Fans at the Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco assumed the pin rally stations closed because the pins ran out. Attendees say a fire marshal shut it down over crowding and threatened to close the entire convention.
Fans at the Pokémon World Championships spent Saturday morning convinced the pins had run out.
The stations went dark early, with no explanation, and the assumption spread fast. Twelve stations, one of the weekend’s biggest draws outside the competition itself, closed without warning at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
By Sunday, an email confirmed the pin rally would not return at all.
The problem was never supply.
A fire marshal reportedly shut it down
According to attendee accounts circulating on X, a fire marshal inspected the convention Saturday morning, saw the crowds packed around the pin stations, and deemed them a hazard in the event of an emergency.
One attendee posted that the marshal threatened to shut down the entire convention if organizers did not address the situation. Stations started closing within hours.
The pin rally worked like a theme park scavenger hunt
The rally spread 12 stations across the convention halls, sending attendees walking the venue to collect and trade enamel Pokémon pins with staff and each other. Disney parks run comparable scavenger hunts during festivals, where guests work through a map hunting for stamps or figures.
One photo circulating from the event showed the line for a Jirachi pin stretching in an unbroken mass along the entire route between convention halls.
Three competitors were already banned over a merch line
The pin rally was not the weekend’s only crowding problem.
Earlier in the event, competitors Luca Ceribelli, Ruben Gianzini, and Luca Lussignoli were barred from the championships for helping people cut the merchandise line. Ceribelli, a former World Champion, said he considered the punishment extremely unjust.
They were initially told they would be banned from the Pokémon Center. They ended up barred from the event entirely.
The pins are already on eBay
The predictable ending is already underway.
Listings for the exclusive pins have started appearing on resale sites, which means the fans who cleared the stations before Saturday morning now hold items nobody else at the event could obtain.
That pattern has followed Pokémon everywhere lately, from card restocks at Target to an invite-only Pokémon Go raid in Times Square whose exclusive items ended up listed for five figures.
The demand is not the problem on its own. The problem is that events keep getting designed for the audience Pokémon used to have rather than the one it has now. A scavenger hunt across a convention floor assumes people will wander. Instead, several thousand of them stood in one place and waited.
The championships wrapped Sunday. The pins are gone, the lines are gone, and somewhere a fire marshal is glad it’s over.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Kotaku (August 30, 2026), Zack Kotzer’s report on the pin rally cancellation, the fire marshal accounts, the station count, and the resale context
Shacknews (August 2026), the initial report that the Pokémon XP pin rally had been cancelled
Kotaku (August 28, 2026), Kenneth Shepard’s reporting on the three competitors banned over the merchandise line and Ceribelli’s response
Attendee posts on X (August 30, 2026), the fire marshal accounts and the Jirachi line photograph, engagement not independently verified