All the Pokémon Anime Seasons, Cycle by Cycle

On the 1^st April 1997, a boy from Pallet Town oversleeps and inherits a Pikachu that refuses to get into its Poké Ball. Twenty-six years later, he lifts a world championship title and passes the torch. In between, 25 seasons and 1,232 episodes, broadcast in France starting September 5, 1999. Then a second series starts over from scratch, with different heroes: three seasons already dubbed in French, and a fourth currently airing in Japan.

This page is the annotated index of all of it. Every season has its own entry here — official French title, episode count, Japanese and French dates, region, traveling companions, what's at stake — plus its full feature on the blog. You'll also find here what no episode count tells you on its own: why no two sources count the same number of seasons, which episodes never aired in France, where to watch the series today, and in what order to pick it back up.

How many seasons does the Pokémon anime have?

The answer takes two numbers, because there are two series and not one. The first, Pokémon the Series, has 25 seasons and 1,232 episodes in Poképédia's numbering, from the 1^st April 1997 to March 24, 2023 in Japan. It tells a single story, that of Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu, from Pallet Town to the world title. In France, it started on September 5, 1999; its final episode aired on October 31, 2023, and the very last French broadcast dates from November 12, 2023, with one episode scheduled after the finale.

The second one is called Pokémon Horizons: The Series. It is not the numbered continuation of the first: it is a brand-new series, with different heroes, and its season counter starts back at 1. Its first season introduces Liko, Roy and the pendant, then two more followed: 45, 44 and 47 episodes, or 136 episodes numbered LH001 to LH136. The third one, Les ailes de l'espoir, isn't finished in French yet: the broadcast had reached LH131 on August 23, 2026, and LH132 was announced for September 6, 2026, the day after this snapshot. In Japan, a new arc started on May 22, 2026 from LH137 on, but no international season 4 has been announced to date.

So the total comes down to one addition: 25 + 3 = 28 seasons dubbed in French as of September 5, 2026. Poképédia already numbers a twenty-ninth, though — Horizons season 4, currently airing in Japan — and that is what gives the summary table on this page its 29 rows; but it has had no international announcement, no title and no French date. This 28 is not the official total of any single source: it is correct as long as you know what you are adding up, 25 seasons of a finished series and 3 seasons of another series, which share neither the same characters nor the same numbering.

The seven cycles of Pokémon the Series

Poképédia groups the 25 seasons into seven cycles, which follow the Japanese series: a cycle matches one Japanese production block, a season one dubbing block. From the Black & White cycle on, the pattern settles down and each cycle yields exactly three seasons ; before that, the ratio was irregular, five then four then four. The totals below are those of Poképédia's Japanese numbering, the one where the sum lands on 1,232.

• Cycle 1 — Pocket Monsters : seasons 1 to 5, 274 episodes, 1997-2002 in Japan.
• Cycle 2 — Advanced Generation : seasons 6 to 9, 192 episodes, 2002-2006.
• Cycle 3 — Diamond and Pearl : seasons 10 to 13, 191 episodes, 2006-2010.
• Cycle 4 — Black & White : seasons 14 to 16, 142 episodes, 2010-2013.
• Cycle 5 — XY : seasons 17 to 19, 140 episodes, 2013-2016.
• Cycle 6 — Sun and Moon : seasons 20 to 22, 146 episodes, 2016-2019.
• Cycle 7 — Journeys : seasons 23 to 25, 147 episodes, 2019-2023.

The three Horizons seasons are not on this list, and that is deliberate: they belong to none of these seven cycles. An eighth Japanese block does exist, since April 2023, but it opens a separate numbering instead of extending the previous one.

Each of these 28 seasons has its own feature on the blog, and the sections that follow go through them in order, from Indigo League to Ultimate Journeys.

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Why no two sources count the same number of seasons

Japan does not count in seasons. The season is a dubbing unit, not a production unit : it was built outside Japan to fit the series onto a yearly television schedule. That is where all the confusion comes from. Depending on the source you consult, the Pokémon anime has 25 seasons, 28 seasons, 7 cycles or 8 series, and the Ash Ketchum era alone runs between 1,220 and 1,240 episodes. None of these figures is wrong: they do not answer the same question.

In Japan, series and arcs

Japanese production splits the anime into series, themselves subdivided into story arcs. Eight series exist to date, all titled Pocket Monsters, with or without a subtitle — the word "season" never appears in them. Poképédia calls cycles the first seven, a word specific to the French-language wiki that renders neither "series" nor "season", and files the eighth separately. Those seven cycles produce 25 Western seasons, and the ratio is anything but regular before the Black & White cycle, which in 2010 established the rule "one Japanese series = three seasons". The changes in art style, for their part, land at the start of cycles 4, 5, 6 and 7: that is where the real seams are, not at the season boundaries.

The season is an invention of the American dub

The split into seasons was born at 4Kids Entertainment, which dubbed seasons 1 through 8 into English, then at Pokémon USA, which became The Pokémon Company International, from season 9 on. Each season was aligned with a marketing subtitle and an opening theme: that is the real unit. French inherits this mechanically, because the French dub works from the American adaptation and not from the Japanese version. The term "series" covering several seasons, for its part, only appeared in 2013 with XY, and it was applied retroactively to the sixteen earlier seasons.

The platforms cut it up again

Netflix does not deliver seasons but parts. Season 25, Ultimate Journeys, landed on US Netflix in four waves, from October 21, 2022 to September 8, 2023, and the last one carries a title of its own. The irony of it all: this sub-splitting restores the original Japanese split, as Poképédia notes, placing the last eleven episodes and the LV5 special in the same sub-arc. Prime Video, for its part, splits the original series into two series instead of the five Western seasons. France adds a reference of its own: Poképédia gives two dates for Horizons episodes LH103 to LH111, the online release of February 4, 2026 and the television airing.

Horizons: season 1 or season 26?

Launched on April 14, 2023 in Japan, the first season of Horizons resets the counter to zero at The Pokémon Company International (TPCi), at Poképédia and on Netflix. The English Wikipedia and the Asian dubs that number by season, by contrast, carry on with 26, 27 and 28. The French Wikipedia holds a third position, "cycle 8" and "season 26" at the same time, while stating elsewhere that the series has seven cycles: the wiki contradicts itself. The concrete consequence: typing "Pokémon season 26" does not return the same product depending on the source you land on.

The skipped episodes shift every count

Eleven Japanese episodes were never dubbed into English, and therefore never into French. The gap builds up in verifiable steps: 2 by episode 62, 3 by the end of Master Quest, 4 by the end of Battle Frontier, 6 by the end of XYZ, 11 by the time Horizons arrives. That is why the first Horizons episode is no. 1,235 in Japanese numbering and no. 1,224 in English numbering on the English Wikipedia. The reasons fall into four families: seven plain clip compilations nobody thought worth dubbing, a health incident (the Porygon episode, pulled after the 685 hospital transports it caused in Japan, including 208 admissions), two withdrawals that no official source explains and that are generally put down to the depiction of a character — Jynx's original design for one, Ash in makeup for the other —, and a last one for firearms pointed at Jessie and James. A twelfth episode is missing from the French count without being missing from the English one : episode 18, aired in the United States on June 24, 2000 and then pulled after two showings. The French count is therefore 1,232 minus 12, or 1,220.

So, how many?

Every number below comes with the counting system that produces it: it is the counting system that changes from one line to the next, not the series.

What is being counted	The number	The source
The seasons of "Pokémon the Series"	25	TPCi, Western dub
The matching cycles	7	Poképédia
The Japanese series, Horizons included	8	Bulbapedia
The Horizons seasons	1, 2 and 3	TPCi, Poképédia, Netflix
The same seasons, numbered continuously	26, 27 and 28	English Wikipedia, Asian dubs
The episodes of "Pokémon the Series"	1 232	Poképédia, specials outside the numbering
The same, with the two winter specials folded in	1 234	English Wikipedia, Japanese numbering
The episodes dubbed into English	1 223	English Wikipedia, English column
The Western episodes of the same series	1 224	Bulbapedia
The episodes actually broadcast in France	1 220	calculated from the Poképédia list, 1,232 minus 12
All series combined, Asia included	1 391	Bulbapedia, undated figure
The episodes of season 25	57 or 54	Japanese version or English version

Season 25 is the textbook case: 57 episodes and 5 specials in the Japanese version, 54 and 4 in the English version, in the same entry. That isn't a mistake, it's the same object counted twice. Same mechanism for the total: the English Wikipedia slips season 1's two winter specials into the continuous run, "Holiday Hi-Jynx" as no. 65 and "Snow Way Out!" as no. 66, which Poképédia keeps outside the numbering. Hence 1,234 against 1,232. Across the 25 seasons, nine carry a different episode count from one wiki to the other.

The problem is not a historical one, it's live. The two Wikipedias don't even use the same Japanese numbers: the last episode of season 3 of Horizons, Les ailes de l'espoir, is numbered 1368 on the French Wikipedia and 1370 on the English Wikipedia. And the received idea that France always comes after the United States no longer holds. As of September 5, 2026, Japan was 147 episodes into Horizons and France 131: there still isn't a single count.

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Series 1 — Pocket Monsters: Kanto, the Orange Archipelago and Johto (seasons 1 to 5)

Poképédia files the first five seasons under a single label, "Series 1: Pocket Monsters". The block covers 274 episodes, from EP001 to EP274, aired in Japan from the 1^st of April 1997 to November 14, 2002, and three territories: the Kanto region and its eight Gyms, the Orange Archipelago, then Johto. Five seasons, three Leagues, one single trophy: this is the series where Ash learns to lose.

The episode count depends on which reference you consult, and the gap is measurable. Poképédia, the French reference, counts 80, 36, 41, 52 and 65 episodes ; the English-language reference gives 80, 36, 41, 52 and 64, because EP250 was never dubbed. Japanese production, for its part, credits season 1 with 82 episodes: the 80 numbered ones plus two winter specials, originally scheduled for December 23, 1997 and January 6, 1998, then aired on the same day, October 5, 1998, after the break caused by the Porygon incident.

S1 · Indigo LeagueS2 · Adventures in the Orange IslandsS3 · The Johto JourneysS4 · Johto League ChampionsS5 · Master Quest

Season 1 — Indigo League (80 episodes, EP001 to EP080)

Aired in Japan from the 1^st of April 1997 to January 21, 1999, the season reached France on September 5, 1999 on Fox Kids, then moved to TF1 on January 3, 2000; the reference dates the season only to the year, 1999-2000. Ash leaves Pallet Town with a Pikachu that refuses its Poké Ball, and collects the eight Kanto Badges, joined by Misty and Brock, two Gym Leaders who decide to follow him. He rarely wins fair and square: Poképédia notes that the Thunder Badge, the third one, is the first he earns by beating a Gym Leader outright. The order departs from the games, with the Marsh Badge (EP024) coming before the Rainbow Badge (EP026), and the eighth Badge is wrested from Team Rocket, whose boss Giovanni runs the Viridian City Gym, in EP063. At the Indigo League, Ash competes from EP075 to EP079 and goes out in the round of 16 against Ritchie, his Charizard having refused to fight. Ritchie himself falls in the quarterfinals, in EP080, and the tournament winner's name is never given.

Season 2 — Adventures in the Orange Islands (36 episodes, EP081 to EP116)

Japan: January 28, 1999 to October 7, 1999. France: on TF1 between 2000 and 2001, with no exact date known for the first episode. The pretext for the trip is the GS Ball, which Professor Oak asks Ash to deliver to Professor Ivy, in the Orange Archipelago. Brock falls for her and stays at her side: it's the only season of the series where he isn't traveling with Ash. He is replaced as early as EP084 by Tracey Sketchit, a Pokémon Watcher who draws instead of catching. Ash catches a Lapras, which becomes the group's transport between the islands, then a Snorlax (EP094). The archipelago exists in no game : it uses the Kanto Pokédex, and its League has only four Gym Leaders plus a head Leader, with tests of skill — shooting cans, freezing a geyser, carving a sled out of ice. Ash clears them all, beats Drake at Pummelo Stadium in a six-on-six (EP111-EP112) and wins his very first trophy.

Season 3 — The Johto Journeys (41 episodes, EP117 to EP157)

Japan: October 14, 1999 to July 27, 2000. France: 2001, with Poképédia's episode table dating EP117 to the 1^st of July. Brock returns, Misty never left: the original trio is back together for the three Johto seasons. This is the season of catches: Heracross (EP119), then the three Johto starters — Chikorita (EP126), Cyndaquil (EP141) and Totodile (EP151) — plus a Shiny Noctowl (EP154), a rare case of a Shiny Pokémon kept for the long haul. It's also the season of a departure: Ash leaves his Charizard in the Charicific Valley in EP134. Only two Badges fall, the Zephyr (EP131) and the Hive (EP144): Johto, its eight Gyms and its two towers in Ecruteak City will take up three full seasons. A cruel detail for the through line: in that same EP144, Poké Ball expert Kurt keeps the GS Ball to study it, and the plot that had launched two seasons stops there, with no resolution.

Season 4 — Johto League Champions (52 episodes, EP158 to EP209)

Japan: August 3, 2000 to August 2, 2001. France: 2001-2002 according to the reference, with EP158 dated September 29, 2001 — the source doesn't decide between Fox Kids and TF1 for that premiere. This is the most static season of the series: Ash catches no Pokémon in it. His team at the end is the one he began with, the only change being Chikorita becoming Bayleef. Three Badges are won: the Plain Badge (EP159), the Fog Badge (EP182), and the Storm Badge in EP209, the season's very last episode. Unlike Kanto, the Johto Gym sequence here follows the order of the games, and the French theme song "Né pour être vainqueur" serves as both opening and closing.

Season 5 — Master Quest (65 episodes, EP210 to EP274)

Japan: August 9, 2001 to November 14, 2002. France: 2003, with EP210 dated February 3. With 65 episodes by the French count, it's the longest season in the whole series — 64 by the English count, for lack of a dub of EP250. It's also the busiest of the series. The Whirl Cup (EP215-EP217) sees Ash go out in the round of 16 against Misty; she loses in the quarterfinals herself, and the winner stays anonymous. Then comes the Lugia arc (EP219-EP222). The last three Johto Badges fall — Mineral (EP224), Glacier (EP238), Rising (EP254) thanks to a one-off return by Charizard. At the Silver Conference (EP266-EP272), Ash finally beats Gary Oak, his rival since the very first episode, in a six-on-six settled in EP270, before being knocked out in the quarterfinals by Harrison; Jon Dickson wins the tournament. Charizard, back for the competition, leaves again in EP272. Then Ash says goodbye to Misty and Brock, entrusts all his Pokémon to Professor Oak and leaves for Hoenn with Pikachu alone. A technical note: from EP261 on, i.e. the 263^rd episode in the continuous Japanese numbering, the series switches from cel animation to digital animation.

