Welcome to Judge Ball, a resource site for Pokémon Professors by Pokémon Professors!
What’s new?
The 2025-2026 Play! Pokémon season is getting underway, and there are a bunch of changes to note. Here’s an overview of all of the changes so far:
League management change
League management has transitioned over to Play! Tools. League sessions (now called Play! Sessions) will now be scheduled via Play! Tools – you’re now able to set recurring times, so no more forgetting to keep times up-to-date on Pokemon.com if you always have League at the same time! Also, instead of having to manually enter player information for a month’s worth of League sessions, you’ll now check in players via Play! Tools for each Play! Session – this can be done by scanning their QR code in the Play! Pokémon Access app or manually adding them.
Along with technical changes, there have also been some shifts to League roles. League Leaders are now known as League Assistants, and a League Assistant certification will be available in Professor University (see more about this in the next section). There are three primary types of League Assistant roles:
- League Assistant (base): able to view League details and report Play! Session attendance. Professor certifications are not required for this role.
- League Assistant with Enhanced permissions: same as above, but also able to create/edit Play! Sessions and sanction Friendly Tournaments. Must be an Organizer.
- League Assistant with Specialist permissions: same as above, but also able to sanction League Challenges, League Cups, and Prerelease events. Must be an Organizer.
A change from League Owners to Play! Pokémon Store Owners was also mentioned, but this transition has not yet taken place.
Pokémon has created self-guided demos to help you get familiar with these changes. They will also be hosting webinar training sessions throughout the next couple months, so stay tuned to your email and Professor Community for more information!
If you still need to report for August, the old League reporting functionality is still available. You can access your League page by going to the Event Locator, choosing your store, and clicking the League Calendar button.
TOM 1.80.3 released
A new version of Tournament Operations Manager has been released! The download link has also migrated over to Play! Tools – click “Download TOM” in the main menu. Be sure to update to 1.80.3 before September 25th, as tournaments run in earlier versions of TOM will not be accepted after this date.
Professor Program certification overhaul
Certifications (e.g. becoming an Organizer/Judge, “ranking up”) will now be handled entirely through Professor University, Pokémon’s training platform for Pokémon Professors. You can read more in the Professor Community news article about these changes, but some quick notes:
- Becoming a Judge, Organizer, or League Assistant now requires taking the relevant course on Professor University – any certifications you had in the old system have rolled over into the new system.
- The Basic/Stage 1/Stage 2 ranks have been deprecated – there are new ranks, which are not required to staff any level of event (read the article linked above for more information on the new ranks).
- The Professor Point cap per month is now flattened to 20 per month (the previous cap for Stage 1), with all sanctioned events other than Play! Sessions adding to points.
Onboarding new stores/Professors
TPCi has split the onboarding process into two tracks: League and Professor. Store Owners will now be able to apply for their store to become a Play! Pokémon Store and host League without needing to become an Organizer. However, an Organizer will still be needed to be able to host any tournaments, including Prereleases and casual Friendly Tournaments. There is a new onboarding portal for this, with a path for Professors and a path for stores.
Event Locator overhaul
The Play! Pokémon Event Locator has been completely re-written. The new locator is generally better for players to be able to find nearby stores, with Play! Sessions showing up once the League management change mentioned above is implemented, though store-agnostic tournament discovery is no longer possible like it was on the old locator. The Play! Pokémon Tools team is aware of concerns and are working on improvements.