The official website for the Pokémon franchise announced during the PokémonXP event on Friday that Disney+ will exclusively stream the Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d and Pichu, the franchise‘s stop-motion animated series collaboration with independent studio Aardman (Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep), beginning in 2027. The Disney XD channel will debut the series on television. The official YouTube channels for the Pokémon franchise and Aardman unveiled a teaser trailer:
The series is part of a global distribution deal between Disney+ and The Pokémon Company International. The deal also includes Pokémon the Series: The Beginning, the original Indigo League season of the anime, which began streaming on Disney+ on August 7 with the first 27 episodes and has also begun airing on Disney XD.
Peter Lord, Cofounder and Creative Director at Aardman, stated that the Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d and Pichu animated series will take place in a region that is “very close to our hearts.” The video teases Wooloo and Sirfetch’d, which are Pokémon originally introduced in the Pokémon Sword/Shield games that are set in the Galar region based on the U.K.
Tom Parkinson is the director, Natalie McKay is the creative director, and James Young is the creative lead.
Pokémon Concierge, another stop-motion animated series for the Pokémon franchise, debuted with four episodes on Netflix in December 2023. The stop-motion production company dwarf studios (Rilakkuma and Kaoru) animated the episodes thus far. New episodes premiered in September 2025.”
The Pokémon: Horizons anime premiered in Japan in April 2023 with a one-hour first-episode special. The show airs in Japan on Fridays at 6:55 p.m. JST.
The Pokémon Company had originally announced that the anime would debut on Netflix in the U.S. in February 2024, but the series debuted instead in March 2024. Netflix premiered Pokémon Horizons: The Series—The Search for Laqua, the anime’s second season, in February 2025. Netflix added Pokémon Horizons: Season 3—Rising Hope on January 6.
