Just three days before the Pokémon World Championships kick off for 2025, two qualified Pokémon Unite teams from China have dropped from the competition. While Champion Road and Nova aren't the only teams that have withdrawn from the bracket ahead of the tournament, they're the only ones whose reasons for doing so are unknown.
The 2025 World Championship is a big moment for Pokémon Unite, as it's the first time in the free Pokémon game's history that the finals are taking place on Championship Sunday, alongside VGC, TCG, and Go. At the end of July, the Unite eSports account announced the 31 qualified teams and their respective groups for day one of the competition, but since then, four teams have dropped, leaving Group F with just two teams competing.
Peru's Infamous withdrew from the tournament due to visa issues, and South Korea's newly-formed LastDance backed out due to lack of synergy and in-fighting, but it's still unclear why China's Nova and Champion Road will not be competing. Japan's Pokémon Unite account simply cites "various circumstances" [machine translation], grouping the two with LastDance. The lack of reasoning has led the community to speculate that it's because of how differently Pokémon Unite operates in China.
The mobile MOBA only launched in China in November 2024, exclusively for mobile, and it looks drastically different from the global version. The TiMi Studios version of Pokémon Unite focuses on a 'first to 500' game mode, rather than the standard 5v5 energy-based matches we see in the West, so Chinese teams would need to adapt drastically to compete alongside international competitors by learning a new game mode and potentially switching from touch controls to Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons.
After these withdrawals, there are no Chinese teams left in the Pokémon Unite 2025 Worlds pool, and it begs the question as to how TiMi Studios and The Pokémon Company International will work together to merge these two very different, but ultimately connected games. I have hope for the future, but maybe trying to combine the two titles less than a year after the Chinese launch was a tad optimistic.
The Pokémon World Championship Series kicks off on Friday, August 15, 2025, and you can earn a bunch of awesome, free rewards just by watching the livestreams, so make sure to tune in. You should also keep an eye on our Pokémon Unite codes, Pokémon Go codes, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet mystery gift codes for any freebies that you might miss.