{"id":998370,"date":"2026-08-13T15:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/998370\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T15:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:31:12","slug":"pokemon-announces-its-ending-support-for-bank-storage-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/998370\/","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9mon Announces It\u2019s Ending Support For Bank Storage App"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moving your Pok\u00e9mon from one game to another has always been a complicated process, and The Pok\u00e9mon Company has gone to great lengths to try to streamline it by creating the Pok\u00e9mon Home app, which acts as a centralized storage system. But before that, there was a pair of 3DS apps called Pok\u00e9mon Bank and Pok\u00e9 Transporter<\/a> that allowed you to transfer Pok\u00e9mon from your DS to your 3DS, which would make it possible to move Pok\u00e9mon as far back as the Game Boy Advance games, or to a system as modern as the Switch 2. Now, The Pok\u00e9mon Company has announced it\u2019s officially ending support for the apps.<\/p>\n

The Pok\u00e9mon Company announced this alongside confirmation that the FireRed and LeafGreen<\/a> Switch ports that launched earlier this year will get Home support in October<\/a>, allowing you to transfer Pok\u00e9mon you capture in the GBA games to any other game that can connect to the app. Bank will end its service on February 25, 2027, at 7 p.m. Pacific\/10 p.m. Eastern. The announcement urges anyone who has Pok\u00e9mon they want to carry over to do so before the end of service, but also, it\u2019s worth noting that Bank is not currently available to download, as the 3DS\u2019 online systems were shut down in 2024<\/a>. So that means that even if you wanted to use the system before next February, you can only do it if you already have the app redeemed on the eShop from before 2024.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine Pok\u00e9mon Bank is getting any meaningful use in 2026, especially as those older games have become so impossible to find and play on old hardware. But it is still the end of an era. As video games lean harder on digital distribution and online servers, Bank feels like a relic of a time when Pok\u00e9mon were trapped on cartridges unless you dealt with some really obtuse transfer methods like having to put both your GBA game and your DS game in the same system at once so you could capture old friends in new games. Game Freak had fun with transporting Pok\u00e9mon over the years, but these methods are pretty cumbersome, especially compared to the relative simplicity of Home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Serebii Update: Pok\u00e9mon Bank will stop working and being able to connect to Pok\u00e9mon HOME on February 26th 2027. Pok\u00e9mon will not be able to stored any longer in it and it cannot connect to Pok\u00e9mon HOME after that dayhttps:\/\/t.co\/NWlAdn57aQ<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/moEivdS5W2<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Serebii.net (@SerebiiNet) August 13, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ability to transfer Pok\u00e9mon from one game to another has become less of an expected feature ever since Sword and Shield stopped allowing players to trade any Pok\u00e9mon they wanted to the next game, which was a huge controversy in the community known colloquially as \u201cDexit.\u201d<\/a> Despite online protests, Game Freak seems pretty set on not bringing back the National Dex that would include every Pok\u00e9mon in each game. Many players have used Bank to transfer Pok\u00e9mon that they caught decades ago<\/a> to modern games, and now it feels like a lot of history is about to be cut off from the present. It\u2019s sad that this app, the last bridge connecting old hardware to current ones, is going away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additionally, when the 3DS servers shut down, Pok\u00e9mon Bank and Transporter were the only apps and services that maintained online functionality, so with this announcement, the 3DS\u2019 online usage is finally going away for good.<\/p>\n