This series comes down to a paradox: the only trophy Ash wins in it comes from a League that exists in no game. In the two Leagues taken from the games, he fails, and two of the series' competitions end on a winner whose name is never spoken. The tally is still massive: sixteen Gym Badges, eight in Kanto and eight in Johto, plus the four Orange League Badges, in five seasons. Lastly, the French version is adapted not from the Japanese but from the international edition by 4Kids Entertainment : Eric Stuart, the English voice of Brock, said in 2019 that the company sanded away the references to Japanese culture. What French audiences saw between 1999 and 2004 is therefore not the Japanese series, but an already reworked version.

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Series 2 — Advanced Generation: Hoenn and the Contests (seasons 6 to 9)

In Japan, this series was never split into seasons : it's a single block of 192 episodes, coded AG001 to AG192, aired from November 21, 2002 to September 14, 2006. The "seasons 6 to 9" are a split manufactured for international broadcast. Poképédia names the series Advanced Generation — with no "d" on Advance, and an accent on Génération. The action leaves Kanto and Johto for the Hoenn region, half land and half ocean, before returning to Kanto for the final season.

S6 · AdvancedS7 · Advanced ChallengeS8 · Advanced BattleS9 · Battle Frontier

The cast changes as much as the map does. May, the daughter of Gym Leader Norman, appears from AG001 on and replaces Misty — a different character from Professor Ivy of the Orange Archipelago, who shares her French name and with whom Brock had stayed for all of season 2; her little brother Max, the seven-year-old expert who has never caught a Pokémon, joins the group in AG003, and Brock catches up with them in AG004. Above all, this is the first time Ash shares top billing : May isn't following his quest, she's pursuing one of her own.

That other quest is the Pokémon Contests and their Grand Festival : an Appeals Round scored out of 30 by a panel of judges, then a five-minute Battle Round where a well-executed move costs the opponent points. Five Ribbons open the way to the Grand Festival, whose winner takes the Ribbon Cup and the title of Top Coordinator. May announces her choice in AG016, and this two-quest template will become the blueprint for every later series.

Season 6 — Advanced (40 episodes, AG001-AG040)

French episodes 275 to 314, theme song "Je veux devenir un héros". Japan from November 21, 2002 to August 28, 2003; France from January 31, 2004 to March 19, 2005, on Fox Kids — later Jetix — and on TF1 in parallel. Ash takes on Hoenn with Pikachu as his only Pokémon, something that had not happened since season 1: he builds a team from scratch with Taillow (AG004), Treecko (AG007) and Corphish (AG023), and earns his first Badge in Rustboro City against Roxanne. On DVD, TF1 Vidéo released only 20 of the 40 episodes.

Season 7 — Advanced Challenge (52 episodes, AG041-AG092)

French episodes 315 to 366, theme song "Mes rêves", still in Hoenn. The French start date is given as March 26, 2005 by Poképédia's episode table — the season reference itself knows only the year, as it does for seasons 2 to 5 and 8 to 11; the rest of the season carries no day-level dates. The high point is AG070, "Le grand jour": Ash wrests the fifth Badge from May and Max's father, the Petalburg City Gym Leader. Treecko becomes Grovyle in AG066, Taillow becomes Swellow in AG080. An industry milestone: season 7 is the last one TF1 ever aired, and the only one of the series with no French DVD release at all. The show does not leave the air for all that — Fox Kids, later Jetix, had been running it since 1999.

Season 8 — Advanced Battle (53 episodes, AG093-AG145)

French episodes 367 to 419, theme song "Invincible", French broadcast in 2006. This is the season with the uneven episode count : 53 episodes in the French reference, 52 in the American one, because AG120, a March 2005 recap episode, was never dubbed. AG098 closes out the clash between Team Aqua and Team Magma by unleashing Groudon against Kyogre. The eighth Badge falls in AG111, then the Ever Grande Conference runs from AG126 to AG131: Ash finishes Top 8, knocked out in the quarterfinals by Tyson, who goes on to win the tournament. A season-boundary trap: the return to Kanto (AG132) and the very first Frontier Symbol (AG136) still belong to this season, not the next one.

Season 9 — Battle Frontier (47 episodes, AG146-AG192)

French episodes 420 to 466, theme song "Le Tournoi Extrême", instrumental closing theme, French broadcast in 2007. It takes place entirely in Kanto, around the institution the French games call the Zone de Combat and the French anime calls the Tournoi Extrême — the season's theme song, quoted above, carries exactly the same title without meaning the same thing: seven Frontier facilities, seven Symbols, and a seventh address handed out only to Trainers who already hold the other six. Here Ash wins six of the seven. He loses to Anabel before winning the rematch, then fails twice against Brandon before pulling it off on the third try, bringing back Charizard, Bulbasaur and Squirtle, his very first Kanto Pokémon. He is offered the title of Frontier Brain: he turns it down. May, for her part, gathers five Kanto Ribbons and reaches the Grand Festival at the Indigo Plateau. Then everyone scatters: May leaves for Johto, Max goes home to Petalburg City, Brock heads back to Pewter City, and Ash sets off for Sinnoh with Pikachu.

From 4Kids to Pokémon USA: the switch lands exactly on AG146

On December 23, 2005, 4Kids Entertainment and Pokémon USA agree not to renew their representation deal, which expires on December 31. Pokémon USA — the company that would later take the name The Pokémon Company International — brings English localization in house and hands it to the studio TAJ Productions. The handover does not happen mid-season: season 8 is the last one dubbed by 4Kids, and the change falls exactly on AG146, the first episode of season 9. The English cast follows, starting with Sarah Natochenny taking over from Veronica Taylor as Ash.

Seen from France, the effect is much quieter. Not one French voice in the group changes at that point, and the four theme songs of the series are sung by the same performer. What does change in the season 9 theme song is the songwriters of the American source song : John Loeffler and David Wolfert replace Joe Garrity, John Siegler and David Rolfe. That is a fact, not proof: Loeffler was already credited with additional music on season 8, in the middle of the 4Kids era. The real French change lands elsewhere — Brock switches voice actors between season 7 and season 8, a season before the American handover.

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Series 3 — Diamond and Pearl: Sinnoh, Dawn and Team Galactic (seasons 10 to 13)

The third series takes Ash to Sinnoh and weighs in at 191 episodes, from September 28, 2006 to September 9, 2010 in Japan. This is the series where "how many seasons?" gets a different answer depending on the reference: in Japan, Diamond & Pearl is a single block, DP001 to DP191, with no internal division at all. The split into four seasons — 52, 52, 53 then 34 episodes — is international, and France adopted it.

In Poképédia's continuous numbering, aligned on the Japanese broadcast, the series covers episodes 467 to 657. The reset is radical: Ash leaves Kanto with Pikachu as his only Pokémon, plus an Aipom who invited herself along by stowing away on the boat. He meets up with Brock once there and travels, as he did in Hoenn, with a rookie Coordinator: Dawn, from Twinleaf Town. Sinnoh, its three lakes and Mount Coronet supply the mythology that carries the background plot.

S10 · Diamond and PearlS11 · Battle DimensionS12 · Galactic BattlesS13 · Sinnoh League Victors

Season 10 — Diamond and Pearl (52 episodes)

DP001 to DP052, episodes 467 to 518, in Japan from September 28, 2006 to October 25, 2007, in France in 2008 on Jetix, theme song "Diamant et Perle". The season puts everyone in place: Dawn from the very first episode, the rival Paul from DP002 according to Poképédia's infobox, Professor Rowan, and the region's Champion in DP040. Ash earns the Coal Badge in DP018 and the Forest Badge in DP037, then takes in the Chimchar that Paul abandons after the Hearthome City Tag Team Tournament (DP050-DP052).

Season 11 — DP Battle Dimension (52 episodes)

DP053 to DP104, episodes 519 to 570, in Japan from November 8, 2007 to December 4, 2008, in France in 2009 on Jetix, theme song "Nous serons les héros". Three badges fall: Cobble in DP068, Fen in DP083, Relic in DP102. Two group interludes give the season its shape: the Wallace Cup at Valor Lakefront, where May comes back as a guest for DP075-DP079, and Professor Rowan's Pokémon Summer Academy (DP088-DP091). That is where Ash trades his Aipom for Dawn's Buizel.

Season 12 — DP Galactic Battles (53 episodes)

DP105 to DP157, episodes 571 to 623, in Japan from December 4, 2008 to December 24, 2009, and in France from April 6 to September 26, 2010 — the first episode on Disney XD, the rest on Gulli starting the 1^st of May. Theme song: "Oui, fonce !". Ash takes the Mine Badge in DP108 and the Icicle Badge in DP127, loses the full battle at Lake Acuity against Paul (DP131-DP132) and sees his Chimchar evolve into Monferno there. His DP120 recap episode was never broadcast in France.

Season 13 — DP Sinnoh League Victors (34 episodes)

DP158 to DP191, episodes 624 to 657, in Japan from January 7 to September 9, 2010, in France in 2011 on Disney XD, theme song "Ensemble nous vaincrons". The shortest season of the series exists only to close things out : Monferno becomes Infernape in DP163, Grotle becomes Torterra in DP166, the eighth badge — the Beacon Badge — does not arrive until DP179, the Grand Festival takes up DP174-DP177 and the League DP183-DP189. Brock leaves to become a Pokémon Doctor in DP190, and the group splits up in DP191.

Dawn, five ribbons and a final lost on points

Dawn is no sidekick: Poképédia writes that she holds a place as important as Ash's, and she is chasing the Top Coordinator title her mother Johanna already won. She needs five ribbons to enter the Grand Festival : she wins them in Floaroma Town (DP027, against her childhood friend), at the Wallace Cup against May, in Celestic Town, in Chocovine Town and in Daybreak Town. The mechanics of Contests and the Grand Festival deserve a feature of their own.

The count calls for precision. Poképédia credits Dawn with ten contests plus the Wallace Cup, but that total includes the Alamos Town one, which belongs to the tenth movie and not to a season: there are therefore only nine contests in Sinnoh. At the Lake Valor Grand Festival, she beats Ursula then Jessie, and loses the final to Zoey when time runs out, by a handful of points. Her team at the end of the series: Piplup, Buneary, Pachirisu, Mamoswine, Cyndaquil and Togekiss.

Team Galactic: an antagonist that shows up late and leaves fast

The season 12 title is almost retrospective. Cyrus's organization and his plan to remake the universe first appear only in silhouette at the end of DP036, get genuinely involved only in DP060, and Ash does not run into them until DP069, sixty-eight episodes after his arrival in Sinnoh. Cyrus himself does not step on stage until DP096: he is absent from seasons 10 and 13. Everything closes in DP152, where Ash, Dawn and Brock — backed by Cynthia, the Sinnoh League Champion, by agent Looker and by Team Rocket — bring the organization down.

The real antagonist of the series is elsewhere. Pokémon Hunter J turns Pokémon to stone to sell them on commission, and she is never caught: five appearances spread over seven episodes, from DP020 to DP151. She explicitly tries to kill Ash, and her implied death is shown on screen — her ship sinks to the bottom of Lake Valor, with a final shot of her glasses. Poképédia counts only two major characters in that situation, her and Lysandre.

Paul, the Lily of the Valley Conference and the Top 4

The rivalry with Paul, the Trainer who discards whatever doesn't win, is the backbone of the cycle, and it closes cleanly: the Chimchar released in DP052 becomes the Infernape that knocks out three of Paul's Pokémon at the League. Three battles chart the progression. In DP118, Ash beats Paul for the first time in a 1-on-1, in the very match where his Staravia becomes Staraptor. In DP131-DP132, he loses the Full Battle at Lake Acuity. In DP188, he beats him for the first time in a 6-on-6, in the quarterfinals.

The tournament goes by a name that doesn't shorten: the Lily of the Valley Conference. Only sixty-four entrants, against more than two hundred in Hoenn, so no preliminary elimination round. Poképédia counts eight episodes for it, from DP182 to DP189, with DP182 serving as the eve: the tournament actually opens in DP183. Ash reaches the Top 4 there, better than his Top 16 in Kanto and his Top 8 finishes in Johto and Hoenn; he wouldn't do better until the Kalos League, lost in the final, then the Alola League, which he won. He also brings in Pokémon caught outside Sinnoh — including his Johto Cyndaquil, which became Quilava in DP182. It isn't a first: his Kanto Charizard had already come back for Johto's Silver Conference.

He is eliminated in the semifinal by Tobias, a Trainer with a Darkrai and a Latios, who then wins the final with Darkrai alone: it's the first League in the series where Legendary Pokémon take part. The loss is no rout — Sceptile takes Darkrai down, Pikachu and Latios knock each other out, and Tobias admits that no other Trainer has beaten two of his Pokémon.

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Cycle 4 — Black & White: Unova's clean slate (seasons 14 to 16)

Cycle 4 covers 142 episodes, from September 23, 2010 to September 26, 2013 in Japan, in the Unova region, the first one not modeled on Japan, then to the Decolore Islands. It is also the one that carries the series' worst numbering trap: the international run splits it into 3 seasons, Japan into 4 chapters whose internal boundaries never fall in the same place — the chapter Best Wishes! runs 84 episodes and stops in the middle of season 15. NB001 itself carries three numbers: 658 on Poképédia, 654 in English, 660 in Japanese.

The premise fits in one sentence: everything goes back to zero. Ash lands in Unova with Pikachu as his only Pokémon and leaves his team behind in Pallet Town — that much he does in every new region since Hoenn. What belongs to this cycle alone is that everything else disappears along with it. Neither Misty nor Brock appears, except in a brief flashback. His mom and Professor Oak travel with him to the new region, a series first, and Zekrom shows up as early as episode 1: according to Poképédia, it's the only cycle where Ash meets, in his very first episode, one of the mascots of the games the cycle corresponds to. Both companions are new faces, Iris, an aspiring Dragon Master who later becomes Champion of the Unova League, and Cilan, a Pokémon Connoisseur.

S14 · Black & WhiteS15 · Rival DestiniesS16 · Adventures in Unova / Adventures in Unova and Beyond

Then real life stepped in. A two-parter already produced, archived in French under the title "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma!", was scheduled for March 17 and 24, 2011 and showed the destruction of Castelia City. The Tōhoku earthquake of March 11, 2011 struck six days before part one: both episodes were pulled from the schedule and have never aired, in Japan, in the United States or in France. A rescheduled airing was considered, then dropped.

The consequence shows up in the story: Team Plasma, the organization of N and Ghetsis, was meant to enter the picture in season 14. It only arrives in season 16, two years later, across a handful of episodes, where the games make it the central plot. Footage from the two-parter's previews was recycled into episode 753 all the same, and since May 2023 both scripts have circulated online, published by the anonymous buyer who had acquired them at auction — an unofficial source.

