After three years of calling New Orleans, Louisiana the home of the Pokémon North America International Championships (NAIC), the ever-growing tournament and event is moving to McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois in 2027.
The news comes out of the closing ceremonies today at Pokémon NAIC in New Orleans. Though New Orleans has been “fantastic” in many ways, Chicago may be even better, said Chris Brown, The Pokemon Company’s (TPCi) Director, Global Esports and Events Producer. “It’s a world class city.”
When planning events of this scale, TPCi looks at a few important factors: geographical accessibility, room for growth, and, casually speaking, vacationability. “Chicago checks all the boxes,” Brown said in a group interview.
As far as geographical accessibility goes, New Orleans has direct flights from 55 different airports around the world from four different countries, according to FlightConnections.com. Chicago, on the other hand, has the largest airport in the United States, with direct flights from 281 airports spread between 49 countries, also according to FlightConnections.com.
“We have 48 countries and regions represented this weekend [in New Orleans], for example.” Brown said. “So having that accessibility is vital now for a show of this scale.”
Pokémon NAIC has been growing each year in every way, and surpassed TPCi’s three-year attendance goal in just two years, with attendance up more than 150%. This year, every kind of entry badge sold out. Brown explained that while the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans is one of the largest in the world, booking enough of that space simultaneously is a challenge considering that it’s so in demand by other events.
TPCi actually discussed whether they would shrink the competition aspect to add more fan experiences in New Orleans, but ultimately, first and foremost, this event is the international championships, so Brown wanted to make sure they serve that audience first.
“Chicago, for us, lets us grow the space,” Brown said. “We want to grow the competition, we want to grow our fan programming.”
That’s a goal in general for TPCi’s events–they want to treat both groups, competitors and fans, equally. Last year, TPCi announced a major move toward this by pairing their first-ever PokémonXP fan celebration with the upcoming 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco, California this August.
I asked Brown if Chicago would be the home for the Pokémon North America International Championships for the foreseeable future, but he didn’t have an official comment on that for now.
I can, however, tell you that TPCi had a three-year contract with the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, and that Brown said that moving the Pokémon World Championships around yearly is “really, really hard to do” and “for an event organizer, the best thing you can do is hold the same show in the same location at roughly the same time. Like that’s the organizer’s dream.”
Chicago is also currently home to the annual Pokemon GO Fest in May, as well as the Pokemon Fossil Museum, a temporary exhibit at the city’s Field Museum. As of now, the Pokemon Fossil Museum is set to move on before next year’s NAIC.
The closing ceremonies at this year’s NAIC also revealed the 2026 Pokémon World Championships promo cards, some merch, and two different Pikachu plush.
Casey DeFreitas is IGN’s Deputy Editor of Guides and has been catching ’em all since the beginning. Find her yapping about all sizes of monsters on her on socials @ShinyCaseyD.
