The Pokémon Trading Card Game held its first World Championship in 2004.
The inaugural event took place at the Wyndham Palace Resort and Spa in Orlando, Florida. It established the championship tradition for competitive Pokémon card players and became the predecessor to the broader Pokémon World Championships.
Video-game competition was added later. Play! Pokémon began organizing video-game tournaments alongside the Trading Card Game in 2008, creating the Video Game Championships format.
The event's history is sometimes confused with the video-game championship timeline because modern World Championships combine multiple competitive disciplines. The TCG was the original competitive category, beginning its world-level competition before the video-game series joined it.