Season 14 — Black & White (48 episodes)

NB001 to NB048, in Japan from September 23, 2010 to September 15, 2011, theme song "Black or White." Ash earns the Trio Badge there against Cilan and his two brothers, the three Gym Leaders of Striaton City, and needs two tries against Lenora, beaten in NB015, victorious in NB016. On the French side, the broadcast runs in fits and starts : two episodes on Gulli on February 23, 2011 after a movie, two more on March 2, then nothing until June 5; back on Disney XD on August 28, 2011; and five episodes, NB044 to NB048, dropped on the same day, March 3, 2012.

Season 15 — Rival Destinies (49 episodes)

NB049 to NB097, from September 22, 2011 to October 4, 2012 in Japan, and from April 18, 2012 to February 13, 2013 on Gulli, theme song "Rival Destinies." It's the season of badges 4 through 8, and of a rarely flagged anomaly: Ash's eighth badge, Roxie's Toxic Badge, doesn't exist in Pokémon Black and White — it comes from Black 2 and White 2, where Roxie runs the Virbank City Gym. Conversely, the anime skips the Opelucid City Gym, the game's last one. The two-part finale brings Giovanni, the Team Rocket boss, down onto the field to oversee Meloetta's capture in person: the Pokémon summons Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus, who wreck Unova under his control. An Electro Ball from Pikachu tears the site apart, and it's the Rocket trio that shatters the magic mirror to save their boss.

Season 16 — Adventures in Unova, then Adventures in Unova and Beyond (45 episodes)

NB098 to NB142, from October 11, 2012 to September 26, 2013 in Japan, and from April 17 to November 11, 2013 in France, theme song "It's Always You and Me." A single season, but two titles and two logos : the switch falls at NB123, and it is, according to Poképédia, the only one of the twenty-five seasons of "Pokémon the Series" to hold three arcs — season 3 of Horizons also groups three. The first arc peaks at the Vertress Conference, the anime's name for the Unova League: 128 competitors in the preliminary round, in 1-on-1 battles. Ash finally beats Trip there, eliminated in that very round, then falls in the quarterfinals to Cameron, the Trainer whose Riolu evolves mid-match — a duel straddling NB107 and NB108, where Cameron fields only five Pokémon out of six. Next come the arc devoted to N, the king raised among Pokémon (NB109-NB122), then the Decolore Islands. Iris and Cilan head off for Johto in NB141.

That leaves the criticism that clings to this cycle: that it "reset Ash." The facts themselves check out. He loses his very first Unova battle to Trip, a beginner, with Pikachu no longer able to use his Electric-type moves after his run-in with Zekrom. Across five encounters, he takes two losses (NB001, NB010), a draw (NB031) and a lost Junior Cup final (NB092) before winning at the League. He comes up short in the cycle's three big Trainer competitions, and season 16 brings no badge at all, for a simple reason: the Unova circuit is already finished, the eighth badge having fallen in season 15.

What these facts don't say is what to conclude from them. The word "reset" comes from fan forums, not from the studios : no known statement from TV Tokyo, OLM or The Pokémon Company acknowledges a reboot of the character. And one detail people forget: in Unova, his catches stay with Professor Juniper, in Nuvema Town, and only reach Professor Oak's lab when he leaves for the Decolore Islands.

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Cycle 5 — XY: Kalos, Mega Evolution and the lost final (seasons 17 to 19)

The fifth cycle takes place in Kalos and covers 140 numbered episodes, from October 17, 2013 to October 27, 2016 in Japan, spread across seasons 17, 18 and 19. Ash travels with Serena, Clemont and his little sister Bonnie, earns the region's eight Badges, then reaches the final of the Lumiose Conference. It's also the cycle that puts Mega Evolution on screen, right from the first episode.

The count, though, depends on the source. Poképédia, which this page follows, splits the cycle into 49 + 44 + 47 episodes. The Western split announces 48 + 45 + 48, or 141: one episode changed seasons along the way, and a special dubbed in French adds to the count. In Japan, the cycle isn't made of three seasons but of two successive series, Pocket Monsters XY then Pocket Monsters XY&Z, for 142 episodes counting the two specials.

France opened the cycle with a bang: the first two episodes came out on October 19, 2013, just two days after Japan. But that was a one-off preview event: XY003 had to wait until May 2, 2014, that is 195 days later. The cycle then went back to its usual pace, a median lag of two and a half months in season 17, then four months in season 19.

S17 · XYS18 · XY - Kalos QuestS19 · XYZ

Season 17 — The XY series (49 episodes, XY001-XY049)

Ash lands in Kalos through the Lumiose airport and sets off, as always, without a single Pokémon from his previous regions, Pikachu excepted. He catches Froakie as early as XY002 and Fletchling in XY003, then meets Serena, Clemont and Bonnie. The Badge run starts with a failure: beaten by Viola, the Santalune City Gym Leader, in XY005, he only wins the Bug Badge in the XY006 rematch. The season also lays down the vocabulary of the Kalos region : the Mega Stone is worn by the Pokémon, the Key Stone by the Trainer.

One episode throws off every date in this season. XY024 was pulled from the Japanese schedule of April 24, 2014 after the sinking of the South Korean ferry Sewol, and only aired on November 20, 2014, slotted in between XY050 and XY051. In France it didn't arrive until May 1^st 2015, while its immediate neighbors XY023 and XY025 had gone out on June 4, 2014. That single episode is what stretches season 17's window into 2015, and it's the one the international split moved to the following season.

Season 18 — The XY series - Kalos Quest (44 episodes, XY050-XY093)

In Japan, episodes XY050-XY093 run from November 13, 2014 to October 22, 2015 — the Japanese season 18, for its part, only starts at XY055; in France, the broadcast runs from May 1^st 2015 to January 19, 2016, on Canal J then Gulli. It's the season of the mid-run Badges, and the fifth is won against a member of the group : Clemont is the Lumiose Gym Leader, and Ash beats him on his home turf in XY067. Froakie evolves into Frogadier in XY052, his Fletchling — which had become Fletchinder in XY036 — reaches Talonflame in XY086, and Ash releases his Goodra back into its marsh before calling it up again for the League. French theme song: "Sois un héros".

A catalog trap runs right through it. XY078, "Pikachu en vedette !", is a special episode in Japan that France treated as an ordinary episode: its neighbors XY077 and XY079 aired on September 17, 2015, and it aired on January 15, 2016, four months later.

Season 19 — The XYZ series (47 episodes, XY094-XY140)

This is the season that closes out the series, airing in Japan from October 29, 2015 to October 27, 2016 and in France from April 13, 2016 to February 9, 2017. It strings together three blocks: the end of the Gyms, the Lumiose Conference, then the destruction of Lumiose City. Frogadier evolves into Greninja in XY100. Ash first loses to Wulfric in XY120, slips out of the Pokémon Center toward the Winding Woods in XY121, and only earns his eighth Badge in the rematch in XY122, against a Mega Abomasnow.

The final act is one of the darkest in the anime. From XY132 to XY136, Lumiose City is torn apart by giant roots : Lysandre's Team Flare has seized the blue-cored Zygarde entity, Z2, and is using it as a weapon. Squishy, the red-cored entity taken in by Bonnie in XY094, first tries to stop it before being enslaved in turn, in XY133. It takes a coalition of the eight Kalos Gym Leaders, Champion Diantha, Steven Stone, Malva and even Team Rocket to break the assault. XY135 and XY136 aired on the same day in Japan, September 15, 2016.

Mega Evolution, Ash-Greninja and the mirror-image Kalos League final

Mega Evolution doesn't wait: Professor Sycamore explains it to Ash as early as XY001-XY002. The series then lines up its showcases, from Korrina's Mega Lucario in XY032 to Lysandre's Shiny Mega Gyarados in XY133. But the star transformation of the series isn't one of them.

The official French name of the form is "Amphinobi Forme Sacha" ; in the anime, it's Bonnie who nicknames it "Sachanobi". It rests on the Ability Battle Bond, without a single Mega Stone, and it comes at a price: Ash himself takes the damage his Pokémon receives, which XY102 shows explicitly. Alain, who discovers the scene in XY106, is the first to assume it's a Mega Evolution and is surprised that no stone is needed. Watch the spelling: "Amphinobi-Sacha" is a calque of the English.

While Ash collects Badges, Serena is chasing a title of her own. She's after the Kalos Queen crown by way of Pokémon Showcases, falls short on her first attempt in XY060, changes her hair and outfit as a result, then wins her three Princess Keys in XY080, XY091 and XY109. She reaches the Master Class final in XY112-XY113 and loses it to Aria, who keeps her title.

That leaves Ash's own final. The Lumiose Conference runs from XY125 to XY131: he beats Titus, Astrid and then Sawyer, and faces Alain in a 6-on-6 that ends with Mega Charizard X against Ash-Greninja. Ash finishes second — Poképédia sees this as his first time reaching the final of a Pokémon League ; he would have to wait for the Manalo Conference, in Alola, to finally become Champion. The symmetry is complete: Alain had gathered the eight Kalos Badges too, the eighth taken from Korrina off-screen, as we learn in XY123.

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Series 6 — Sun & Moon: the Alola school and the first title (seasons 20 to 22)

The sixth series adapts Pokémon Sun and Moon, then Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. In Japan, it forms a single continuous run of 146 episodes, codes SL001 to SL146, aired from November 17, 2016 to November 3, 2019 on TV Tokyo; it's the international split that cuts it into three seasons, 43 + 49 + 54. In the anime's overall numbering, these episodes occupy slots 940 to 1085: the series' 1,000th episode is SL061, "A Mission of Ultra Urgency!".

The series divided viewers before it even aired. The art style changes completely: softer linework, rounder faces, a wider range of expressions. As early as September 2016, the French press judged it far more childish than its predecessor; Anime News Network explained in December 2016 that this style serves a freer kind of animation, built on Toon Boom tools. Daiki Tomiyasu directed at studio OLM, with Satoshi Nakano on character design, assisted by Shūhei Yasuda. Three years later, this series mocked for its artwork would be the one that finally lets Ash win.

S20 · Sun & MoonS21 · Sun & Moon—Ultra AdventuresS22 · Sun & Moon—Ultra Legends

The break in substance runs deeper than the artwork. For the first time in the series, Ash isn't on the road: he moves in with Professor Kukui and enrolls at the Pokémon School, a place unique to the animated series, located on Melemele Island and run by Samson Oak. The pair or trio of traveling companions gives way to five classmates who take turns from episode to episode: Lillie, Mallow, Kiawe, Lana and Sophocles. The Pokédex itself becomes a character: the Rotom Dex talks, comments and follows the hero everywhere.

Another convention thrown overboard: the Gyms. Alola has none, and Ash doesn't win a single badge in the whole series — it's the first series in that situation; the next one won't have a Gym circuit either, though Ash will still receive one stand-alone badge there, in LV105. In their place, the island challenge strings together "trials", a term specific to the anime, each closed out by a Totem Pokémon; every island then wraps up with its grand trial, which pits the challenger not against a Totem but against the island kahuna, chosen by the local guardian deity. The contrast with the Gym circuit and the Elite Four of the other regions is head-on; the details of the four islands can be found in the complete guide to the Alola region.

Season 20 — The Sun & Moon series (43 episodes)

43 episodes, SL001 to SL043, from November 17, 2016 to September 21, 2017 in Japan; in France from November 18, 2016 to March 7, 2018. Theme song: "Sous le soleil d'Alola". This is the settling-in season: Ash catches Rowlet in SL004, Rockruff in SL015 and Litten in SL021, but not the regional bird, which breaks an unbroken run stretching from Pidgeotto to Fletchling.

It runs through the first two grand trials. In SL010, Ash beats Kahuna Hala in a 2-on-2 and receives a Fightinium Z, immediately swapped by Tapu Koko for an Electrium Z ; in SL036, he gets the better of Kahuna Olivia in a Double Battle and leaves with a Rockium Z. In between, his Rockruff evolves in SL037 into Dusk Form Lycanroc, the third form introduced by Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, while Lillie's Alolan Vulpix, nicknamed Snowy, illustrates what sets a regional form apart from the original species. The season closes on a school trip to Kanto (SL042-SL043) organized for the school's twentieth anniversary, where Ash sees Misty and Brock again.

Season 21 — The Sun & Moon—Ultra Adventures series (49 episodes)

49 episodes, SL044 to SL092, from October 5, 2017 to October 14, 2018 in Japan; in France from the 1^st of May 2018 to February 7, 2019 on Canal J. Theme song: "Sous la lune d'Alola". This is the season that turns a classroom into a task force : Lusamine, president of the Aether Foundation, names the group the "Ultra Guardians" and puts it in charge of sending the creatures from another dimension back home.

Those creatures are the Ultra Beasts, eleven species that come through Ultra Wormholes. The first one on screen is Nihilego, glimpsed in SL047 in one of Gladion's memories. The first official mission, in SL061, has Ash catch a Buzzwole with the anime's first Beast Ball, then release it ; Poipole follows in SL067 and Stakataka in SL085, then a Pheromosa in SL114. The Celesteela of SL069, for its part, is sent back by the Ultra Guardians without ever counting among Ash's catches. A Cosmog nicknamed Nebby, met in SL044, evolves all the way to Solgaleo, leaves the group in SL055 and returns in SL088. Pikachu, for his part, receives his exclusive Z-Move, 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt, in SL054. Lillie's arc, as Lusamine's daughter and Gladion's sister, serves as the season's dramatic through line.

The season then raises the stakes with Necrozma, dubbed "UB Black" in the anime, the main antagonist from SL087 to SL090. It also leaves the series' only gap: SL064, which aired in Japan on the 1^st of March 2018, was never dubbed, in France or in the United States — so France saw 145 of the 146 episodes.

Season 22 — The Sun & Moon—Ultra Legends series (54 episodes)

54 episodes, SL093 to SL146, from October 21, 2018 to November 3, 2019 in Japan; in France from June 3, 2019 to April 24, 2020, Monday through Friday at 4:30 p.m. Theme song: "Le défi de la vie". It's the longest season of the series, and the one with the crowning. The Japanese broadcast shifts from Thursday to Sunday just before it, between SL090 on September 13, 2018 and SL091 on October 7.

Ash finishes his island challenge in it — the fourth and last grand trial in SL109, against Kahuna Hapu, at night on a water-covered field, for a Steelium Z — then Professor Kukui makes official in SL115 the tournament he has been hinting at since SL043. The Manalo Conference, which crowns Alola's first League Champion, opens in SL128 with a Battle Royal among 151 entrants, a nod to the first 151 Pokémon. Poképédia makes it the longest League in the series at 17 episodes, through SL144 — a total that takes in the post-title exhibition match: the tournament itself ends in SL139 with the final, so twelve episodes. It's also the first League where the entire main group competes.

