it into a gaming cartridge (which happens in this case to be Pokemon Scarlet and Violet).

The Pokemon European Championships 2024 was a competitive event, and perhaps I’ve put too much emphasis on the concepts that it involves, rather than the actual competitive aspect. However, the games and community vibe are what I will associate with this gathering, and perhaps, in the legacy of the competition, that is what will be most important. The championships were not only about video games. The trading card game was also a big part of the event, maybe taking up almost 50% of the space and presence.

Despite the competitive element, the championships are a great day out or weekend experience for families, and young Pokemon-crazy kids will definitely enjoy the championships, just as I enjoyed the first Pokemon craze back in the late 90’s. The Game Boys might be gone, but the community remains, and let that long be the case because it’s definitely a positive (in many ways) for the videogame industry.