Pokemon Bank Shutting Down in February 2027, Pokemon Home Adding Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen Support - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 August 2026 / 3,125 Views
The Pokemon Company announced the 3DS service used for storing Pokemon in online storage, Pokemon Bank, will be ending service on February 26, 2027.
It was also announced the newer Pokemon cloud storage service, Pokemon Home, will be adding support for Pokemon FireRed Version and Pokemon LeafGreen Version connectivity in October. The service is available on the Switch, iOS, and Android.
After February 26, 2027 the ability to transfer Pokemon from Pokemon Bank to Pokemon Home will no longer be available.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Hopefully they make it compatible offline so that you can still use Bank for storage on your 3DS games to be able to save Pokemon through different playthroughs.
Yet another case for why an all-online future is not a good idea.
Would be a nice idea to allow it to be used locally on your 3DS but realistically that’s not going to happen.
It would require a major software update to game that is inaccessible if you haven’t already purchased it, on a hardware system that is no longer supported with its online store and servers shutdown.
So basically, either you move all your pokemon from 3DS to the new services, or they become lost/unable to be moved forward. And of course, you have to bring them to Home for the new games, where they cannot be guaranteed to be even compatible with, all while you play monthly. Just a way to keep your own pokemon for ransome.
To note, Pokemon Bank was a paid service prior to the 3DS servers being shutdown.
And you can use the free service for Home to transfer between Switch games. You only need to pay if you want increased storage or to transfer from the 3DS.
Yes. Pokemon USUM is the last mainline game with a complete pokedex. If you just want to keep your old pokemon pre-gen 7, you could just keep them on the 3DS, and if you want to move them, you pay the minimum and move them. Still bad in my eyes, but now, they'll have to be moved to Home, and pay monthly for an indetermined amount of time until you get a new gen where they are compatible again. If you don't, they will be stuck forever on the 3DS games. I know Home has a free option, but a 30 pokemon limit is absurdly low, considering how many mons are not in the latest games. Not to mention, having your games stored in the cloud leads to all sorts of risks (account theft, accidental erasure...).
You don’t have to pay monthly for an indeterminate amount of time.
Whilst some Pokemon aren’t available in some games, you can still transfer and store them in at least 1 Switch game even if they aren’t natively available in that game,
I believe only Spinda can’t enter Home at all.
I'm devastated by this news. My main gaming hobbie is to play Pokémon with my rules for playthrough being to use a party of 6 pokémon that later are transfered to modern Pokémon games and use them to battle online. Last vacations I was playing in my Ruby cartridge,,and I built a team focused on how they would perform in the Scarlet/Violet meta. One part of the fun is using them in the original game they come from, the second half is adapting them to the online meta of the new games. I'm playing Pokémon X now, with the same logic. Damn... I've been doing this since I became a dedicated gamer more than 15 years ago. Many people find it annoying to transfer Pokémon throughout the consoles, using Pal Park, Pokémon Transfer and such, but I always had fun doing this. Can''t believe it's over and I won't be able to get my old Pokémon to the newer games =(
All services have to end sometime, but in this case I fully agree with you that it sucks and should not be happening. The Pokémon Company has to understand that Pokémon fans themselves are diehards with most playing since the beginning, and THOSE the fans they need to always remember. Honestly, how many few 100 copy sales of a modern Pokémon game on Switch does it take to cover the server costs of running Pokémon Bank for an entire year? Like it can't be much, and to keep those fans happy, that incredibly small cost is more than worth it.
It's not just server costs. Stuff will probably also have to be updated. The service might not be able to run on a more recent software stack (operating system, libraries etc.), so they might need to also update the service itself. Servers need to be upgraded, i.e. probably swapper to newer ones, the service installed on the newer servers etc. I can't imagine all of this costing a whole lot in the long run, but it's also probably not as cheap as you think.
Well, Pokémon is the biggest entertainment franchise in the world. I guess money is not a problem by any means
No, but still its part and the parcel of businesses to cut costs,
It would be interesting to see numbers for those still using it. They’ve keep Bank open 4 years after the wider 3DS servers shutdown but its likely thats its only a small number of people who are still using it.
Personally Im sad to see it go but in reality I barely used Bank.
I don't think so either, but I'm sure they're constantly evaluation whether different things are worth their cost. To them, it's cold business in the end, even if among the decision-makers there is sympathy for the users.
As someone who runs IT for an oil company, I would guess with all hardware/software upgrade costs and licensing costs and maintenance would be between $50k and $100k over the course of the next 5-10 years. Which, looking at their profits ($900 million for last fiscal year), would be covered by just ONE HOUR of their time... I understand trimming slack, but this is a service still beloved by their hardest core fans, and one that costs them virtually nothing to maintain in the grand scheme of things.
I do see where you’re coming from but beyond being loved by hardcore fans, how much is use is the service still seeing?
The vast majority of players will have long since moved on from the 3DS games. Whilst theres no doubt a contigent that still makes use of the service, either regularly or irregularly, they are likely to be small in number.
I do something similar. I don't bring over the literal exact same teams from previous games, but I breed new versions of them in the newer game and add them to the Pokemon from that newer game to form an ever-expanding team. I used 18 in Y, 30 in Ultra Moon, and 42 in Violet, lol.
PM me if you ever want to battle some time.
Glad I already got my Shiny Celebi from Crystal moved to Home.
Maybe I should get another before I can't anymore, hm...