Having qualified through the Battle Royal, Ash pushes Faba aside in the round of 16 in SL130 — it's Meltan, caught in SL112, that beats the opposing Hypno —, Hau in the quarterfinals, then Guzma, the Team Skull boss who entered the plot very late, in the semifinal. In the final, in SL139, he beats Gladion in a 3-on-3 and becomes the very first Alola League Champion : his first regional League title, twenty-two years after the first Japanese episode of the 1^st April 1997. French viewers, for their part, saw that final on 1^st March 2020, a little over twenty years after the first French broadcast on September 5, 1999. It is the only official League where he does not lose a single battle, and his Meltan evolves into Melmetal in the middle of the tournament, in SL138.

The series does not stop at the trophy. Ash then takes on the League's founder in a 6-on-6, from SL141 to SL144, after discovering in SL140 that his host and teacher is also the Masked Royal, the masked wrestler of the Battle Royal Dome. In SL146, he leaves all his Alola Pokémon with Professor Kukui and sets off again with Pikachu alone, while the class scatters.

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Series 7 — Journeys: the whole world and the world title (seasons 23 to 25)

Series 7 is the seventh and final series of "Pokémon the Series" : 147 episodes, aired in Japan from November 17, 2019 to March 24, 2023, and in France from July 18, 2020 to November 12, 2023. Poképédia codes them LV001 to LV147, Bulbapedia JN001 to JN147: same scope, two reference systems. In absolute numbering, Poképédia and the French Wikipedia count them from the 1,086^th to the 1,232^nd episode of the anime.

Seasons 23, 24 and 25 are a Western construct. Japan never aired three seasons, but two blocks — a first one of 136 episodes (LV001 to LV136, through December 16, 2022), a second of 11 episodes (LV137 to LV147, from January 13 to March 24, 2023). Season 25 therefore straddles both: it runs to 57 episodes on Poképédia, the last eleven of which also form a standalone arc, released under its own French title, "Pokémon : Être Maître Pokémon".

S23 · JourneysS24 · Master JourneysS25 · Ultimate Journeys

Above all, this is the series that breaks the formula. No single region to travel across, no Badge circuit or regional League to chase : his progress is now measured by a world ranking. Only one Badge still falls, outside any circuit — the second Rain Badge that Wallace gives him in LV105, seventeen years after Juan's. He and Goh become research assistants at the laboratory of Professor Cerise, in Vermilion City, and live there from LV002 on; each episode heads out from there to a region — Galar, Kanto, Sinnoh, Alola — then comes back. It is also the first series where the traveling group is down to two boys.

The co-lead is named Goh, and his goal is to catch every species once to get closer to Mew. He catches Scorbunny in LV005, then Legendaries: Eternatus in LV045, Suicune in LV053, Regieleki in LV113. It is, according to Poképédia, the first series in which a member of the traveling group catches more Pokémon than Ash. His quest gets a name in LV068 with the reveal of Project Mew, run by Professor Amaranth, who selects her Chasers with tokens: Goh scrapes through, third with 10 tokens, behind Gary Oak and Horace.

The third main character barely travels at all. Chloe Cerise goes to school during the week and joins the two boys only now and then: her Poképédia infobox lists her as a "Pokémon Trainer," not a researcher, and she does not become a lab assistant until LV136, on weekends only. She catches her first Pokémon of her own, an Eevee, in LV049, and her arc consists of meeting the Eeveelutions so that Eevee can choose its own. The answer, given by Lana in LV112, is a "ninth path": that Eevee stays an Eevee.

The through-line of the series is the World Coronation Series, whose official French name is Tournoi du Couronnement Mondial. The competition sorts its entrants into four classes: Master Class from 1^st to 8^th place, Hyper Class from 9^th to 99^th, Super Class from 100^th to 999^th, Normal Class beyond 1,000^th. LV018 announces at least 10,808 entrants. You sign up with your Rotom Phone, and each battle allows only one mechanic out of Mega Evolution, Z-Moves and Dynamax, Galar's homegrown mechanic. Ash enters it ranked 3,763^rd and comes out first.

Season 23 — Pokémon Journeys: The Series (LV001 to LV048)

• 48 episodes, LV001 to LV048
• Japan: November 17, 2019 to December 4, 2020
• France: July 18, 2020 to April 25, 2021
• French opening theme: "Le voyage peut commencer"

The season sets up the laboratory, the duo and the Tournament. It takes Ash ten episodes to catch his second Pokémon, a Dragonite in LV010: the slowest start among the opening seasons of a series. He signs up in LV018 beyond 10,000^th place, moves up to 3,763^rd by winning his first battle, climbs as high as 890^th place, then takes his first defeat in LV034 against Bea, Galar's Fighting-type Gym Leader; two more losses in LV036 send him back to Normal Class, 1,021^st. It is also a Covid season: the Japanese broadcast stopped for seven weeks after LV022 on April 19, 2020, for lack of voice actors — the second interruption in the show's history, after the one in season 1. The series has only one feature film, "Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle," attached to this season.

Season 24 — Pokémon Master Journeys: The Series (LV049 to LV090)

• 42 episodes, LV049 to LV090
• Japan: December 11, 2020 to December 10, 2021
• France: September 4, 2021 to May 29, 2022
• French opening theme: "Le chemin de ton cœur"

This is the comeback season. Ash is back to 381^st after LV051, 184^th in LV060, then 99^th by beating Iris in LV065, which takes him into Hyper Class, and 36^th after his third clash with Bea (LV085-LV086), won thanks to Mega Lucario — the Riolu hatched in LV021 and evolved in LV045. Poképédia leaves several tiers blank: the climb is documented by milestones, not place by place. Alongside it, Project Mew takes up the second half of the season and Ash's Galarian Farfetch’d evolves into Sirfetch’d in LV060.

Season 25 — Pokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series (LV091 to LV147)

• 57 episodes, LV091 to LV147 — the longest of the series, and the last of "Pokémon the Series"
• Japan: December 17, 2021 to March 24, 2023
• France: July 9, 2022 online, September 3, 2022 on television; last broadcast on November 12, 2023
• French opening themes: "Avec toi" (LV091 to LV136), then "Attrapez-les tous" (LV137 to LV147)

Ash moves up to 9^th after his win over Drasna (LV104), then takes 8^th place and Master Class in LV109 in a Combat de Passage, the only exception to the rule that Trainers face their equals, which pits the 9^th of Hyper Class against the 8^th of Master Class. The Masters Eight Tournament is then held in Wyndon, from LV115 to LV132 : there Ash beats Steven Stone, the Hoenn Champion, in the quarterfinals (LV118), Cynthia in the semifinals (LV123 to LV125, his Mega Lucario getting the better of the Sinnoh Champion's Garchomp), then, for the title, Leon, the Galar League Champion. Their final runs over four episodes (LV129 to LV132) and ends on a duel between Pikachu and Leon's Charizard. He is crowned Monarch, and world champion.

The rest of the season closes out the show: Goh and Chloe leave it after LV136; from LV137 on, Pikachu is the only permanent Pokémon on Ash's team, while Misty returns in LV138 and Brock in LV139 for the final arc. Two French oddities mark this ending: four episodes (LV119, LV121, LV126 and LV128) were never dubbed or aired in French, leaving only 53 episodes on this side of the world; and the finale, LV147, aired on October 31, 2023, ahead of three episodes that come before it in the Japanese order, up to LV144 on November 12.

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Ash's eleven farewell episodes

The 16th of December 2022, The Pokémon Company announces two things on the same day: the adventures of Ash and Pikachu are coming to an end, and an entirely new series will take their place the following spring. The send-off fills eleven episodes written for the occasion, aired in Japan one per week from January 13 to March 24, 2023.

Eleven episodes, and definitely not a season

First misunderstanding to clear up: this farewell does not make a 26^th season. These are the last eleven episodes of season 25, Pokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series, coded LV137 to LV147, that is, episodes 1,222 to 1,232 in the continuous French numbering; Poképédia groups them under a sub-arc whose official French name is "Pokémon : Être Maître Pokémon". The French opening theme switches at exactly the same point: a signal, not a scheduling accident.

In France, the ending aired before the ending

France gets the arc between October 21 and November 12, 2023, in a scrambled order. LV147, the last episode of the show, airs there on October 31, 2023 — but three episodes of the arc air after it: LV142 on November 4, LV143 on November 5, and LV144 "Au cœur du problème !" on November 12, 2023. So a viewer who followed the schedule watched Ash say his goodbyes, then saw him three more times traveling as if nothing had happened.

What happens in these eleven episodes

The setup is simple: from LV137 on, only Pikachu stays on the team permanently, and Ash rotates his former Pokémon from one episode to the next. On the human side, Misty, the Cerulean City Gym Leader, returns in LV138 and stays until the end; Brock, the Pewter City Gym Leader, arrives in LV139 with Cilan in tow — whom the French title "Les héros et la sorcière !" does not even name, while the Japanese title does. The Team Rocket trio gets its own epilogue in LV145, when Jessie and James collect from headquarters the Pokémon they had left there.

The real thread the arc ties off lies elsewhere. In episode 81, aired in Japan in January 1999, Ash leaves his Pidgeot to protect a flock of Pidgey and Pidgeotto, and promises to come back for it. Twenty-four years later, in the very last episode, a Pidgeot swoops down from the sky to free Pikachu from a net, then officially becomes one of Ash's Pokémon again. Bulbapedia puts a number on the wait: 1,151 episodes between the departure and the return. In between, the bird had reappeared only in the season 9 opening, in flashbacks and in thought.

The ending itself is open. Ash is not hanging it up: Misty and Brock leave him one after the other to return to their home cities, then, back alone in Pallet Town, he finally says what being a Pokémon Master means to him — meeting the Pokémon of the whole world and becoming their friend — before set off on a new journey with Pikachu. He leaves the air as the reigning Monarch of the World Coronation Series. This isn't a character death, it's a camera that stops following a Trainer from Pallet Town who set out twenty-five seasons earlier.

Has he come back since? Where things stand as of September 5, 2026

No. No new appearance by Ash has been documented in any Pokémon animated program since LV147 on March 24, 2023. He does not appear in the series that follows his own, and he is never named in it; the only bridges to the old series that have been spotted are a Nurse Joy and a silent cameo by Steven Stone, the Hoenn Champion — not to be confused with Brock, the Pewter City Gym Leader, who shares his French name — in an episode from December 2025. The franchise's 30th anniversary, celebrated on February 27, 2026, didn't bring him back either.

Two news items from August 2026 can be misleading. On August 7, Disney+ put a first wave of 27 episodes back online in the United States from season 1, with a second wave announced for September 9, 2026, four days after this snapshot: that's a catalog return, not a character return. And the new feature film announced at the close of the San Francisco World Championships — on August 30 on site, picked up by the press on the 31st — is slated for 2027, with neither Ash nor Pikachu in the starring role. No official statement has closed the door, though : the teams who have been asked stick to open-ended wording, with no timeline. He is gone, but he has not disappeared.

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Pokémon Horizons: the series that starts back at 1

Announced on December 16, 2022, "Pokémon Horizons: The Series" premiered on April 14, 2023 on TV Tokyo, three weeks after Ash's final episode. This is not one more season: it is a brand-new series, with new heroes, new episode codes (LH instead of LV) and a counter that starts back at 1. In France, it began airing on December 9, 2023 on Canal J, then on Gulli from February 28, 2024.

Here again, Japan splits the show into arcs and the international release groups those arcs into seasons : four seasons currently cover seven numbered arcs plus one special arc, and Poképédia itself notes that the fourth has not been announced outside Japan.

Season 1Season 2 · The Search for LaquaSeason 3 · The Wings of Hope

Three things set this series apart from the twenty-five seasons before it. First, a pair of heroes rather than a lone Trainer : Liko, the shy girl whose pendant sets the plot in motion, and Roy, a boy from an island off the coast of Kanto. Next, the absence of a badge run: nobody here collects a region's eight Badges to take on a League. Finally, a serialized plot built on a family secret, which forces you to watch in order — something Ash's anime almost never required.

Season 1: the pendant, the airship and the ancient Poké Ball

The first season runs 45 episodes, LH001 to LH045, and on its own merges the first two Japanese arcs ; internationally, the move from one to the other shows only in the changed opening visuals. Liko comes from Cabo Poco, in Paldea, and arrives in Kanto to study at the Indigo Academy, where she is given a Sprigatito. The pendant she wears around her neck, a gift from her grandmother Diana, immediately draws the Explorers, among them Amethio, the administrator sent after her.

She is taken in by the Rising Volt Tacklers, a crew led by Friede, the Professor who commands from his airship, the Brave Olivine. Friede's Pikachu, nicknamed Captain Pikachu, is officially the ship's captain ; it is from his dream — taking off at dawn to climb higher than the rising sun — that both the group's name and the series' name come. Also on board are Orla, Murdock, Mollie, Ludlow and Dot, a computer expert who streams under the handle Nidothing.

Roy, the boy with the ancient Poké Ball, shows up as early as LH003 with a Fuecoco. His Poké Ball opens for the first time in LH006 and releases a Shiny Rayquaza, the "Black Rayquaza". A word on the name: he is Roy in English and in Japanese, but Rhod in French, because "Roy" is already the French name of the Hammerlocke Gym Leader, Raihan. In France, the season ran from December 9, 2023 to October 13, 2024, with the theme song "Être qui je suis".

Season 2: Laqua, Terapagos and the one-year time skip

The second season, 44 episodes (LH046 to LH089), a merger of arcs 3 and 4 : the first revolves around the Terastal phenomenon and the Naranja Academy, Paldea's school — unrelated to the Orange Archipelago or the Orange League from Ash's season 2 — and the second around the Black Rayquaza. This is where the revelation that holds the whole series together lands: Liko's pendant is not a piece of jewelry, it is Terapagos asleep in crystallized form, nicknamed Pagogo — the same nickname in French, in English and in Japanese. That nickname comes from Rystal, Liko's great-great-grandmother, a hundred years earlier; Terapagos officially becomes Liko's third Pokémon in LH075.

The season aired in France from January 12 to November 2, 2025, with the theme song "Mon Pokémon préféré". Its final episode, LH089, jumps one year forward in time : the heroes grow older, and the Rising Volt Tacklers are disbanded and wrongly blamed for the Laqua disaster. That is a break from the twenty-five seasons before it, where Ash is still presented as ten years old no matter how many years have gone by on screen.

Season 3: The Wings of Hope, and the return of Mega Evolution

The third season is the longest and the most unusual of the set: 47 episodes (LH090 to LH136) that bundle together not two but three Japanese blocks, including a special arc of only 3 episodes devoted to Mega Evolution — a flashback to the meeting of Roy and Ult in Kalos. The math adds up: 22 + 3 + 22 = 47.

It is through this arc that Mega Evolution, the mechanic born in Kalos, makes its entrance in Horizons. It arrives with Ult, the rival from Lumiose City, who wears a Mega Bracelet and has a Sableye able to Mega Evolve. Ult shows up in LH090, that is, in the very first episode of season 3, then joins the Rising Volt Tacklers when the group re-forms in LH100. Part of the season takes place at the Blueberry Academy, in Unova, and in its artificial reserve, the Terarium.

