Will Pokemon Collab With Animal Crossing: New Horizons Next?

Animal Crossing New Horizon Update 3.0 released on January 15, 2026, giving players an island hotel to decorate, Slumber Islands, and quality of life improvements (batch crafting FTW!). Although for collectors the big news was the collaborations with Lego, Splatoon, and The Legend of Zelda. These come after the successful 2024 Super Mario 35th anniversary collaboration.

The Super Mario event gave players Mario and Lugio outfits to wear and an assortment of functional items from the Marioverse. The most impressive, IMHO, were working warp pipes, which provided fast travel across your island.

Rolling out the three new collaborations in a short time span suggests Nintendo is hoping these will boast interest in the five year old New Horizons game. If this is the case, what are the chances we see a Pokemon collaboration and what would it entail?

Pokemon Fashion

New Horizons offers players a wide variety of clothing and accessory options, including custom player designed items. Players can wear clothing, gift to villagers to wear, or display on walls.

Pokemon clothing stores offer a similar variety of choices, along with preview and purchase functionality. A Pokemon collaboration could deliver dozens of regional, trainer, gym outfits from throughout the game’s history.

Apparel choices can extend to the numerous Teams that have harassed Pokemon players, especially the ever tenacious Team Rocket. Wigs would be a great offering for when you want to let your inner Jessie or James out.

Pokemon Items

Now here’s the fun stuff. Collaborations include a variety of themed wallpaper, carpeting, ornaments, and furniture. Along with turning your house into a Pokemon gym is the potential of obtaining an empty trash can, because, why not?

Exterior housing options can transform your house into a Pokemon Center or favorite gym. New Horizons players can build a boxing ring, and a collab can allow a Pokemon battle field or stadium. Of course, having someplace to battle pokemon implies pokemon will be present and this is where a collaboration can get a little complicated.

Pokemon and Pokeballs

The goal of a Pokemon Trainer is to catch wild pokemon and battle other trainers, eventually becoming Pokemon League Champion. This does not translate into a game about island development and socializing with villagers. However, a path forward can be if the pokemon are toys and not living creatures.

New Horizons does not have pets, unless you count showing off captured bugs, but players can display plush puppies and dinosaur toys. A similar functionality can integrate pokemon into the game. Presenting pokemon this way acknowledges them as fictional creations to be enjoyed, and not beings like villagers. Although, some villages look like they can be closely related to pokemon. It would be amazing if pokemon scaled under this scheme, so a 47 foot long Wailord would be appropriately huge compared to a knee high Pikachu.

Aside from pokemon themselves, a defining element of the Pokemon universe are the Poke Balls utilized by Trainers. The twenty-seven current designs are based on the catch rate ability and specific attributes of the particular Poke Ball.

Poke Balls can be presented in New Horizons in several ways. They can be simple decorations. However, the most fun would be if they were functional, similar to the Super Mario warp pipes. Poke Balls can be a player tool, like the net, used to catch bugs by being thrown at a bug or targeted spot. The captured bug would then be sucked into the Poke Ball just like a pokemon. Poke Balls can also be a passive effect of placing a pokemon toy, by displaying the animation of the New Horizons player tossing the ball and the pokemon emerging.

To Be The Best

Pokemon battles do not fit with the New Horizons island vibe. While one option can be, tossing a Poke Ball near a villager who has a Poke Ball, causes the villager to release their own pokemon, and the pokemon toys will bop and dance, making everyone in the immediate area happy. Maybe not a good idea, but an idea.

A more satisfying option is to have player vs. player battles available via traveling to a competition island. Two players stand in designated spots and release their pokemon. The toys face off, exchanging an automated series of type attacks, until one toy breaks. Players visit an island NPC to repair their damaged toy, if they want to continue battling, or receive a reward for winning. Returning to your own island automatically repairs all damaged pokemon toys.

Another option is not having battles or pokemon interaction at all.

Wrap Up

These are ideas on what a Pokemon and Animal Crossing: New Horizons collaboration could look like. An actual event will probably look very different. What do you think of a Pokemon collab? Aand what other games would make for a fun New Horizons event (Persona 5, anyone)?

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