Pokémon Bank Shuts Down in February 2027, So Move Your Old Pokémon Before They Are Gone for Good

If you still have Pokémon sitting in Pokémon Bank, you now have a hard deadline to deal with. The Pokémon Company announced this week that the 3DS era storage service will end on Thursday, February 25, 2027 at 7:00 p.m. PST. When the servers go dark, the option to transfer Pokémon from Bank to Pokémon HOME disappears with them, and anything left behind is gone for good.

That makes this one of those rare news stories that comes with homework. Bank launched in Japan at the end of 2013 and worldwide in 2014, and for over a decade it has been the bridge that carries Pokémon from the oldest generations forward. It survived the 3DS eShop closing in March 2023 and the end of 3DS online play in 2024, quietly kept alive as a free service long after the hardware it runs on stopped being sold. That grace period now has an expiration date.

Why you should move your Pokémon now, not in 2027

The mechanics are simple but unforgiving. Pokémon stored in Bank can be moved to Pokémon HOME, the current cloud service on Switch and mobile, and that is the only exit. Once the February 2027 cutoff passes, The Pokémon Company says anything still in Bank cannot be recovered, no exceptions.

There is one more wrinkle worth flagging: the Bank app is no longer available for download. If it is still installed on your 3DS you are fine, but you cannot grab it fresh from the store anymore. If your old console is in a drawer somewhere, our honest advice is to charge it this weekend, check what is in your boxes, and do the transfer while it is on your mind. Six months sounds like plenty of time until it is suddenly February and the 3DS will not hold a charge.

October's HOME update softens the blow

The same announcement carries some genuinely good news. In October, the Version 4.1.0 update connects the Nintendo Switch versions of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen to HOME, so Pokémon caught in the Kanto classics can move into modern games. Transfers are one way, and as a bonus, anyone who has completed the Pokédex in those games can claim a special Celebi through the HOME mobile app, no transfers required.

The update also raises the storage cap for Premium Plan subscribers from 6,000 to 9,000 Pokémon, which should comfortably absorb everyone's incoming Bank collections. And Pokémon caught in Safari Balls in Pokémon GO become transferable for the first time, arriving in HOME in a Strange Ball. If GO is still part of your weekly rotation, we keep a list of active Pokémon GO codes with free items worth grabbing.

It is a strange split screen for the franchise. The same week that Pokopia passed five million copies on Switch 2, the company is winding down one of the last living pieces of the 3DS ecosystem. Thirteen years is a long run for a legacy service, and the October update shows real effort to carry old collections forward rather than abandon them. But a hard cutoff is a hard cutoff. Set a reminder now, because some of those Pokémon date back to 2003, and they only get one trip out.