Pokémon Bank, the 3DS cloud storage app that has quietly kept decades of creatures reachable, is being switched off. The Pokémon Company has set the shutdown for February 26, 2027, and the same date kills the one-way link that moves Pokémon from Bank into Pokémon Home. If your team is still parked in Bank, the clock is now running.
Quick answer: Open Pokémon Bank on your 3DS and send every Pokémon you want to keep to Pokémon Home before 12:00 PM on February 26, 2027. After that time, the transfer button stops working and anything left in Bank is stranded.
What happens on February 26, 2027
The service ends at 12:00 PM on Friday, February 26, 2027. At that moment two things happen at once. Bank goes offline as a storage app, and the feature that pushes Pokémon from Bank up to Home is discontinued on the same day. There is no grace period, and the shutdown time and the transfer cutoff are the same deadline.
The company’s guidance is blunt. Anything you want to keep needs to be sent to Pokémon Home before the service ends. Once Bank is down, even having the app installed won’t help, because the connection it relies on will be gone.
The full details are laid out in the official announcement from The Pokémon Company.
Games that rely on Pokémon Bank to reach Home
This is bigger than a single app closing. Bank is the last official step for pulling Pokémon out of most 3DS-era and classic titles and into the modern Switch ecosystem through Home. Some older games route through Poké Transporter first, but they still need Bank to finish the trip. When Bank goes, that road closes for the games below.
| Generation / type | Games |
|---|---|
| Gen 1 (Virtual Console) | Red, Blue, Yellow |
| Gen 2 (Virtual Console) | Gold, Silver, Crystal |
| Gen 3 | Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald |
| Gen 4 | Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, SoulSilver |
| Gen 5 | Black, White, Black 2, White 2 |
| Gen 6 | X, Y, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire |
| Gen 7 | Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon |
Note: The Virtual Console versions of Gen 1 and Gen 2 needed Poké Transporter to reach Bank in the first place, so those transfers depend on Bank too. Once it’s offline, the only ways to move those Pokémon are unofficial homebrew tools or emulators that copy save files, neither of which is an official method.
How to move your Pokémon before the shutdown
Tip: The move only goes one direction. Once a Pokémon reaches Home from Bank, it can continue into supported Switch games, but it can’t return to the 3DS.
What you can’t carry over
Not everything travels with your Pokémon. PokéMile Points earned through Bank cannot be moved to Home, so any balance tied to the service is lost when it closes. Plan around your Pokémon, not the points.
The shutdown also effectively ends Pokémon transfers between 3DS games without unofficial tools. For players who used the 3DS as a bridge between generations, that long chain from Ruby and Sapphire all the way up to the Switch titles is closing for anything not already moved.
What’s changing in Pokémon Home this year
Pokémon Home stays fully online across Switch, iOS, and Android, and a few updates land before Bank shuts down. In October, Home adds connectivity for the Switch versions of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, and premium subscribers see their storage capacity raised to 9,000 Pokémon.
FireRed and LeafGreen support comes with limits. Pokémon transferred out of those games into other titles cannot come back, and you can’t bring Pokémon from other games into FireRed and LeafGreen. There’s also a bonus for completists. Finish the Pokédex in FireRed or LeafGreen and you can claim Celebi in the mobile version of Pokémon Home.
Treat October as a separate feature update, not a replacement for the transfer deadline. If your goal is to preserve what’s already in Bank, that window still closes on February 26, 2027, and moving your Pokémon first is the only official way to keep them.