Roy is officially recognized as team leader in LH122, alongside Captain Pikachu, and catches the Black Rayquaza for good in LH129. Sprigatito, which became Floragato in LH045 then Meowscarada in LH088, and Fuecoco, which became Crocalor in LH067 then Skeledirge in LH119, close the starter cycle opened in season 1. French theme song: "Évolution". The Japanese broadcast ended on May 1^st , 2026; the French one, which began on November 9, 2025, is still ongoing.

Season 4: a Japanese arc in progress, with no French title

Since May 22, 2026 and LH137, Japan has been airing a new arc, ワンダーボヤージュ. As of September 5, 2026, this season has no French title, no French theme song, no French air date, not even an international announcement : Poképédia shows "??" everywhere and states that the total number of episodes is still unknown. No official English title exists either. The lead quartet is now Liko, Roy, Dot and Ult, joined in LH142 by Navi, a girl from Lumiose City who is the Trainer of a Ditto.

Even the arc's number depends on the source: Poképédia calls it "arc 7" by keeping the special Mega Evolution arc separate, while Bulbapedia counts it as the eighth arc. Both readings hold up, as long as you say which one you are using.

Where the broadcast stands, as of September 5, 2026

Three schedules, three different situations. Japan is the only territory that is up to date : LH147 aired there on August 28, 2026, and LH148 is scheduled for this September 4. France is up to LH131, "Le rassemblement de l'amitié !", released on August 23, 2026; LH132 was announced for September 6, 2026, the day after this snapshot, and we were not able to confirm that it aired. The gap between the two countries is therefore sixteen episodes, and two season 3 episodes — LH135 and LH136 — still have neither a French title nor a French date, even though Japan aired them in April and May 2026.

On the English-language side, the release does not start in the United States but in the United Kingdom, several weeks to three months ahead depending on the season, and the American episodes land on Netflix in grouped batches. 123 episodes are available in the United States, with season 3's final batch (LH124 to LH136) announced on Netflix for September 18, 2026, thirteen days after this snapshot.

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Traveling companions, season by season

French-speaking fans call it the Pokégroupe : the team Ash forms with his traveling companions. Poképédia sets its lineup cycle by cycle, and that is the list that counts: nine successive lineups across twenty-five seasons.

The original trio and the Orange Archipelago interlude

Misty, the Cerulean City Gym Leader, appears as early as episode 1 but only joins Ash in episode 2, and for a very down-to-earth reason: she follows him until he pays her back for the bike Pikachu destroyed. Brock joins them in episode 5, leaving the Pewter City Gym behind. The trio holds for five seasons, with one exception: season 2.

Brock stays behind on Valencia Island with Professor Ivy, and in his place the group recruits Tracey Sketchit, the watcher who draws Pokémon. With 33 episodes, he is the Pokégroupe member who traveled with Ash for the shortest time; he then becomes Professor Oak's assistant.

The split comes inepisode 273, "Gotta Catch Ya Later!", the second-to-last of season 5: Misty takes the Cerulean City Gym back over to stand in for her sisters, who have left on a cruise.

Brock, eight seasons longer than Misty

Where Misty stops, Brock, the Pewter City Gym Leader turned Breeder and then Pokémon Doctor, stays on through season 13, the group's cook. He is the one who decides to leave : in DP191, he announces that he wants to become a Pokémon Doctor. Hence his absence in Unova, in Kalos and in Alola.

Hoenn then Sinnoh: the Coordinator era

Cycles 2 and 3 run the same formula again, a rookie Coordinator alongside Ash. May is the first heroine in the group to chase Contest Ribbons rather than Badges ; she leaves the series inAG192 (episode 466) for the Johto Contests, at the same time as Max. Dawn takes over in DP001, and the trio breaks up in DP191, episode 657, which closes out both Sinnoh and the longest companionship in the series, begun in episode 5.

Unova, Kalos, Alola: three formats

Cycle 4 wipes the slate clean: no companion comes from Kanto anymore. Iris runs into Ash in NB002, Cilan appears in NB005 and inherits Brock's apron, but the trio is not officially formed until the end of NB006 ; the two of them head off together for Johto in episode 798 (NB141), by Magnet Train.

Cycle 5 comes together in three stages: Ash meets Clemont and Bonnie in XY001, they decide to travel together in XY003, and Serena, who is aiming for the title of Kalos Queen, does not join the Pokégroupe until XY006. She is the first traveling companion to have known Ash before the very start of the series, when they were both children: in XY140 (episode 939), she flies off to Hoenn and kisses him, the only character to have kissed him in the series, movies aside.

Alola changes the very nature of the Pokégroupe: these are no longer traveling companions but five Pokémon School classmates, all introduced right from SL001. It is the largest group in the series, and none of its members leaves along the way: it is Ash who goes, in SL146, episode 1085.

Goh, the only companion of cycle 7

The last three seasons have only one official companion, Goh : in LV136, he owns 108 Pokémon and has registered 116 species in his Pokédex — the very episode in which he and Ash leave the Cerise Laboratory. Chloe Cerise travels with the duo across the same seasons, but Poképédia files her as a recurring character, not a main character : she does not appear in the cycle 7 protagonist banner.

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Ash's team, region by region

Poképédia counts 56 Pokémon acquisitions by Ash over the 1,232 episodes of the series: 54 numbered entries, plus a Raticate obtained in a trade and a Beedrill caught and then given to Casey, the Johto Trainer — the rival introduced in episode 118, who in French shares her name, Cathy, with the video-game character met in season 9, Anabel, and shares nothing else with her. The number of Pokémon actually owned is another matter entirely: 77, because the thirty Tauros from the Safari Zone count one by one. The tally adds up exactly — Pikachu, 41 entries at Professor Oak's (70 individuals in all), 4 left in Alola with Professor Kukui, 2 entrusted to others. Poképédia also credits 98 different species to Ash, pre-evolutions and released Pokémon included: a figure taken as is, since the itemized list is published nowhere. The run of the Trainer from Pallet Town is covered elsewhere, season by season.

The rule across the series is five catches or more per region, with two exceptions that Poképédia allows for itself: the Orange Archipelago and the second stay in Kanto, the Battle Frontier one. The table follows the continuous French episode numbering.

Four seasons contain no acquisition at all : 13, 16, 19 and 25. Each of them closes a cycle, but the reverse is not true: 5, 9 and 22 close theirs as well and each records one acquisition.

The evolution refusals of his oldest companions

Ash never forces one of his Pokémon to evolve and leaves them the choice; two refusals shown on screen make it a character signature. Pikachu tosses the Thunder Stone aside in episode 14 before going on to beat Lt. Surge's Raichu, a moment covered in detail on the page devoted to Pikachu. Squirtle, leader of the firefighting squad met in episode 12, never evolved either.

Bulbasaur is the clearest case. Taken in during episode 10 at Melanie's hidden village, a shelter for injured Pokémon that he was guarding, he is Ash's third Pokémon caught but his fourth Pokémon, since Pikachu was a gift. In episode 51, he turns down the secret garden ceremony presided over by a Venusaur and learns Solar Beam there; he settles in at the lab in episode 225. Along with Charmander and Squirtle, he completes Ash's trio of Kanto starters — none of the three having been received as a starter.

The departures, the returns and the promise kept 1,151 episodes later

The first Pokémon Ash ever caught, a Caterpie taken in episode 3 without a single battle, is also the first one lost: now a Butterfree, he is traded for a Raticate aboard the S.S. Anne in episode 15, won back in a second trade, then released in episode 21 to follow a pink Butterfree. Charmander arrives in episode 11, abandoned in the rain by Damian; once he becomes Charizard in episode 46, he stops obeying, prefers a nap to battling Ritchie's Pikachu in episode 79, leaves to train in the Charicific Valley in episode 134 and only comes back for good in episode 773, six hundred and thirty-nine episodes later.

The record for waiting belongs to Pidgeot, the only Pokémon of Ash's to have evolved in the very episode where he was left behind, in episode 81; he only comes back in the very last episode, 1,151 later.

The three anomalies of twenty-five seasons

Poképédia recognizes only three "special" Pokémon for Ash across 1,232 episodes. The first is the Shiny Noctowl caught in episode 154, in Johto: the first Shiny Pokémon to appear in the animated series, smaller than an ordinary Noctowl, and sparkling as it comes out of its Poké Ball just as in the games. The second is the Kalos Greninja: Froakie was living at Professor Sycamore's lab and caught himself, deliberately pressing one of Ash's Poké Balls in episode 801, the second episode of season 17. Ash releases him in episode 938.

The third anomaly comes from Alola: Rockruff joins Ash in episode 954 and evolves into Dusk Form Lycanroc in episode 976, facing the sunset, after being healed by Tapu Lele — neither the Midday Form nor the Midnight Form, but the third one.

Thirty Tauros never seen, and a Dragonite that cannot fly

The thirty Tauros account for 39% of his total, and no French-speaking viewer has ever seen them being caught, since episode 35 was never broadcast anywhere in the West. Nor was the herd taken in a single throw: Ash catches one, Brock another, then the herd runs across the path of every Safari Ball aimed at a Rhyhorn, and the park warden transfers all thirty to the lab that same evening. Another unusual case is the Dragonite of episode 1095: a Dragonair unable to fly, whom Ash teaches to take off by bouncing her on Pikachu's Electroweb, and whom only the French version confirms to be female.

One last category is missing from the count: the three Ultra Beasts caught and then released in the same episode by Ash as an Ultra Guardian — Buzzwole, Stakataka and Pheromosa — absent from the list of acquisitions. And the Farfetch’d obtained in episode 1112 is in fact its Galarian regional form, the only one able to evolve.

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Badges and Leagues: Ash's complete record

Ash Ketchum chased an official title for twenty-five seasons, from episode 5 to episode 1217. Each campaign is listed here under the official name Poképédia gives it. The ranges are in arc codes, except for the world tournament, given in overall numbering.

Twenty years of "almost"

The results column tells the whole story, and the progression is not even steady: the Top 8 in Unova comes after the Top 4 in Sinnoh, the only step backward in the entire career. Watch out for the names: "Lumiose Conference", "Ever Grande Conference" and "Manalo Conference" exist only as row labels on Poképédia, whose own pages are titled Kalos League, Hoenn League and Alola League.

Two losses stand out, and for the same reason: the opponent was simply on another level. In Sinnoh, Tobias fields two Legendaries in a League ; in Kalos, the final comes down to the last exchange against Alain.

The Orange League is not a regional League

The Orange Archipelago circuit has neither an Elite Four nor eight Gyms : four Gym Leaders and one Supreme Gym Leader make up the Orange Crew, and the challenges test skills as much as battling — target shooting with Cissy, an ice sled run with Danny. Ash earns his four badges, then beats Drake 6-on-6, with Pikachu taking down the Dragonite that had already knocked out three of his Pokémon. Poképédia is clear: this trophy does not grant the rank of League Champion. The full rundown of the challenges is in the feature on season 2, the Orange Islands season.

The "Battle Frontier": seven Symbols, and a title turned down

The Kanto circuit that French-speaking fans call the "Front de Combat" does not go by that name in French sources: the French dub of the anime speaks of extreme matches, extreme Gyms and extreme Leaders, while the games say Battle Frontier. The dub even kept the American names of the seven opponents, where the French games give them seven different ones. Ash wins all seven Symbols there, after one loss to Anabel and two to Brandon, then turns down becoming a Frontier Brain himself so he can get back on the road. The run starts at the end of season 8 and takes up most of season 9, Battle Frontier.

The badges Ash never won, and the one he won without receiving

Poképédia says it plainly: Ash gets most of his early badges as a reward for a favor, not for a win. The specific cases:

• Boulder Badge (Brock, ep. 5): match interrupted, badge handed over anyway.
• Cascade Badge (ep. 7): match interrupted; Misty's sisters hand it over for saving the Gym.
• Marsh Badge (Sabrina, ep. 24): Haunter makes Sabrina laugh, her Kadabra laughs along with her and becomes unable to battle.
• Rainbow Badge (Erika, ep. 26): match interrupted; a reward for carrying Gloom out of the fire.
• Earth Badge (ep. 63): won but never handed over — the Viridian City Gym is being run by the Team Rocket trio, Jessie refuses to give up the badge, and an explosion makes her drop it straight into Ash's hands.
• Glacier Badge (Pryce, Johto, ep. 238): earned after the Gym Leader forfeited.
• Cobble Badge (Maylene, Sinnoh, ep. 534): a draw; Maylene hands over the badge all the same.

Another counting oddity: Ash holds nine Hoenn badges, not eight. Seventeen years after Juan's Rain Badge (Japanese air dates: January 2005, then April 2022), Wallace, back as Gym Leader of Sootopolis City, loses a 3-on-3 in LV105 and gives him a second Rain Badge. Actual total: 49 Gym badges, eight in each of the five other Gym regions — Kanto, Johto, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos — plus nine in Hoenn, not counting the four Orange Archipelago badges and the seven Frontier Symbols. For the official order in each region, often different from the anime's, see the feature on the Gym Leaders and the Elite Four.

Alola, then the world

The first official title rests on no badge at all: Alola did away with Gyms in favor of the island challenge and its Z-Crystals. The Manalo Conference opens with a Battle Royal with 151 entrants, runs seventeen episodes, from SL128 to SL144 — the biggest total in the series according to Poképédia, provided you count the exhibition match that follows the crowning: the tournament itself ends with the final in SL139, twelve episodes. Ash goes through the entire bracket without losing a single battle, the only official League where that happens. The final comes down to Lycanroc against Lycanroc: Ash's Dusk Form beats Gladion's Midnight Form with a Counter, which makes him the first Alola League Champion. The winner then earns the right to face the League's founder: Ash takes that 6-on-6 exhibition against Professor Kukui.

The world title means telling two things apart: the World Coronation Series is a permanent ranking with four classes (Normal, Great, Ultra, Master), while the Masters Eight Tournament is its closing mini-tournament between the eight Master Class Trainers. Ash signs up ranked beyond 10,000^th place, shows up in 3,763^rd place after his first win, then climbs to 890^th. Three straight losses in Great Class then send him back to 1,021^st place and into Normal Class; Bea is the only named opponent to beat him, the other two are never identified. He climbs back to eighth, knocks out Steven Stone in the quarterfinals, Cynthia in the semifinal, then Leon in the final: Pikachu beats the Galar Champion's Charizard in episode 1217. Ash becomes Monarch, a title Poképédia presents as the equivalent of world champion. The climb back up is told in the feature on season 25, Ultimate Journeys.

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The rivals and Team Rocket, arc by arc

Rival status never lasts more than one arc: Poképédia frames Ash's seven main rivals season by season, and none of them keeps the role beyond his original arc. It is the roles that end, not the characters: Gary Oak comes back in arc 7 as a Project Mew Chaser, without being a rival there. Facing them, a trio of antagonists runs through all twenty-five seasons without a break. The rival measures Ash's progress from one League to the next; Team Rocket sets the rhythm of the standalone episodes.

