2024 Pokemon World Champion Luca Ceribelli says he and two other qualified competitors have been effectively banned from the 2026 Pokemon World Championships. The incident resulting in the ban has not been officially confirmed by the Pokemon tournament.
The 2026 Pokemon World Championships are taking place from August 28 through August 30 in San Francisco, with competition across the mainline Pokemon RPGs, the Pokemon Trading Card Game, Pokemon GO, and Pokemon Unite. Ceribelli won the Masters Division of the Video Game Championships at the 2024 Pokemon Worlds in Honolulu, making him one of the most accomplished VGC players in this year’s field.
3 Players Reportedly Had Their 2026 Pokemon World Championships Passes Revoked
Ceribelli had qualified to compete again in 2026, as had fellow Italian players Ruben Gianzini and Luca Lussignoli. In an August 28 statement, Ceribelli said all three were unable to compete at Worlds after their event passes were confiscated during a Friday dispute involving the Pokemon Center line, describing what followed as having “effectively” turned a Pokemon Center sanction into a ban from the event itself. Ceribelli said he and Lussignoli allowed Gianzini to join them in line because Gianzini has a documented disability that makes crowded spaces “severely uncomfortable” for him. Ceribelli acknowledged that letting Gianzini join them was their mistake, citing that as the reason the group did not dispute the resulting decision to bar them from entering the Pokemon Center. His complaint instead centers on what allegedly happened after security took their event passes.
Ceribelli Says Security Told the Players Their Passes Could Be Reprinted
According to Ceribelli, security confiscated the passes to ensure the three players could not return to the Pokemon Center, while repeatedly assuring them that replacement passes could be printed so they could compete in the Pokemon World Championships the following day. Ceribelli noted that the group complied because it accepted the ban from the store and did not expect it to affect its tournament participation. However, they later learned that passes confiscated by staff could not be reprinted, leaving them unable to access the venue on a technicality, even though they were not disqualified or suspended as part of a conventional competitive sanction.
Ceribelli is a prominent figure in the competitive scene, with The Pokemon Company having previously distributed a Mystery Gift based on his championship-winning Farigiraf during the 2025 Pokemon World Championships. As of this writing, however, The Pokemon Company International had not publicly responded to his account. Meanwhile, he said the situation was especially difficult to process because he had been unable to attend tournaments during the first eight months of 2026, making him particularly eager to experience Worlds again. His statement does not explain why he was absent from competition for most of that period. The timeline, however, is consistent with the public record: Ceribelli won the Stuttgart Regional in late November 2025, securing his invitation to the 2026 Worlds. Between then and the 2026 World Championships, he competed in only a handful of online events.
Ceribelli Missed a Historic Year for Pokemon World Championships
Due to the incident, Ceribelli missed the first Pokemon World Championships to use Pokemon Champions as its VGC platform, following the competitive scene’s move away from Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. The 21-year-old Italian stopped short of saying he was done with competitive Pokemon, but wrote that the overall experience had left him unsure whether he would feel comfortable competing again.
- Released
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April 8, 2026
- ESRB
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Everyone / Mild Fantasy Violence
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo
Source: Dexerto
