Pokémon: Indigo League is now streaming on Disney+
The first season of the Pokémon anime landed on Disney+ and Hulu today, a day after an all-day marathon on Disney XD. It is not exclusive, and Disney does not own Pokémon.
Pokémon: Indigo League is on Disney+ as of yesterday.
The first season of the anime, the one where Ash Ketchum turns ten and gets handed a Pikachu instead of a normal starter, arrived on Disney+ and Hulu on August 7. Disney XD ran an all-day marathon the day before.
Starting August 10, it airs on Disney XD every weekday afternoon at 2:30, with weekend showings too.
We reported the deal in July when it was still a scoop. It’s live now.
What’s actually on Disney+ right now
The library is arriving in stages rather than all at once, which matters if you’re planning to sit a kid down with it.
Our own check of the Disney+ listing at launch showed the first 27 episodes, not the full run. Disney and The Pokémon Company have signaled the wider catalog fills in over time, series by series.
For scale: Indigo League as an arc runs to roughly 80 episodes, and Pokémon the Series as a whole is past 1,200. There is a lot still to load.
This is a return, not a first
Pokémon has lived at Disney before, and recently enough that plenty of people remember it.
The anime aired on Disney XD from December 2016 through the Sun & Moon era. The channel’s anime block was discontinued in 2020, when Netflix picked up the streaming rights.
Six years later it’s back on the same channel, which makes this less a landmark acquisition and more a lease renewal.
Disney+ isn’t the only place to watch it
Worth knowing before anyone signs up for a subscription over this.
Netflix still carries the first season of the original series and Pokémon Horizons. The official Pokémon YouTube channel has the first nine seasons available at no cost.
So Disney’s version of Indigo League is one of at least three legal ways to watch the same episodes, two of which you may already have.
Disney does not own Pokémon
This one comes up every time and it’s worth stating clearly, because headlines about Disney re-acquiring Pokémon read like the Marvel and Star Wars deals.
They aren’t that. Disney Branded Television holds U.S. broadcast and streaming rights to the anime. That is a distribution arrangement.
The franchise belongs to The Pokémon Company, the joint venture backed by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. Disney has never owned any part of it and doesn’t now, and nothing here gives Disney a say in what future episodes look like.
The timing is at least well chosen. Pokémon turns 30 this year, having launched in Japan in 1996, and a nostalgia push on a Disney channel to an audience of parents who watched it the first time is the kind of thing that writes its own marketing plan.
Set a reminder for August 10 if you’d rather watch it the way it originally ran, one episode a day, in the afternoon.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
NintendoSoup (July 2026), confirmation of the August 7 Disney+ and Hulu date, the August 6 Disney XD marathon, and the note that Netflix and the official Pokémon YouTube channel still carry the series
Anime Superhero News (July 2026), the Disney XD weekday schedule and the 2:30 p.m. slot beginning August 10
Collider and The Disney Beat (June and July 2026), the original report that Disney Branded Television re-acquired U.S. rights
Bulbapedia and Disney XD broadcast records, the 2016 through 2020 Disney XD run and the episode counts