The Pokémon Company has announced that Pokémon UNITE will cease operations on Tuesday, 23 March 2027 at 00:00 UTC, with the final official competition, the Aeos Crown 2027 in Tokyo, concluding just two days prior.
This shutdown will affect both the Nintendo Switch and mobile editions of the team strategy game, which made its debut on the Switch on 21 July 2021. As of today, at 05:00 UTC, sales of Aeos gems have been suspended. Additionally, new memberships for the UNITE Club and automatic renewals have also been halted, as per the official service termination announcement.
Aeos Crown 2027 still goes ahead
The closure has no impact on the Tokyo event, which the publisher has affirmed will proceed as planned. In July, it was communicated that UNITE would not be a part of the 2027 Pokémon World Championships and would instead feature its own independent tournament.
Registration for the regional qualifiers began on the same morning as the closure announcement. According to the schedule on Pokemon.com, the first online qualifiers are set to begin on 5 December. Teams from Europe, North America, Brazil, Latin America, and Oceania can register until that date.
A total of 32 teams will qualify for the offline finals. North America and Japan will be allocated four invitation slots each, while Europe, Brazil, and Latin America North will each receive three slots. Japan’s selection includes ZETA DIVISION, who secured the WCS 2026 championship. There will also be two Last Chance Qualifiers for APAC West and APAC East, providing one additional spot each.
Format and broadcast plans
The finals are scheduled for 20 and 21 March 2027. The first day will break participants into eight round-robin groups, with the top two teams from each group advancing to a single-elimination bracket on the second day. Every match will adhere to the “All-Star Draft” ruleset.
There will be no general admission in Tokyo. Instead, organizers will livestream all matches on official platforms in multiple languages, with detailed regulations available on each region’s registration website.
What players keep after the servers close
A farewell update will be released on 12 November. This update will introduce special Unite coins, which can be earned through logging in and winning matches, allowing players to exchange them for items that were available earlier in the game, including Unite licenses and Holowear.
The same update will include a “library” mode that allows certain cosmetic items and records to be accessible even after the service ends on 23 March. Players will need to perform a one-time data download before the shutdown to utilize this feature, with the publisher indicating that library data typically cannot be transferred between devices.
For the competitive scene, the Tokyo finals will mark the conclusion of over five years of official UNITE play. This represents yet another change for organized Pokémon tournaments, following the relocation of the North American International Championships to Chicago for 2027.