One rival per region

The pattern is set as early as episode 1 with Gary Oak, Professor Oak's grandson, who holds the role across seasons 1 through 5 : cocky, always one step ahead — ten badges to his name the day Ash earns his eighth — he keeps half of a broken Poké Ball whose other half Ash holds.

Arc 2 breaks the pattern: in Hoenn, Ash has no recurring rival. He strikes up friendly rivalries, including the one with Morrison from AG118 on, and it is Tyson who wins the Ever Grande Conference in season 8. The rivalry that runs across the arc's four seasons is not his but May's, against the Coordinators Drew, Harley and Solidad: it is the Contests and the Grand Festival that supply the arc's opponents.

Sinnoh hardens the tone. Paul, the rival of seasons 10 through 13, shows up in DP002 and treats his Pokémon like disposable equipment. Ash beats him in the quarterfinals of the Lily of the Valley Conference, in a 6-on-6 that ends in DP188, which sends him to the semifinal — where he loses to Tobias in DP189.

In Unova, Trip holds the role for seasons 14 through 16: Ash knocks him out in the preliminary round of the Vertress Conference, a simple 1-on-1. In Kalos, Sawyer beats Ash for the first time in XY119, then Alain enters the main series in XY106, in the middle of season 19, with a mini-series behind him. He is the only main rival Ash never beat, and the only one to have won a League : the Kalos League, in the final against him, in XY130 and XY131. The rival is no longer a kid throwing taunts, he is an adult who wins.

The last two arcs close the whole setup out. Gladion, rival of seasons 20 through 22 and Lillie's brother, loses the Alola League final to Ash; Hau, introduced in SL097, goes out in the quarterfinals of that same League. Then the category disappears: in season 25, Ash's last opponents are no longer rivals but League Champions — Cynthia, beaten in the semifinal of the Masters Eight Tournament in LV123 to LV125, and Leon, beaten in the final in LV129 to LV132.

Jessie, James and Meowth

The trio comes on stage in episode 2, trying to rob the Viridian City Pokémon Center. Where the pages for the companions and the rivals list season ranges, Jessie's and James's read "all seasons". Meowth, for his part, belongs to no one: a talking Pokémon, he is a full member of the team, and LV044 reveals a Gigantamax form for him. The gag itself never changes — the motto on the way in, blasting off "to other skies" on the way out — but its wording does: Poképédia lists six French versions of the motto, rewritten in seasons 8, 10, 14 and 16, then for the Alola arc alone.

Four moments really make them matter across twenty-five seasons. In season 1, they run the Viridian City Gym in place of Giovanni, Team Rocket's real boss, and there they lose the Earth Badge to Ash. Over the Sinnoh arc, Jessie runs a genuine Coordinator career under the alias Jessilina — five Ribbons collected from DP061 to DP171, then a Grand Festival semifinal lost to Dawn on time. In Kalos, under the name Jessilee, she wins the Couriway Town Showcase in XY101. And at the Alola League, the trio's two humans enter for real: James finishes Top 8, Jessie Top 16.

The break in tone comes with the change of arc. Promoted in DP191, the three become Giovanni's liaison team in Unova: black uniforms, numbered missions — steal the meteorite from the Nacrene City museum, recover the Meteonite in the Desert Resort — no comedy left and no more blasting off. That is the stretch where Poképédia credits them with the role of main antagonists, and season 14, the one that resets everything in Unova, takes on a different color once you know it. Their usual selves are back the very next season, the 15^th, and in Alola the reversal is complete: a mother Bewear takes the trio under her wing, and they leave her Mimikyu and Mareanie behind when they go in SL146.

Their ending is given to them across three episodes. In LV145, they get back the old Pokémon that had been sitting at headquarters; they put together one last big scheme, fail again, blame each other and split up. In LV146, each of them goes back to HQ alone to try a solo career. In the final episode, LV147, the three are demoted to the cafeteria, Jessie waiting tables and James cooking, before running into one another in Viridian Forest, each there to try his luck on Pikachu. They recite the motto, attack, fail one last time — and could not care less, because they are together again.

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The French broadcast: channels, lag and dubbing

In Japan, the series starts on the 1^st of April 1997. In France, you have to wait until September 5, 1999, a lag of 887 days. That lag did not shrink steadily: it widens again between season 6 and season 12, drops all at once to five months with season 14, then slowly climbs back to nearly nine months for season 24. And since 2023, France has even been ahead of the American dub.

The French channels, in order

The first French broadcaster is neither TF1 nor Gulli: it is Fox Kids, starting September 5, 1999. Renamed Jetix in 2004 and then Disney XD in 2009, the channel carried the series through to the Black & White arc, before stopping at the very start of 2014.

TF1 followed a few months later. Bulbapedia reports a preview screening on December 24, 1999: the first five episodes cut together into a single TV movie ; the regular run started on January 3, 2000 inside the TF! block, three slots a week, and the channel dropped the show in 2005. It also picked up three feature films along the way, a decision the French version still carries the mark of.

Next came the kids' channels on French digital terrestrial television. Gulli has aired the series since 2006 — September 2, according to Bulbapedia and Wikipedia — and has never let go of it since. Canal J picked up the torch on the 1^st of January 2014, right after Disney XD stopped airing it. Then MCM since January 5, 2019, with the older seasons, and M6 since the 1^st of April 2019, on M6 Kid — the date is no accident, it was the day the series turned twenty-two. Canal J was also the channel that launched the first season of Pokémon Horizons on December 9, 2023, with Gulli following on February 28, 2024.

The Japan-France gap, season by season

The delay is measured on the first episode of each season, using the international season breakdown. One caveat is in order: For seasons 1 to 5, 7 to 11 and 13, the Poképédia season page gives only the year. The episode table, on the other hand, sometimes dates the first episode to the day — that is where the dates quoted earlier in the series sections come from, from the 1^st of July 2001 for EP117 to March 26, 2005 for AG041. With no consistent reference point, those seasons stay out of the table below, season 1 excepted: its very first French broadcast, on September 5, 1999, is documented separately.

Over the early series, France was watching what Japan had aired one to two years earlier. Then season 14, Black & White broke the pattern, at five months. Since then the gap has swung between five and nine months, without ever crossing the one-year mark again.

The gap with the United States, for its part, flipped outright after Ash Ketchum left. The first episode of Horizons came out on December 9, 2023 in France and on March 7, 2024 in the United States, an 89-day head start for the French version. For a series whose French dub was long built from the American adaptation, the reversal is complete.

The dub: a Belgian French version, and only one Ash

First surprise: the French dub of Pokémon is Belgian, recorded in Brussels. The work was commissioned through Ares-Films, which subcontracted it to Studio La Dame Blanche up to the Advanced Generation series, then to Sun Studio Belgium, which became SDI Media Belgium — and has recorded the French dub since season 13, according to Bulbapedia.

Second surprise: the stability. Aurélien Ringelheim, a Belgian actor born in 1979, voiced Ash Ketchum from the very first episode to the last, without ever being replaced on the series; he carried all twenty-five seasons of Ash on his own. A stubborn myth falls along the way: Fanny Roy never voiced the hero. She is the voice ofMisty, the Cerulean City Gym Leader, in every one of her appearances but two: one episode of the Black & White series and the fourth movie. On the Team Rocket side, Catherine Conet (Jessie) and David Manet (James) have held their roles since season 1.

The rare voice changes are almost never casting decisions. Meowth is the only one of the trio to have had three actors: Nessym Guetat (seasons 1 to 8), Philippe Tasquin (seasons 9 to 21), and Didier Colfs since season 22. The first handover came from Guetat moving to France in 2006, the second from Tasquin growing tired of the part. Same geographical logic for Brock: Antoni Lo Presti left for Quebec before season 4, Laurent Chauvet replaced him through season 8, then Lo Presti came home and took the role back in season 9. In the control room, Daniel Nicodème directed the first eleven seasons — he was also the Narrator and the Pokédex — before Jean-Marc Delhausse took over from season 12 on.

The only real break comes from the movies. Since TF1 bought and distributed the fourth, sixth and seventh titles in the catalog of twenty-three movies, those were dubbed in France, with a completely different cast — and the sixth by yet another team. The result: two more French voices for Ash across three movies, and a single survivor from the original cast, Nessym Guetat, who was already living in France. The Belgian dub was back with the very next movie. One constant, finally: Pikachu is not dubbed in French. It is the Japanese actress Ikue Ōtani you hear in the French version as in every other one, apart from a handful of season 1 episodes.

The Quebec version: same voices, English names

French-speaking Canada has no dub of its own: it gets the Belgian French version, re-edited with the English names of the Pokémon and the characters — Sacha becomes Ash there and Salamèche goes back to being Charmander, with exactly the same actors. One detail gives the process away: in a season 3 episode, the French track has Sacha call Ondine "Misty," as if the season had first been recorded with the English names for Quebec.

This Quebec broadcast stopped after season 4, before resuming in November 2014 with the XY series. And only the first seven movies have a genuinely separate Quebec dub, with Sébastien Reding voicing Ash from the second one on. No episode of the series, on the other hand, exists with those Canadian voices.

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The French theme songs, season by season

A French Pokémon theme song is not an imported soundtrack: it is a re-recorded song, with its own lyrics and its own performers. The twenty-five seasons of "Pokémon the Series" add up to twenty-six French opening themes, season 25 being the only one to have switched midway through. The table follows the international numbering, the one used for the seasons released in France; on the Japanese side, the themes change at different episodes, and the two systems almost never line up. Season 13 is the exception: its French theme starts at DP158, the exact episode where the Japanese opening changes as well — Poképédia sees it as the first coincidence of that kind.

"Thème Pokémon," the title everybody gets wrong

The 1999 theme song is not called "Pokémon, attrapez-les tous !". Its official title is "Thème Pokémon", an adaptation of "Pokémon Theme" sung in English by Jason Paige: "attrapez-les tous" is only one line of the chorus. The trap is a double one, because "Attrapez-les tous" really is the title of a theme song — the second opening of season 25, the Masters Eight Tournament season, which arrived in 2023, twenty-four years later.

The two songs are in fact one and the same: the 2023 theme is a cover of the original. The 1999 melody has been used on air three times — season 1, season 17, the one that opens the Kalos series, then the last eleven episodes of season 25 — plus the opening of the movie "I Choose You!". The 2014 version carries a separate title on Poképédia, "Thème Pokémon (Version XY)": same melody, new arrangement, different English-language performer.

Ten seasons, a single voice

Jean-Marc Anthony Kabeya sang the first ten theme songs back to back, from 1999 to 2008, before disappearing for six years and coming back exactly once, in 2014, to sing the original theme again for XY. No other performer comes anywhere near that count. It is not a casting accident: the French-language dub is made in Belgium, with the same small troupe of actors and singers from one decade to the next.

So the same troupe keeps coming back decade after decade. Marie-Ange Teuwen sang the PokéRap in 1999, then the theme songs for seasons 14, 19 and 21, nearly twenty years apart on the same franchise. The PokéRap, by the way, is not the ending theme: it is a segment aired just before it during season 1 and its 80 Kanto episodes, in five parts of 32, 32, 32, 30 and 24 Pokémon — 150 in all, Mew being the only first-generation absentee. One clarification about the performers: Nuno Resende, the voice of "Ensemble nous vaincrons" (season 13), is not Belgian but Portuguese, having arrived in Belgium at the age of twelve.

The lyricists, the running time, the long versions

On the lyrics side, three eras follow one another. Alexandre Gibert and Jacques Siatem wrote the French lyrics for seasons 1 through 10, Nathalie Stas those for season 11, and Marie-Line Landerwyn all the ones that follow, from season 12 through the Horizons themes included — she performs two of them herself, those of seasons 20 and 22. A detail of form: only two themes carry the title of their season, "Diamond and Pearl" (season 10) and "Rival Destinies" (season 15), that season being titled in full "Black & White - Rival Destinies" on Poképédia.

The running time, for its part, contracts in two stages, and not in a straight line. The French opening holds a full minute across the first three seasons — 1 min 01, then 1 min 00 twice — drops back to 44-46 s for seasons 4 through 7, then climbs back to exactly 1 min 01 in season 8, the length of season 1. The fall only begins after that: 42 s in season 9, 34 s in season 10, 31 s in season 14, 30 s in season 16, 28 s in seasons 20 and 25. A second withdrawal, quieter: since season 23, the one that drops the principle of one region per cycle, not a single opening in the series has had a French long version; those of seasons 23, 24 and the two halves of season 25 exist in full-length form only in English.

"Pokémon Horizons: The Series" has three French openings : "Être qui je suis" (Stéphanie Vondenhoff), "Mon Pokémon préféré" (Chantal Kashala) and "Evolution" (Florence Locicero). It is with them that the French long version came back, and for all three: May 13, 2024, March 7, 2025, then February 22, 2026 for "Evolution," the opening of Horizons season 3, "Les ailes de l'espoir."

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The episodes never aired in France

Twelve episodes of "Pokémon the Series" are marked "not aired" in the French column of the reference list. Twelve out of 1,232, or less than 1% of the series. Season 1 accounts for three of them and season 25 for four; the other five are scattered. None has an official French title: they were never dubbed, hence the Japanese titles in the table.

"Never aired in France" does not mean "never aired" : the American column of the table below shows it. Conversely, the two episodes of the Black & White cycle pulled from the schedule in March 2011 do not appear there: having aired nowhere, they have no number in the Japanese list.

December 16, 1997: episode 38

The episode that Poképédia renders, with no official title, as "Electric Soldier Porygon" aired only once, on Tuesday, December 16, 1997 at 6:30 p.m., on 37 Japanese channels including TV Tokyo, in front of about 4.6 million households. Twenty minutes in, a four-second sequence shows Pikachu destroying "vaccine missiles" with an electric attack: the image alternates red and blue at 12 Hz. That sequence, and not Porygon, is what triggers the seizures: in the episode, Porygon is the group's ally.

The figures in circulation are not counting the same thing. 685 viewers were taken away by ambulance, 310 boys and 375 girls, according to Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency; Reuters counted 729 of them, the Japan Times 651, the New York Times "more than 700." Hospital admissions, for their part, numbered 208, including two patients kept more than two weeks, the study published in Epilepsia in 1998 writing only "more than 150." Only a minority of those 685 children were diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy, and a follow-up of 103 of them three years later concluded that most had had no further seizures.

TV Tokyo apologized on December 17 and suspended the series; that same morning, Nintendo stock lost 400 yen and fell to 12,200 yen, nearly 3.2%. The series went off the air for four months and came back on April 16, 1998 with two episodes in a row, "Pikachu's Goodbye" and "La montagne de l'évolution," moving from Tuesday to Thursday. Three production rules came out of it, among them a cap of three flashes per second for red and of two seconds of flashing in total.

