Hi there trainers!
We just had the largest tournament ever in GO; the EUIC. And now we’re heading into the last 3 months of competitive play to gather those Championship Points.
My name is Martijn – you may know me as Inadequance. I am the 2024 Worlds finalist, and I’ll be writing most of these articles! The goal is to write the many tournaments that will be held globally as one big storyline.
From here on, all points gained from tournaments held after the EUIC up until and including the NAIC will count for the 2025 LAIC travel award. The total, of course, will count for the Worlds qualification and Travel Award.
Qualification
Recapping real quick on who qualifies (and who doesn’t) for the World Championships. There are 3 ways to qualify:
- Win a Regional or Special Championship
- Reach top 4 at an International Championship or last years World Championship
- Championship Points
Qualifying on Championship points is different per region; you need to be in the top x of the leaderboard to qualify. Per region, these are the numbers of invitations given on Championship points:
Do note that this does NOT include players qualifying directly from Championships. For example: P4T0M4N won the EUIC, that means one more qualification spot will cascade to the person being rank 51 on the Europe leaderboard.
So how do you keep track of this? There isn’t an official way to see this, but the goat JJan11 kept track of it. For players looking to qualify or keeping their qualification spot; this is an important list to keep an eye on as the tournaments continue!
The meta to expect
As much as I would LOVE to elaborate on all the moveset buffs and changes to the new meta, the meta in Vancouver and Fortaleza this weekend will not be so different from what we saw at the EUIC.
The top 3 all had Azumarill and Galarian Corsola on their team. Galarian Corsola may see a drop in usage due to the Night Shade nerf, but is still extremely good at what it does with bulk and Astonish. I think Azumarill may not even see top 6 anymore in the new meta, but for this weekend it likely still has a high usage number due to its unbreakable pairing with Shadow Drapion. Ignore that number 4 guy by the way, no one uses that kind of stuff.
But there’s one Pokémon that I think will do exceptionally well in Vancouver and Fortaleza, due to the rise of Emolga and Jumpluff that will be able to use their buffed attacks. It’s the swan song of Dewgong. I think Dewgong is completely out of the meta once Lapras with Psywave is allowed, but the Flying-type Pokémon make Annihilape and Primeape more difficult to use meaning Dewgong could be even better. Pair that with a Rollout nerf and what already was so good will now be even better.
One of the few niche Pokémon to stop it I think could be Charjabug, as it can tackle Azumarill, Drapion, Dewgong and Emolga. But keep in mind that Diggersby is still insanely good in this meta, even with less Galarian Corsola floating around.
Players to look out for
At the time of writing, Fortaleza counts 71 competitors, while Vancouver counts a whopping 120 competitors.
With P4T0M4N winning the 2025 EUIC, it only makes sense to look at the other youngsters (that are making me feel old and slow at this game). For Fortaleza, I’ve noted down LNDsxJoaoVictor. I know, it’s not the first time – but the guy reached number one on the GO Battle League leaderboard more than anyone else in the world. He only seems to get better with every tournament, too. His most recent performances were a top 17 at LAIC and a top 5 at Rio de Janeiro, two massive tournaments in Brazil. It is only a matter of time before he wins his first medal.
And then the other young battler is SsThorn. He reached the grand finals in his first ever tournament – in Toronto 2024, and then top 8 in Toronto 2025 again! While his team in the latest tournament was fairly meta, SsThorn does like to spice it up a bit with picks like Clefable or Shadow Gyarados. Vancouver does have some well known names competing such as DaiLapCheurng, Reis2Occasion and ItsAXN so we’ll see how he matches up against them.
Closing words
That’ll be it for this week! I’ll have a more accurate analysis on the new meta for the next article – and perhaps have some usage data from my practice tournaments to pair with it too.
As always, you can find the links to the bracket and streams here.
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-vancouver
https://www.dracoviz.com/2025-fortaleza
See you next time trainers!!