Are you excited to play in a League Cup?
How about a League Challenge? Or Premiere Challenge or Midseason Showdown?
Then you may want to sit down for this. That is because Play! Pokemon has announced that these events will not resume for the duration of the 2020-2022 season.
This means that you can not attend local events to earn Championship Points for your invitation for Worlds. The only way to win Championship Points will be through Regionals and Internationals.
There is no word if Leagues will return in the future.
Please note that the season will end in August after Worlds. We will expect to hear if or how local Championship Points earning events will return for TCG and VGC.
Why the Decision?
Pokemon gave no word as to why they decided to not resume local Championship Points earning events. We can only suspect that this is Pokemon’s attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19 at their events.
There are already strict regulations that Pokemon are putting in place for their Regional and International tournaments. We can only guess that Pokemon would like to put the same regulations and protocols for League Cups and Midseason Showdowns. The problem is that there are many of these events happening in a single weekend. To make matters even worst, they are being ran by many different Tournament Organizers. Each one of these TOs with their own ideals and ideas on how to handle COVID-19.
Also, many of the local Championship Points earning events are run by a small staff. Some League Cups only have three people working as staff. Usually it is a TO who handles registration and two Judges to do deck checks or assist with deck lists.
A Regional or above tournament have more staff which can handle checking for vaccination status and negative COVID-19 tests. If this type of regulation was implemented for a League Cup then it could put a strain on the staff.
We could see Pokemon implement or make changes for the qualification for a Worlds invite. Though, there is no official word on this.
Though, this is all speculation. We do not know the reason and can only guess.
With that said. We hope that all players who are chasing a Worlds invite will have the best of luck at any events they will attend.
Source: Pokemon
