The first Pokémon World Championships took place in 2004.
The inaugural championship was for the Pokémon Trading Card Game and was held in Orlando, Florida. It marked the beginning of the organized global event now known as the Pokémon World Championships.
Video game competition joined the championship structure later. Play! Pokémon began organizing tournaments for the video game series in 2008, creating the Video Game Championships alongside the TCG competition. Today, the event can include multiple Pokémon competitive formats and age divisions.
The 2004 date is sometimes confused with 2008 because that was when the video game championships became part of the organized World Championships system. The first event was specifically rooted in the trading card game. Despite Pokémon’s Japanese origins, the championship series has mostly been hosted in the United States; the 2023 event in Yokohama was the first World Championships held in Japan.