Pokémon Winds and Waves are still a year away, but anyone who’s ever paid attention to the series’ community knows that it is full of leakers, theory crafters, and a whole lot of misinformation. A new wave of “leaks” is starting to circulate, some of which are propped up by the Teraleak from 2024 that revealed a flood of new information about both new and old projects in the works at Game Freak and The Pokémon Company. Others are coming from leakers claiming to have access to early builds, and the occasional “trust me, bro” post on social media. If you want to know what folks are talking about, take it all with a grain of salt, but read on.
Winds and Waves may have over 300 new Pokémon and forms
One of the biggest rumors circulating about Winds and Waves, allegedly based on an early build of the game, is that it will add more than 300 Pokémon to the Pokédex. If true, it would replace the original games as the title with the largest, er, wave of new additions in one generation, more than doubling the 151 introduced by those games.. This 300 will reportedly include new species and regional variant forms for established ones. One theory is that this number might include all the possible forms of a mysterious “Seed” Pokémon that will transform into one of several forms depending on in-game events, and it sounds like that monster might have a lot of variability if it accounts for a significant portion of that huge number.
The new battle gimmick will introduce transformations similar to Megas and Gigantamax
We’ve learned bits and pieces about Winds and Waves‘ new battle gimmick, though we’ve yet to see it in action. The current running rumor is that it will involve weather-based attacks and transformations not too dissimilar from Mega Evolutions in X, Y, and Legends: Z-A or the Gigantamax forms in Sword and Shield which turn Pokémon into massive kaijus. The only place we’ve seen anything about this new mechanic is in leaked development footage showing a Pikachu model being distorted like he’s looking at himself in a funhouse mirror, but it’s unclear if that was just an early visual placeholder for the mechanic or if that’s how it will look in the final game. If there are going to be full-blown transformations similar to Megas, I imagine it will be a lot more elaborate than that.
The starters’ supposed final typings
We saw the first forms of the new region’s starter Pokémon Browt, Pombom, and Gecqua. Supposedly when they evolve to their final forms, they will have the following typings:
- Browt (Grass/Ground)
- Pombom (Fire/Fairy)
- Gecqua (Water/Psychic)
That doesn’t tell us anything about what their final forms will actually look like, but you can get a sense of some of their type matchups.
Several Pokémon are rumored to be getting some kind of new form
Here’s a quick infographic related to the rumors from yesterday (not confirmed leaks) because people were struggling to interpret it.
1/2 🧵 pic.twitter.com/2xXsQOl5E2
— PearlEnthusiast (@palkiaorigin) July 10, 2026
Pokémon has been introducing regional variants of old monsters for a few generations now, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Winds and Waves kept the tradition going. A few names are circulating for possible new variants in the upcoming games, though the nature of them is still unclear. Shellos, Salandit, Drowzee, Psyduck, Nincada, Houndour, Zweilous, Onix, and Clamperl are all rumored to have some kind of shakeup in the new games, though some of these, such as the rumored Ice/Psychic Psyduck variant, are disputed by some leakers.
You’ll travel around on a Rotom scooter
Winds and Waves will include an open world, and it seems like you won’t be riding around on Pokémon to get around it like you did in Scarlet and Violet. Early leaks mention that the player will have a scooter with a Rotom inside that will act as their primary means of traversal. This will apparently be able to hover like a hoverboard and tether to Pokémon like a sled in some cases. When the games were finally revealed earlier this year, fans noticed that the player characters are carrying a board-like device on their person, so the leak seems plausible.
There may be some level of voice acting in a mainline Pokémon game
As the Pokémon games have transitioned into 3D, their jarring lack of voice acting in cinematic scenes has become harder to ignore. Legends: Z-A gave the player character grunts and yells when moving through the world, but they never said a full sentence out loud. It’s unclear if this will change in Winds and Waves, but prominent leaker BallGuy claims that some level of voice recording has taken place for the games.
As we’ve seen in previous Pokémon leaks, early builds may not accurately reflect the final game, and even the information that came from the Teraleaks is several years out of date. We’ll see how much of this comes to pass when Winds and Waves launch in 2027.