Porygon has not reappeared in a single episode of the series since 1997, and neither have Porygon2 and Porygon-Z; Bulbapedia notes a cameo by those two evolutions in the fifteenth of the twenty-three Pokémon feature films.

Episodes 18 and 35, censored before it

Episode 38 is the third censored episode of the series, not the first. Episode 18, from July 29, 1997, is the first one kept out of Europe and the United States : it is built around a beauty pageant in which James competes in disguise, wearing a fake bust, in an American climate of distrust toward children's pageants. A fan campaign got Nintendo of America to air it anyway, on June 24, 2000. It was also shown in Portugal, never in France.

Episode 35, from November 25, 1997, was kept out for gun use judged excessive: Jessie and James get shot at in it, and cutting those scenes would have made the story incomprehensible. Its absence digs a continuity hole: that is where Ash catches his thirty Tauros before entrusting them to Professor Oak. They turn up again as early as episode 65 of the 80 episodes of the Indigo League, without any French viewer having seen where they came from: thirty of the seventy-seven Pokémon in Ash's complete roster arrive off-screen.

Episode 250 and SL064: two episodes pulled over what they depict

Episode 250, from May 30, 2002, is the fourth censored episode of the series and the first of season 5, Master Quest. Poképédia puts forward two explanations without settling on either: the central role of Jynx, whose appearance at the time was accused of echoing a racial stereotype, and the symptoms of Brock's illness, judged too close to an epidemic then affecting Asia. It was shown only in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. Watch the numbering: Poképédia files it as 250, the French Wikipedia as 253.

Three other episodes marked by Jynx did air in France in 2000: "Des joujoux par milliers" on May 8, "Sirena sur l'Île Mandarine" and "Un combat théâtral" on a date the reference list knows only to the year. Watch the second title: Sirena is the name the French dub gives to Lorelei, of Kanto's Elite Four, and not a spelling of Serena, the companion of cycle 5. They were not pulled from the schedule at the time, they were removed from the catalogs after the fact — hence their absence from the table. The most recent documented case of censorship, SL064, from 1^st March 2018, was skipped with no official explanation; the most cited hypothesis is the makeup on Ash's face, close enough to blackface.

The Japanese specials and the four gaps in season 25

Seven of the twelve episodes in the table, for their part, have no documented reason for censorship. AG120, DP048 and DP120 are programs that the Japanese list numbers but that no Western broadcaster picked up; DP048 and DP120 share their Japanese air date with the episode before them, a sign of a double bill. DP120 is also the only one of the twelve to carry a French title in the list, "Les étranges créatures, les Pokémon !", flagged as an unofficial translation — and the only one whose American column reads "censored" rather than "not aired".

The last four all belong to season 25, Ultimate Journeys, the hardest hit in the series: France saw 53 of its 57 episodes, from July 9, 2022 to November 12, 2023. Their Japanese titles mention Chloe and her Eevee, Goh, and two moments from Ash's final tournament.

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The other Pokémon animated series

Poképédia files thirteen works in its "Cartoon" category: the two main series — Pokémon the Series and Horizons — and eleven spin-offs or mini-series, which do not follow Ash and do not count toward the 1,232 episodes.

Two titles trip up French-language searches. On Netflix, "Pokémon Concierge" is officially called Pokémon Concierge, and "Path to the Peak" is called Pokémon: Path to the Peak — never "Le Chemin vers le Sommet," which is the title of nothing at all.

Pokémon Chronicles: Ash's world, without following him

Aired in Japan from December 3, 2002 to September 28, 2004 and produced by OLM, it tells what becomes of Misty, Brock, Tracey, Ritchie and Gary while Ash travels in Hoenn; the trio of Team Rocket is promoted to main character there, with episodes of its own. Its episode count depends on the source: 16 episodes in the Japanese version, 22 in the international and French versions — the 18 Japanese "Pokémon Hoso" yield 16 episodes once their halves are recombined two by two, to which the international version adds the three parts of The Legend of Thunder and three Christmas special episodes. Dubbed into French, but released in France on DVD only.

The three series that retell the games

Pokémon Origins (2013) is the longest: 4 episodes of 22 to 23 minutes, aired in a single block on October 2, 2013 in Japan, ten days before the release of Pokémon X and Y. It adapts Red and Blue, the Pokémon do not say their own names in it, and it is the first animation to show the Mega Evolution mechanic. In France: from November 15 to 22, 2013, then Gulli on April 12, 2014.

Pokémon Generations (2016) takes the same approach in a much shorter form: 18 episodes of 3 to 5 minutes released on YouTube from September 16 to December 23, 2016, from Kanto to Kalos, animated by OLM and released in English first. Pokémon Evolutions (2021) is its 25th-anniversary counterpart: 8 episodes of 6 to 10 minutes, from September 9 to December 23, 2021, which walk back through the regions in reverse, from Galar in the first episode to Kanto in the last. All three are dubbed in French.

The four Mega Evolution Acts, and the name clash that trips everyone up

"Pokémon: Mega Evolution" refers to four special Acts following Alain and Mairin through Kalos and Hoenn, aired in Japan between April 3, 2014 and October 29, 2015. All four came out in French on Gulli, six to fourteen months late depending on the Act — the 1^st and 6th of May 2015, then the 4th and 5th of May 2016 — following Alain, the Trainer who beat Ash at the Kalos League. Not to be confused with the Japanese arc "Episode: Mega Evolution" from October 2025, which belongs to the main series and ends up folded into season 3 of Horizons.

Since 2020, one miniseries = one auteur studio

The turning point isn't the move away from OLM, already under way in 2013: it's that each miniseries is now handed in full to a different studio, and becomes that studio's visual calling card. The five that follow are all dubbed in French.

• Pokémon: Twilight Wings (2020, Studio Colorido) — 7 episodes of about 5 minutes plus a special in November 2020: the everyday lives and dreams of the people of Galar, all revolving around the League.
• Pokémon: Hisuian Snow (2022, WIT STUDIO) — 3 episodes from May 18 to June 22, 2022, 6 minutes for the first and about 12 for the rest. Alec, raised to believe that Pokémon and humans don't live side by side, crosses paths with a Hisuian Zorua.
• Pokemon: Paldean Winds (2023, WIT STUDIO) — 4 episodes about three students at Naranja Academy, whose titles form a single breath: "Breathe Out", "Breathe In", "Breathe", "Breathe Together". In France from September 29 to December 13, 2023.
• Pokémon: Path to the Peak (2023, TAIKO Studios) — 4 CGI episodes, from August 11 to 30, 2023: the first Pokémon animated series drawn from the trading card game. Ava, 13, changes schools, joins the Pokémon club and wins with an Oddish deck, all the way to the World Championships.
• Pokémon Concierge (2023 and 2025, dwarf studios) — 8 stop-motion episodes on Netflix, 4 on December 28, 2023 and 4 on September 4, 2025. Haru welcomes Pokémon guests at a resort; no battles, and more than 80,000 unique frames for the first four episodes alone.

Pokétoon, the short films, and what's missing in French

Pokétoon is a web series of standalone stories whose art style changes with almost every episode. Launched on June 5, 2020 on the Japanese Pokémon Kids TV channel, it now runs to 22 numbered episodes as of September 5, 2026, released in French out of order : the Japanese set known as "Pokétoon 2024" (PT09 to PT17) only landed between June and August 2026. PT18, "Kangaskhan to the Rescue", had already gone out on December 8, 2025, after a theatrical run on November 22 and 23, 2025 as the opening short for one of the series' feature films. PT21 and PT22 have neither a title nor a date in French.

Promotional shorts exist in French too: three Mystery Dungeon adaptations on DVD, the mini web series Les deux Professeurs in 2018, and "The Rise of Bidoof", released in France on January 11, 2022, a month ahead of Japan. The oldest gap is still the Hoopa miniseries, 6 episodes from 2015 that never came out here.

Where to watch them, and which one to start with

Since the Pokémon TV platform shut down, the miniseries and Pokétoon live on the official YouTube channels, French playlists included; Pokémon Concierge is a Netflix exclusive, and Netflix has also carried, since September 23, 2022, the mini-movie Pokemon: The Arceus Chronicles — which is not Pokémon Chronicles but a special four-episode arc from season 25, cut together as a single film for international release. Pokémon Chronicles, on the other hand, can only be bought on DVD.

The best entry point is still Pokémon Origins, the story of the founding game told plainly, then Generations, six generations in eighteen shorts. For an adult who lost the thread of Ash's journey, the way in is somewhere else : Pokémon Concierge, or Twilight Wings, which looks at Galar through the eyes of its residents as much as through those of Leon, its undefeated Champion.

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What order to watch in, and where to start

Faced with 1,232 episodes spread over 25 seasons, plus a series that starts over from scratch in 2023, the question isn't "what is this about" but "where do I even grab hold of it". Pokémon has no alternate viewing order to piece together : the difficulty lies elsewhere, in the episodes that are missing and in the movies you think you have to slot in.

Broadcast order is the right order

The episodes follow one another sequentially: the last episode of a cycle is followed by the first of the next, with no flashbacks and no parallel storyline to put back in place. The best proof isn't a production rule, it's the curve of Ash's competitive record, from the Top 16 at the Indigo League to the title of Monarch: every step presupposes the one before it, which is laid out region by region in the Ash Ketchum profile.

The first break to know about isn't a reordering, it's a gap: twelve episodes were never aired in France, listed one by one above. Seven are pure recaps made of clips, which the industry itself judged skippable; only one leaves a real hole, episode 35, where Ash catches his thirty Tauros. A different case, not to be confused with these: episodes 90 and 99 were indeed dubbed and aired, then pulled from circulation in April 2013.

Four outside accidents did distort that sequence all the same, and none of them comes from a storytelling choice. The December 1997 incident pushed back the two special episodes of season 1, which the West watches between episodes 64 and 65. The Niigata earthquake of October 23, 2004 got an episode canceled between AG100 and AG101: no one gets to see Ash learn where the eighth Hoenn Gym is. After the March 2011 disaster, NB037 moved from the NB023-NB024 slot to the NB036-NB038 slot, creating a retroactive continuity problem from NB112 on. Finally XY024, pulled from the schedule in April 2014, came out seven months later even though it sets up the move that decides the following episode.

Where the 23 movies fit

The match-up is mechanical: each movie carries the number of the season it is attached to, from movie 1 with season 1 through movie 23 with season 23. So you watch movie n after season n — optional, since their consequences for the series are next to nonexistent, except for movies 20, 21 and 23, which set up an alternate continuity where Ash travels alone. Don't trust the French dates, which mix previews, theatrical releases and video releases: follow the number. The details of each one live on the page devoted to the 23 Pokémon movies.

Where to start

You want to see everything, in order

Start at episode 1 and don't go looking for anything else: 1,232 episodes, from the 1^st of April 1997 to March 24, 2023 in Japan, and a first French broadcast on September 5, 1999. Just one warning, for anyone coming from the video games: don't skip season 2 on the grounds that the Orange Archipelago appears in no game. It is the most exclusive content in the series, and it is where Ash wins his first League, in episodes 111 and 112 — the Orange Islands feature covers those 36 episodes.

You only want the big moments

The series is episodic, but about a dozen blocks are narratively continuous and can be spotted by their episode codes. The table gives Ash's own run: the tournaments themselves sometimes start a few episodes earlier and sometimes carry on after he is knocked out.

Two warnings. The Battle Frontier stretches over fifty-five episodes and involves seven Battle Frontier facilities but ten battles : Ash faces the same Frontier Brain twice and the final opponent three times. And four episodes of the Masters Eight Tournament don't exist in French — 1204, 1206, 1211 and 1213 — which makes the numbering jump at the worst possible moment. The last eleven episodes then form a separate epilogue, detailed above.

You're coming to it today, having seen none of it

That's the simplest case, and the answer is yes: you can start straight in with "Pokémon Horizons: The Series". No character from the Ash era is needed to follow the plot of Liko's pendant, and the price of admission is 45 episodes instead of 1,232 — the ones covered by the feature on the first season of Horizons.

One last bearing: as of September 5, 2026, French-speaking viewers are a full arc behind Japan, which has been airing a block since May 22, 2026 for which no international season has been announced yet.

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Where to watch the Pokémon anime today

An answer to this question is only worth anything with a date on it. Everything below was verified on September 5, 2026, for the French market : the broad strokes will hold, the season-by-season detail won't. The catalogs and the prices quoted were recorded that day; anything that was still only announced at that date is flagged as such, with its deadline.

The Pokémon TV app no longer exists

For years, the answer came in two words: Pokémon TV, the official app, free and with no account needed, which offered rotating blocks of French-dubbed episodes. It shut down on March 28, 2024. The Pokémon Company International had announced it on January 8, 2024, the day it stopped being downloadable from the App Store, Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, the Roku Channel Store and the Nintendo Switch eShop. Existing installs kept working until March 28, the date on which the player on the official site stopped too. Any guide that still sends you there predates 2024.

The replacement: the Pokémon TV YouTube channel

The company reopened the same idea elsewhere, in a simpler form. The "Pokémon TV" YouTube channel launched on December 6, 2024, announced a few days earlier. It carries full episodes, compilations and continuous streams, free and with no account. The French how-to was published by the official site on March 14, 2025: the channel is international, and the French audio track is chosen in the player settings, under the gear icon. The rollout began with all of season 1, the Indigo League season, then the Orange Islands, at a rate of several episodes per week. It is a library still being built, not a complete run.

M6+: the first twenty-two seasons, free

This is the broadest French offering. Since May 15, 2024, M6+ has offered seasons 1 through 22 of "Pokémon the Series" free of charge, ad-supported, provided you open an account, which costs nothing. The catalog covers the first six series, from Kanto through Ultra Legends, the season where Ash finally becomes Champion. It stops there: series 7 is not included. Since January 14, 2026, M6+ has also been folded into Amazon Prime Video in France at no extra cost for Prime subscribers — same catalog, different app.

Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+

Netflix France is stingier than you would think. As of September 5, 2026, the platform offers only the first season of the original series and season 1 of "Pokémon Horizons", which reached the French catalog on May 12, 2025. Netflix releases Horizons in batches and region by region: season 3 landed there in January 2026 in the United States, Belgium and the Netherlands, but not in France. An international announcement therefore guarantees nothing for the French catalog. Amazon Prime Video, for its part, mostly acts as a storefront for third-party offerings — M6+ since January 2026, and TFOU MAX, TF1's kids subscription. Watch out for the trap: the three seasons TFOU MAX was listing as of the September 5, 2026 check are not the Journeys seasons, they are seasons 20, 21 and 22, exactly the same ones as on SFR Play.

Disney+ is the newcomer, still too recent to count on. On August 28, 2026, Disney+ announced a worldwide distribution deal with The Pokémon Company International : a stop-motion series from the Aardman studio, due in 2027, and the return of the show's early years under the title "Pokémon the Series: The Beginning", on Disney XD and Disney+ in the United States and in "select international markets". Nothing confirms that France is one of them.

