Pokemon League Schedule Hinting at Fall ‘Z’ Game?

The schedule for this year’s Pokemon League could potentially be hinting at “Z” being released in September or October.

Every month a new season commences at Pokemon League. Each season is named after current happenings in the TCG or video games, so sometimes the season names can hint at events that will be happening in the Pokemon world.

We’ve been able to obtain the names for this year’s upcoming seasons, which TPCi has released through September:

• January: The season is named “Break,” referring to the TCG’s current BREAK block. The block introduced a theme to the TCG pitting the world of nature against the world of technology.
• February: “Parallel” – Referring to BREAKthrough, the first BREAK set released in November. The set description for XY8 BREAKthrough is “Parallel Worlds: Two Paths to Power!” (Referring to the nature vs. technology theme.)
• March: “Rift” – Referring to BREAKpoint, the second BREAK set that was released in stores this month. The set description for XY9 BREAKpoint is “A Rift Torn Between Worlds!” (The two worlds fight.)
• April: “Worlds Collide” – Referring to XY10 Fates Collide. The set description mentions the two worlds will be unified. It will have its prereleases in this month, but its official release date is May 4th.
• May: “New Friends” – What could this be? There’s nothing on the TCG horizon that suggests anything involving “new friends,” unless they’re stretching to say “new friends” were made after the conflict was resolved. (Although the set description doesn’t say that, which is what all of the season names have thus far drawn from.)
• June: “Alakazam” – Alakazam is the mascot for XY10 Fates Collide. Oddly, they’re using Alakazam here instead of in the previous month, which is when its set would be in stores. This might suggest “New Friends” is referring to something important in the month of May and that they’re purposefully moving names around it. I’m probably looking too much into this though. Onward!
• July: “Closure” – The Play! Pokemon season ends in July, so this is referring to that and / or the end of the conflict in the BREAK sets.
• August: “Steam” – Volcanion. Obviously. This is the start of the new season and a new naming convention, being a noun to describe a specific Pokemon.
• September: “Gear” – Magiana. Its name is a combination of マキナ (machine) and ギア (gear). And it’s got a big ol’ gear on its head.
• (The rest of the year’s seasons were not released.)

If a new game is to be released and Magiana is in it, September or October seem to be the best bet. When Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were released on November 21st, December’s Pokemon League season was “Rustboro City” and the following seasons were all Gym cities.

While Magiana being the mascot for September could also refer to the release of the next movie, all the recent Pokemon films have aired on Cartoon Network in either October or December, so it’s unlikely this is what Magiana and Volcanion’s placements mean. Not to mention Pokemon League seasons aren’t themed after the anime; they’re for the TCG and main series games. Assuming they’re sticking to this.

So about the only thing we can say with certainty is that if there is going to be a new game, and if Magiana is going to be in it, they’d be using Magiana for a Pokemon League season when it would be relevant to the video game world (September or October). What this naming schedule also means is that we probably won’t get a “Z” anytime soon, especially with all the “fluff” terms they used to pad out the first half of the year. If a new “Z” game was coming soon, they’d probably be using more relevant names.

All of this is assuming of course that Pokemon has decided to continue naming Pokemon League seasons after current events, and that the above schedule is synced to what will be happening. For example, they could release a “Z” game earlier in the year, but for some reason only choose to promote it at Pokemon League much later. However, there’s no precedent for that, and it would be odd playing in a League season themed after Alakazam when a new game is out.

In the future if we learn something new or can look at the above evidence differently, I’ll post an update to let people know.

What do you think? Let us know below! Thanks goes to Melkor for helping with this news story!