Pokemon turns 30 next year, and The Pokemon Company isn't waiting around. A new anniversary release lands in December 2026, a collection covering all nine generations of the franchise, from Kanto's original 151 up through Paldea. GameRant has the full rundown on what's included.

The centerpiece is a set of art books, and I'll admit upfront this is the kind of thing I'm a sucker for. Pokemon's art history runs deep. Ken Sugimori's original watercolor illustrations for Red and Green had this loose, sketchy charm that got cleaner and more polished with every generation. Put a 1996 Rattata next to a modern one and you basically get a crash course in how game art pipelines changed over three decades. I want to say it was around Gen 4 or 5 when his style really locked into the crisp look we know now. If these books dig into process art and early concept material, they'll earn the shelf space.

Nine generations is a lot of ground. Gen 1 through 3 was the Game Boy and Advance era, art direction squeezed into tiny sprites and limited palettes. Gen 4 and 5 pushed into the DS years where the series started leaning on 3D models and cinematic presentation, then X and Y changed everything again. Each of those transitions left behind concept art, unused designs, design documents that fans have only ever seen in fragments.

The timing tracks, too. Pokemon's actual 30th anniversary is February 27, 2027, thirty years since Red and Green launched in Japan, and The Pokemon Company has been rolling out related projects already. The 30th anniversary card sets drew massive lines last month and there's a Pokemon movie landing in 2027. December books are the quiet appetizer before the main course.

One thing worth watching: localization. Art book releases like this sometimes hit Japan first with a Western release trailing by months, so pay attention to whether the December date is worldwide or Japan-only. The anniversary card sets already showed how lopsided regional availability can get when demand spikes.

If you've been collecting since the Game Boy days, easy buy. If you came in during the Paldea era, it's a decent shortcut to where the whole thing started, back when the Pokedex was small enough to memorize and Sugimori was drawing every single one of them himself. I still remember flipping through the old official guidebooks just for the art pages. Good to see the franchise treating that history like it matters.