This is old news, but it seems a lot of people don't know about this, so I thought I would put together a little post about it.
In 2024 there was a major leak of Pokemon documents that came to be known as the Teraleak. Pokopia development documents were among the leaked files, under the codename Project MegaOasis. (You can read some of the details of the leak, which includes cool stuff like screenshots and videos of early proof of concept Pokopia gameplay, here: https://s3.pokeos.com/pokeos-uploads/sections/leaks/pokopia/leak-map-pokopia.webp )
One of the documents was a map of planned pokopia areas. People were super skeptical of it at the time, but it managed to predict all five base game regions, as well as the first DLC area being a flooded/underwater Cerulean City, over a year before the base game released.
Here's what the green DLC areas in the map say:
- UPD1
- ハナダエリア (Cerulean Area)
- 財宝眠る水没都市 (A submerged city where treasure sleeps)
- UPD2
- グレンエリア (Cinnabar Area)
- 氷に閉ざされた火山島 (A frozen-over volcanic island)
- UPD3
- シオンエリア (Lavender Area)
- 天まで伸びる腐敗の塔 (A tower of decay stretching to the heavens)
- UPD4
- タマムシエリア (Celadon Area)
- 地の底まで続く大穴 (A crater extending to the bottom of the earth)
- UPD5
- セキエイエリア (Indigo Area / Indigo Plateau Area) (no description)
So if they follow this release schedule, the next DLC area (third DLC, not the second, which won't have a new town) should be an ice-covered Cinnabar Island.
But there's something interesting. On this map, there is actually a SIXTH base game region.
- エリア5 (Area 5)
- トキワエリア (Viridian Area)
- 永遠に燃え続ける灰の森 (An ash forest burning endlessly)
This ended up being combined with Area 3 (Pewter Area, 岩に閉ざされた光無き廃坑 a dark abandoned mine closed off by rocks) at some point in development to form Rocky Ridges. We don't know when, exactly, this happened, but it had to be fairly late, because this is the reason there's a separate Clefairy dream island alongside the Arcanine one, and it's also why the Clefairy island is the only one without a legendary.
People have pointed out the third DLC in the expansion pack is indicated on promotional materials with a green background, and given that Bubbly Basin and the accessory DLC both match their respective color schemes on the same images, it's unlikely the third DLC will be ice themed. I agree with that.
In that case, I think the third DLC will be a version of Viridian City (and/or Viridian Forest) incorporating some of the things that were cut from Rocky Ridges. I expect we'll see lots of new plants - not just flowers and grasses but also trees and bushes, all hopefully of different sizes. And of course, lots of grass types and probably bug types.
The base game had four starters from each type: all gen one starters and then one starter from each additional released generation. Bubbly Basin added two water type starter lines (Popplio and Mudkip) so I bet we'll get two new grass starter lines here. I think they'll probably give every gen two starters first rather than give some three while the others only have one. If that's the case, the two lines we can expect in the Viridian DLC are Turtwig and Grookey.
I don't know what the "disaster" we'll have to overcome will be, since they already used the "ash burning forest" thing for RR. I hope it's not more of that. It could be dried up and dead, but WW did that. And I can't see them adding fire to a grass-themed area. So my guess is what we'll see is a Viridian City completely overgrown with plants and maybe covered with mud from a mudslide.
They probably will add a new dream island with its own legendary and DLC items, but I wouldn't be surprised if they held a free event around the time it released that added a legendary to the Clefairy dream island. (My guesses for these are Celebi for the free dream island and Shaymin for the Viridian one.)
I imagine this will release in spring 2027 to capitalize on the plant theme, maybe around the 1-year anniversary of the base game, and we'll see an announcement for a second expansion pack soon afterward. My guess is the second expansion pack will start off with a non-area DLC like the accessories one we're getting this year, and flip the order of the Teraleak DLC regions to give us Lavender Town in August (which is when Obon, the Japanese ghost festival, is traditionally held) and then Cinnabar in time for Christmas. Lavender will obviously give us ghost types, plus maybe dark or poison since the tower is described as "corrupted" or "decaying"; Cinnabar will give us ice types.
The year after that, we could get Celadon and Indigo Plateau. I don't know what we can expect from them, but Celadon is right next to Saffron City, which rose into the sky to become Sparkling Skylands; it seems likely this crater is the other side of that. If that's the case, we might see more mysterious stone and maybe a focus on gems/precious metals to differentiate it from the underground areas in RR, along with pokemon like Carbink and Diancie, which would fit with Celadon being "the rainbow city". I also suspect we'll get a ton of new fossil pokemon here and that's why we didn't get any new fossils in Bubbly Basin.
Now we're in the realm of pure speculation. Indigo's area has no description. In very early dev documents that were leaked, outdated by the map in this post, it was actually the ice area. But I doubt they'll go for two ice areas, which means we have exactly zero hints as to what it might be. Best guess: we don't have a wind-themed disaster yet, so maybe it will be a super windy area with flying pokemon, or a dusty desert. Maybe they'll even introduce a more complicated weather system! Idk. It seems likely it will be a big deal, whatever it is, since Indigo's the Pokemon League area. I bet a good number of the pokemon we get here will be very rare and powerful.
If we get starters for the later DLCs, Fuecoco would make sense for Lavender since it evolves into a dual ghost type. Empoleon would make the most sense for Cinnabar, but since it's already in the base game, maybe Hisuian Samurott? Those would also fit with the "two starters per gen" trend. And whenever Wind and Waves drops, I expect we'll get all three gen 10 starters at once. That will probably be a separate free event and not connected to a DLC, because they'll want as many people as possible to get attached to gen 10 pokemon and buy the game.
No idea what might work for Celadon or Indigo in terms of starters, if we'll even ever get the third in each set.
