Tech 27 October 2026

Pokémon UNITE shuts down on 23 March 2027, and you can no longer buy gems

The Pokémon Company announced on 27 October that the team battle game will end service on Switch and mobile. Aeos gem sales and new UNITE Club memberships stopped the same day. A farewell event starts on 12 November.

Pokémon UNITE has an end date. Service stops on Tuesday 23 March 2027 at 00:00 UTC, on Nintendo Switch as well as Android and iOS, according to the end-of-service notice posted on the game’s official site on Tuesday. After that, nobody logs in and nobody joins a battle.

Some of it has already changed. Since 05:00 UTC on 27 October you can’t buy Aeos gems, the game’s paid currency, and the UNITE Club has stopped taking new memberships or auto-renewals. Gems you already hold can be spent until the end, and members keep their perks until the period they paid for runs out. The notice says nothing about refunds, and nothing about why the game is closing.

A five-month goodbye

UNITE arrived on Switch on 21 July 2021 and became Pokémon’s bet on team battles in the MOBA mould: five against five, scoring goals rather than catching anything. For the send-off, a special event starting on 12 November hands out UNITE licences and Holowear outfits that have appeared in the game over the years.

The same day brings a “library” feature. Download its data before the shutdown and you’ll still be able to browse certain records and in-game content after 23 March, even though you can’t play. One catch worth knowing: library data generally can’t be moved from one device to another.

Tokyo still happens

The competitive scene gets one last stop. The Aeos Crown 2027 tournament in Tokyo goes ahead as announced, with qualifiers starting on 5 December. UNITE had already been dropped from the 2027 Pokémon World Championships circuit, which players read at the time as a bad sign.

The news shot straight up the search charts in Brazil and Spain. It lands in an autumn of blunt cuts across the industry, not least EA shutting BioWare and cancelling the next Mass Effect. The difference here is that players get almost five months of last matches.

By Oliver Grant

Image: The Pokémon Company

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