The Pokemon Center online store is facing unprecedented traffic right now, with some absurdly long virtual queue wait times that are stretching into hours. I personally just tried to access the site, only for it to put me in a queue with a wait time of nearly two hours, but there have been other reports of wait times lasting as long as almost six hours for the online Pokemon store. At this point, I’m unable to even get past the CAPTCHA, despite putting all the birds in the birdhouse and pairing the mice with the keyboard. Keeping the window open does nothing, as it automatically refreshes, creating this revolving door that I’m unable to get out of.
This isn’t the first time the Pokemon Center has faced extreme queue times either, as users have been reporting on them periodically for weeks. What is different right now, however, is the sheer volume of traffic on a week when the Pokemon franchise’s annual Pokemon Day celebration is imminent and the company is in the midst of its 30th anniversary festivities, sparking more interest in drops, preorders, and merch than on a typical day.
Pokemon Day 2025 Wish List
With Pokemon Day fast approaching, there are some things that trainers want to see revealed and confirmed during the annual festivities.
What the Pokemon Center Virtual Queue Is and How It Works
As is the case with many traffic-heavy sites, the official Pokemon Center uses a virtual queue system to manage site access during times of high traffic. Rather than letting all visitors access the store at the same time, incoming users are put into a digital waiting room with an estimated wait time until they can enter, lest the high volume of visitors lead to server instability or outages. Essentially, it’s designed to help keep online browsing and shopping smooth when large numbers of people attempt to connect all at once.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
Pokemon Center’s support documentation also notes that estimated wait times can be lengthy and vary based on how many people are interested in visiting the store at a given moment. A key point is that the wait time shown on the queue page is merely an estimate, not a live countdown, and is recalculated as conditions change. Large surges in traffic can cause the system to increase the estimated time if more users join the queue, and it’s also what leads to instances where the page might automatically refresh—as it has in my case.
Traffic Has Clearly Spiked Ahead of Pokemon Day 2026
One major reason for the unusually long Pokemon Center queue times right now is the timing. Today, February 26, 2026, is the day before this year’s Pokemon Day, an annual event meant to celebrate the franchise’s original launch on February 27, 1996. What makes this year’s Pokemon Day so special, though, is that it marks Pokemon‘s 30th anniversary, making it a particularly high-visibility event with multiple anticipated releases and announcements.
One major reason for the unusually long Pokemon Center queue times right now is the timing.
In particular, Pokemon Presents, a major broadcast event for the franchise, is scheduled for tomorrow, and it will likely include announcements and reveals for games, trading cards, apps, and various merchandise. With that ahead, there is far more potential for increased web traffic, not just for the broadcast itself but also for retail channels like the Pokemon Center. Collectors and shoppers are undoubtedly lining up to check out any new Pokemon Day-themed products, releases, and anniversary merchandise, thereby leading to long queue times for the Pokemon Center.
With Pokemon Day 2026 and the franchise’s 30th anniversary landing tomorrow, traffic to the Pokemon Center is clearly elevated beyond what it might be on a normal weekday. The queue system is absorbing that surge rather than letting the site crash outright, but the tradeoff is access either slows to a crawl or is interrupted altogether. Perhaps things will stabilize either before or after the broadcast and anniversary drops roll out, but for now, the long queue times are just a sign of how much attention Pokemon is drawing in this specific 24-hour window.