On French television

The two long-running kids' channels restarted reruns in 2026: Canal J on January 3, Gulli on May 29. New episodes, on the other hand, all come from Horizons. Season 3, Les ailes de l'espoir, went up on M6+ on February 4, 2026 for its first twenty-two episodes, before moving to Gulli starting February 11, at one episode per week. The slot has shifted since: LH131 and LH132 are dated August 23 and September 6, 2026, two Sundays two weeks apart. The platform now runs ahead of broadcast, and the broadcast rhythm is no longer regular.

Buying the episodes, and the case of physical media

For the last series, France has neither a free offering nor a subscription. The three Journeys seasons can only be bought outright, on the Apple TV Store : at the early September 2026 check, 2,99 € per episode and 18,99 € for the full season for Ultimate Journeys, the season of Ash's farewell. Seven seasons are offered for purchase there, and they are seasons 19 through 25 : the three Journeys seasons, plus the four that come before them, from the XYZ series to Ultra Legends. The count goes past three without contradicting what precedes it, because those four are also free on M6+: only the Journeys seasons have no other way in. No season earlier than 19 is sold in that catalog. The twenty-three feature films belong to a separate catalog.

On the DVD side, France has never had a complete run. The "Planète Pokémon" collection, published by Éditions Atlas in 51 issues from December 2007 to December 2009, remains the only official way to get the first three seasons in French : a booklet and a three-episode DVD per issue, with issue 3 the only one to hold two DVDs. Three episodes are missing, 18, 35 and 38, the very ones that never aired in France. The collection can now only be found secondhand, and beyond it the French releases amount to a few TF1 Vidéo volumes issued between 2002 and 2004: six VHS tapes and three DVDs covering part of season 4.

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How the series is made

One episode a week, or nearly, since April 1^st 1997: the series is as much a workshop as it is a story. The same Japanese studio has made it since the very first episode, OLM, Inc., formerly Oriental Light and Magic, founded in June 1994 by two former Studio Pastel producers, Toshiaki Okuno and Shūkichi Kanda. The studio was only two years and ten months older than the show, and Kunihiko Yuyama, its future chief director, joined right at its creation — without being a founder.

Teams that hand the series off

OLM does not work as one block: the studio splits its projects among production lines called "Teams", named after the animation producer who runs them. Pokémon has passed from hand to hand inside the house: Team Ota, then Team Iguchi at the 171^st episode of the Advanced Generation series, then Team Kato at the 164^th episode of the Diamond & Pearl series — preceded, within that same series, by twenty-seven episodes credited simply to "OLM", with no team name. The latest handoff came in April 2024: Makoto Kumemura, a Team Kato member on the first 45 episodes of Horizons, was promoted to animation producer, and Team Kato became Team Kumemura.

From CoroCoro to TV Tokyo, and the writer of the endings never made

The series was born from the manga published in CoroCoro magazine: it was Masakazu Kubo, the magazine's deputy editor-in-chief at Shogakukan, who obtained Nintendo's permission to turn it into a television series. The rights belong to six companies, among them Nintendo, Creatures, Game Freak and TV Tokyo; OLM is only the contractor. First major decision: setting the game's three starters aside in favor of a yellow partner, "to widen the target audience to girls" according to the production team — the choice that launched Pikachu's career as a mascot.

The head writer of the early years was Takeshi Shudō. The Japanese credits list him on episodes 1 through 158, that is up to August 3, 2000, whereas the English-language infobox stretches his tenure to 2002: two sources, two endpoints. He is the one who wrote the motto the Team Rocket trio recites, and the one who designed Lugia for the second movie. In the columns he was writing at the end of his life, he describes two endings that were never produced: an older Ash looking back on his journey, and a Pokémon revolt led by Pikachu, and he warns Yuyama around 1999 that he will not last more than two years — remarks known only through a single fan translation of his blog. He died in 2010 and is credited posthumously on the screenplay of the 2017 movie, whose opening replays that of the first episode.

Directors rotate, the technicians stay

Yuyama held the chief director post from 1997 to 2019, then again on the last eleven episodes of the Ash era, through March 24, 2023. In the director's chair, a post distinct from his, eight names have followed one another, from Masamitsu Hidaka to Makoto Nakata, by way of Tetsuo Yajima, who took the job at 28 on XY. The handover between the first two left a factory-floor trace: episodes 159 through 170 of the Advanced Generation series, plus 173, carry no director's name in the credits, "due to on-the-job training".

Masafumi Mima has been sound director since episode 1 in 1997, and Norimichi Yoshino head of color since that same date : twenty-nine years with no handoff, while the backgrounds and the editing have each changed only once. On the music side, only three composers: Shinji Miyazaki from 1997 to 2019 — no relation to Hayao Miyazaki — then Yuki Hayashi until 2023, and then Conisch. For the final chapter of the Ash era, it was the sound director who had Miyazaki's old themes played again.

One episode a week, and two real interruptions

The show fills a thirty-minute slot on the TV Tokyo network, for a program of about 22 minutes — 24 according to another count on the same English-language wiki, with no primary source. The slot has moved four times in twenty-nine years, from Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. in 1997 to the Friday 6:55 p.m. slot in place since October 2020. The "breaks" are scheduling changes, not production stoppages: seven Fridays skipped between January and August 7, 2026, in favor of specials or table tennis. Only two real interruptions in twenty-nine years: the four-month halt that follows the Porygon episode of December 16, 1997, and April 2020, when the pandemic pushed TV Tokyo to rerun older episodes.

From cels to HD, and the four times the art changed

The series was painted on celluloid until August 2002 : the first episode made digitally is the 263^rd Japanese one, and the director of photography changes at exactly that episode. The move to 16:9 high definition dates from April 2, 2009, with the one-hour special made of episodes 121 and 122 of the Diamond & Pearl series — and not of Black & White, as you often read. The artwork itself only went digital in 2016, and first on a simple mini-segment of XY&Z aired on January 28.

Poképédia notes changes of art style at the start of series 4, 5, 6 and 7, each tied to a new character designer: Toshiya Yamada on season 14, Black & White, then Toshihito Hirooka on XY, the pair of Satoshi Nakano and Shūhei Yasuda on Sun & Moon, and Yasuda alone on Journeys. Yamada was not coming from outside, though: he had already been chief animation director (総作画監督) on the series since 1999, eleven years before redesigning it — the 2010 turn was a style decision, not a casting accident. The deepest break remains the one in 2016 : season 20, Sun & Moon, also changes its backgrounds and its photography, and Yōichi Kotabe leaves. The two men did not hold the same post, despite the similar-sounding French job titles: Kotabe, a veteran of Japanese animation and a graphics advisor to Nintendo, was credited with "animation supervision" (アニメーション監修) from the first episode in 1997 through XY&Z — an outside eye on the style, where Yamada held a production post, episode after episode.

Twenty-six years at a weekly pace

The Ash and Pikachu series ended on March 24, 2023, after twenty-six years, without the workshop shutting down: Horizons took over three weeks later. In the ranking of Japanese animated franchises by episode count, Pokémon comes in seventh, with 1,373 television episodes and 203 other programs (figure taken on September 5, 2026, eight episodes behind the continuous Japanese counter, which shows 1,381 as of August 28, 2026), behind six larger franchises, among them Doraemon (1979), Sazae-san (1969) and Anpanman (1988). Broadcast in 192 countries and territories (official The Pokémon Company figure, March 2022), the show reached its thousandth Japanese airing on November 9, 2017, seven months after its twentieth anniversary, with SM049: that is a count of slots on the air, not to be confused with episode no. 1000 of the continuous numbering, which is SM061, from February 2018.

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The anime's numbers, source by source

This page puts forward a lot of numbers. Here they are in one place, each with its date and its source.

The pair to remember is 1 234 / 1 223 : these are the two numbers carried by the same final episode, on the same line of the same source, so each one checks the other. That finale closes season 25, Pokémon Ultimate Journeys. Poképédia's 1,232 is not a French-language count for all that: it is Bulbapedia's numbering, taken over as is, identical to the Japanese one up to episode 64 and then off by two, because two episodes of the first season are given no number in the continuous series. And none of these totals includes the 23 feature films released alongside, which are counted separately.

The counter, for its part, is still running. The 1,381 episodes counted as of August 28, 2026 add together Ash's series and the new one, whose season 3, The Wings of Hope, ended in Japan on May 1^st 2026. That number is dated and tied to a source: at Bulbapedia, the 1,381^st episode is a different one, scheduled for September 11, 2026.

The wrong numbers you read everywhere

"Pokémon is the longest-running animated series in the world" is false. That Guinness record belongs to Sazae-san, which launched on October 5, 1969 and was credited with 55 years and 1 day as of October 6, 2024. The record the anime really holds is narrower, and more accurate: the longest-running animated series based on a video game, certified at 1,327 episodes as of April 25, 2025. That total can be rebuilt episode by episode — 1,234 + 93 — which lines the Guinness count up with the continuous Japanese numbering.

"685 hospitalized" after the episode of December 16, 1997 is wrong too, through a slip of wording: 685 viewers were taken to the hospital by ambulance; 208 were admitted.

"Ikue Ōtani has recorded every episode since 1997" holds for the credits, not for the studio: she took a health leave from January to May 2006, during which older recordings were reused. One last figure to stop quoting: the 919 episodes of a second Guinness record, verified on April 28, 2016 and never updated since.

The numbers no one can verify

The 192 countries of broadcast come from The Pokémon Company's official document of March 2022; its online version no longer displays those values, so this figure can no longer be checked against its source. The 216 Netflix regions, often written in the present tense, date from 2016. The number of species that have appeared on screen exists in no source at all: don't confuse it with the 98 species Ash owned across the eight regions. The ratings peak of 18.6%, finally, dates from November 11, 1997, in the middle of the first season, Indigo League : comparing it with the 3.0% of 2023 says as much about the fragmentation of Japanese television as about the show's own trajectory.

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The 28 seasons at a glance

This table is the index of the page. One row per season, in the order of the international numbering — the one used by The Pokémon Company International and by French broadcasters, and the only one that speaks of "seasons". The first twenty-five rows cover Pokémon the Series : 1,232 episodes aired in Japan from April 1^st 1997 to March 24, 2023, twenty-five years and eleven months behind the same Trainer from Pallet Town. The last four rows cover Pokémon Horizons: The Series, the series that has taken over since April 14, 2023: three completed seasons, which brings the total to 28 existing seasons, plus one last row for the Japanese arc still under way, which nothing has yet turned into an international season. The "cycle" column groups seasons by Japanese series — what Poképédia calls a cycle: seven cycles for twenty-five seasons. A cycle lines up neither with a game generation nor with a single region of the Pokémon world : the first one holds Kanto, the Orange Archipelago and Johto all by itself, while the last settles nowhere and radiates out from Vermilion City. Each season title leads to its detailed article, except that of Horizons season 4, which has neither an international title nor an article yet.

Three reading precautions before you use this table as a reference. The years alone are not a shortcut: for seasons 1 to 5, 7 to 11 and 13, the French source records only the year of broadcast, never the day — a bare year beats an invented date. Then the numbering: in the system this page follows, Horizons starts over at 1, and its first season is not a season 26 but the first of another series, carried by a new heroine and her pendant. The English Wikipedia, for its part, keeps counting to 26. Horizons season 4 started in Japan on May 22, 2026 and, as of September 5, 2026, had received neither a title nor an air date internationally. Finally the scope: these twenty-nine rows — the 28 existing seasons plus the Japanese arc under way — list only the main television series. The 23 feature films have no row here : each one attaches to a season, from the first movie with season 1 to the twenty-third with season 23, without belonging to the continuity of the episodes — the movies in detail, in order has a page of its own.

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In short

The Pokémon anime is today two series and not one. "Pokémon the Series" counts 25 seasons and 1,232 episodes, from April 1^st 1997 to March 24, 2023 in Japan, grouped into seven cycles that each pick up one Japanese series. "Pokémon Horizons: The Series" took over on April 14, 2023, with new heroes and a numbering that starts again at season 1.

The count itself depends on who is counting. Those 25 seasons are an international breakdown: Japan divides the show into story arcs, which the West then groups into seasons built around a subtitle and an opening theme. Hence totals that vary from one source to the next, and a single episode whose number changes depending on the system you use.

Ash's own journey, on the other hand, ran all the way to its end. An Orange League won as early as season 2, the only official League of his career taken at Alola's Manalo Conference, then the World Coronation Series that took him from 3,763^rd to 1^st in the world rankings, before eleven farewell episodes. In France, the finale aired on October 31, 2023, but three season 25 episodes were shown after it, up to November 12, 2023: the end of the story and the end of the broadcast run do not fall on the same day. Ash Ketchum's profile tells that whole journey in full.

And the series goes on without him. As of September 5, 2026, France is up to season 3 of Horizons, which started on November 9, 2025 and is still running ; Japan, which aired its last episode on the 1^st of May 2026, moved straight on from May 22 to a block that still has no French title and no international announcement. The first series is therefore closed, from its first episode to its last; the second is still being written: the feature on The Wings of Hope covers where Liko, Roy and Friede stand.

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In the shop

Twenty-five seasons of Ash's journey leave you with very specific wants, and it is the hero who draws them all together: the Ash section carries 24 products, including 5 caps, 5 rugs, 3 duvet covers, 2 jackets and 2 costumes. Across from it, the 16 items in Team Rocket colors dress the trio that turns up in the second episode and then runs through every season, among them 4 costumes, 2 t-shirts, 2 bags and 2 keycap sets. The Meowth section, for its part, has only 6 items : better to say so plainly than to promise a whole section.

The rest of the catalog is organized by Pokémon and by item, never by season: the Pikachu section brings together 197 products on its own, the plush toys stop at 54 and the posters at 27. No collection is named after a season : you buy a Pokémon or a character, not a block of broadcasts. To wear the series rather than display it, the costumes section lines up 40 items, including 18 pajamas, 15 costumes and 4 wigs. Eight regions and twenty-five seasons later, the hero's section is still the simplest way in.

See all 24 products in the Ash section

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Explore the Pokémon universe

This page is part of a series of guides covering the whole Pokémon universe:

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Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the questions that come up most often about how the seasons are divided, each with a self-contained answer. Every figure comes with its frame of reference — Japanese, international or French — because that is exactly where the confusion lives: Japan divides the show into arcs, the West into seasons, and France inherits the American split without ever renegotiating it.

Three topics come up more than the others. Ash's exit, settled in eleven episodes at the end of season 25 and its Masters Eight Tournament. Where the 23 feature films stand next to the episodes, since they do not belong to the same continuity. And how far along season 3 of Horizons, The Wings of Hope, has gotten, with its French broadcast still under way. For the full record, badge by badge and League by League, the feature on Ash Ketchum and his twenty-five seasons goes into detail on all nine tournaments.

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