Pokemon Pokopia's Bubbly Basin DLC Opens an Underwater Town August 5, and Everyone Gets Manaphy for Free

Pokopia is about to get a lot wetter. The Pokemon Company has locked in August 5 for Pokemon Pokopia Expansion Pass Part 1: Bubbly Basin, the first paid DLC for the Switch 2 life sim, and it comes with a genuinely generous twist. The same day, a free Ver. 2.0.0 update lands for every player, and it is the free half that carries the headline feature: Manaphy shows up in your Pokopia, teaches you the move Dive, and from then on you can swim with Water-type Pokemon and build on the ocean floor whether you bought anything or not.

Video: The Pokemon Company on YouTube

The paid part is the destination. Bubbly Basin is a whole new underwater town for your human-form Ditto to rebuild, and the extended trailer makes it look like the strangest place Pokopia has offered yet, with pagoda rooftops on the seabed, glowing coral lighting the deeper stretches, and Mudkip, Chinchou and Popplio drifting past your front door.

Building only works like this underwater

The mechanical hook is buoyancy. Bubbly Basin introduces buoyant blocks that float at whatever depth you set them, so structures can hang in open water in ways the surface towns simply do not allow. The farming loop gets its own aquatic spin too: watermelons become a plantable crop, Pokemon with the Water specialty help them grow, and Pokemon with the Generate specialty power bubble machines and streetlights to keep the town running. Smoothies join the prepared food list, Surf gets a power-up, and there are new outfits and ocean-floor furniture to hunt down. The flashiest flex is the Sharpedo submarine, a build-your-own secret base you can park at the bottom of the sea.

The $34.99 Expansion Pass covers three parts, and this is only the opener. Part 2 arrives in late 2026 with new Pokemon accessories and furniture, while Part 3 brings another entirely new town in 2027. Buying the pass also unlocks Ditto print block and wallpaper recipes right away, plus a code for 30 rare Pokemetal ingots for anyone who purchases before August 31, 2027.

Our take

Splitting Dive and Manaphy off into the free update is the right call, and not every publisher would have made it. The ocean becomes part of everyone's Pokopia, and the pass is really selling a town, not the ability to get wet. At $34.99 against a $59.99 base game, the three-part pass is priced like Nintendo expects Pokopia to stick around for years, which tracks for a game that is still the headline pick in the Switch 2 summer bundle through the end of August. If the next two parts are as substantial as this one looks, the math works. If they are thinner, that judgment gets revisited in 2027.