Pokémon Presents broadcast announced for next week

The Pokémon Company’s annual Pokémon Presents broadcast has now been confirmed to air next week, on Thursday 27th February at 2pm UK time. That’s 6am Pacific Time, or 9am Eastern.

Every year, Pokémon holds a presentation on this date to mark the anniversary of the original Pokémon Red and Green titles launching in Japan for Game Boy. This year is no different.

So, what do we expect to see?

This year’s biggest Pokémon launch will undoubtedly be Pokémon Legends Z-A, which was announced last year in a brief teaser that curiously did not show any gameplay. The title is a Switch 1 game, but will we see a Switch 2 version confirmed – or the game running on Nintendo’s newly-announced hardware?

Legends Z-A is set to take players back to the Kalos region, the setting of Pokémon X and Y, and looks like it will once again feature the popular Mega Evolution mechanic.

As another Legends game, it will likely have more of an action-RPG focus, similar to the previous Pokémon Legends Arceus. But where that game was set in the distant past, Z-A appears to be set in the modern day or near future.

Alongside a big focus on Z-A, Presents will likely feature a look at the franchise’s other various ongoing games – such as Pokémon Unite, Pokémon TCG Pocket and Pokémon Go.

This week, it was reported that Pokémon Go is in talks to be sold to the Saudi-backed Savvy Games Group, in a deal worth $3.5bn. But don’t expect to hear an update on that next week.

As ever, Eurogamer will be covering all the announcements from Pokémon Presents – join us then for more.