Do you need a new Pokémon T-shirt? Don’t answer that. Could you be convinced to buy a new Pokémon T-shirt if a nice one popped up? Well, prepare yourselves, because trendy Japanese high street clothing company Uniqlo has announced a new Pokémon collab for 2026.
The range is scheduled to arrive late March, according to the Uniqlo website, and features seven unique designs – some for adults, some for kids (often differentiated by the base colour of the T-shirt). I think the standout adult design is a blue-ish Snorlax T-shirt with a sleepy character design on the left side of the chest, and the words “Snorlax woke up!” underneath it. Though there’s a grey Gengar T-shirt with the character smiling wickedly in the middle of the chest that I can imagine going down well.
The best kids’ T-shirt, and I don’t know why they don’t do these in adult sizes, is a sunshine yellow (or Easter yellow – is that a real colour?) Pikachu design. Kids and adults both get a watercolour-style white T-shirt with cute little Bulbasaur, Charmeleon and Squirtle character designs across the middle and the words “I have only 3 left, but you can have one! Choose!” underneath. I think this is a quote from one of the games when you get your Pokémon at the beginning? It could even be the original Pokémon game. I am really stretching my Pokémon knowledge here.
Pokémon turns 30 years old next year – I’ll look away while you turn to dust at that realisation – and the official celebration date is 27th February, apparently. But Pokémon arrived a few years later in the west, not touching down in the UK until 1999. I know this because I investigated the story of how Pokémon significantly upset Games Workshop’s operations when it did arrive. It’s unlikely competition, I know, but it transformed the house of Warhammer’s operations forever.
The Uniqlo adult T-Shirts are €19.90, and the kids’ T-shirts are €12.90. Maybe see if you can squeeze into one of the smaller ones?
Uniqlo is no stranger to Pokémon collabs. Earlier this year it released an eye-catching and very, perhaps, knowing Magikarp design that referenced the creature being an “expert splasher”.
This year saw the launch of Pokémon Legends: Z-A on Nintendo Switch – another of the in-between and slightly off-at-a-tangent Pokémon Switch instalments. It was a bit uneven but, overall, Chris Tapsell liked it. “Lumiose City could do with work, but Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a much more tightly focused – and delightfully goofy – return to better form. At least by modern Pokémon’s standards,” he wrote in his Pokémon Legends: Z-A review.
