What time does Pokémon TCG Pocket release?

Pokémon TCG Pocket is The Pokémon Company’s latest foray into the mobile game scene, creating a new digital TCG format for players with a focus on collecting on iOS and Android. The game has been advertised relentlessly with gorgeous animations of ripping packs and getting app-exclusive cards, so fiends for the physical TCG will want to get in on this.

Despite the cute art and shiny animations counting down the last few days before launch, it’s a little bit unclear what time Pokémon TCG Pocket will actually be playable. Below we list what time the game should approximately go live in different times around the world.

What time does Pokémon TCG Pocket launch in your time zone?

The Japanese X account for the game notes that service will start on Wednesday, Oct. 30, at around noon JST, so going off of that, the game should launch at around these times globally:

• Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. PDT for the west coast of North America
• Oct. 29 at 11 p.m. EDT for the east coast of North America
• Oct. 30 at 3 a.m. GMT for the U.K.
• Oct. 30 at 4 a.m. CET for western Europe/Paris
• Oct. 30 at 12 p.m. JST for Japan/Tokyo
• Oct. 30 at 2 p.m. AET for Australia/Sydney

Of course, this is just an approximation, so the game may go up earlier or later than this. There has been no specific time the game will launch announced yet.

This time is conflicting with the App Store’s release date of Oct. 31, but keep in mind that the official website does list Oct. 30 as its launch date.

Can you preload Pokémon TCG Pocket?

As of writing this post (Oct. 29 at 12 p.m. EDT), you cannot preload the game before launch. The exception is, of course, for folks in New Zealand, who got to play the game a bit earlier than the rest of the world as part of some early tests.

You can pre-order the game and set it to automatically download to your devices when it becomes available, if you’re very excited.

We’ll update this post when the game becomes available to download, though note that even if you can preload the game, you won’t be able to actually play it until the server maintenance ends.