Pokémon Bank Shuts Down: The End of GBA and DS Transfers

A Game Boy Advance cartridge, a Nintendo DS and a Nintendo 3DS arranged together

A Pokémon caught on a Game Boy Advance in 2004 can, today, be moved onto a Nintendo Switch. It takes four separate pieces of hardware, five one-way transfers and a paid subscription, but it works. That has been true for over a decade.

On 13 August 2026, The Pokémon Company announced that Pokémon Bank will end service on 25 February 2027. Bank sits in the middle of that chain. Once it closes, nothing caught on a GBA, a DS or a 3DS can be moved forward again.

The Deadline

Nintendo gives the cutoff in Pacific time. For UK readers it lands in the small hours of the following morning.

Pokémon Bank end of service

Friday 26 February 2027, 03:00 GMT

Pacific: Thu 25 Feb, 7:00 p.m. PST Eastern: Thu 25 Feb, 10:00 p.m. EST Japan: Fri 26 Feb, 12:00 JST

Two things stop. Bank's online Boxes stop accepting deposits and withdrawals, and, in Nintendo's phrasing, "transferring Pokémon from Pokémon Bank to Pokémon HOME will also no longer be possible."

Nintendo has not said what happens to Pokémon left in Bank's Boxes afterwards. No grace period has been announced. Assume anything still sitting there on the morning of 26 February stays there permanently.

                Poké Transporter: the companion app is not named in the announcement. It does not need to be. Its only destination is Bank, so once Bank stops accepting deposits, Transporter has nowhere to send anything.
            

The Chain

Getting a Generation 3 Pokémon to a modern game is not one transfer. It is five, each one-way, each with its own hardware requirement.

#	From → To	Method	Hardware needed	After Feb 2027
1	Gen 3 → Gen 4 Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen → Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, SoulSilver	Pal Park	Original DS or DS Lite. The GBA cartridge goes in the second slot, which the DSi and 3DS do not have.	Unaffected
2	Gen 4 → Gen 5 Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, SoulSilver → Black, White, Black 2, White 2	Poké Transfer	Two DS-family systems, one holding each game, over local wireless.	Unaffected
3	Gen 5 → Bank Black, White, Black 2, White 2	Poké Transporter	A 3DS-family system with Poké Transporter and Bank installed, plus an internet connection.	Ends
4	Virtual Console → Bank Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal (3DS re-releases)	Poké Transporter	The 3DS Virtual Console version, not the original Game Boy cartridge.	Ends
5	Gen 6 / Gen 7 → Bank X, Y, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire, Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon	Bank, directly	A 3DS-family system with Bank installed.	Ends
6	Bank → Pokémon HOME The final link out of the 3DS era	Move to HOME	A HOME Premium Plan and a linked Nintendo Network ID. A 3DS is not required for this step.	Ends
7	HOME → Switch games Sword, Shield, Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl, Legends: Arceus, Scarlet, Violet and later titles	HOME	Subject to each game's own compatibility rules.	Unaffected

Step 1 is the one people underestimate. Pal Park reads the GBA cartridge sitting in the console's second slot, and only the original DS and the DS Lite have that slot. Every 3DS model, and the DSi before it, dropped it. If your cartridges are in a drawer and the only handheld in the house is a 3DS, the chain will not start. Pal Park also unlocks only after the National Pokédex, moves six Pokémon at a time, and works only between games of the same language and region.

Every link that touches Bank goes at once, and the consequence is that the chain does not shorten. It severs. After February 2027 a Ruby cartridge can still send Pokémon to Diamond, and Diamond can still send them to Black, because both of those steps happen between two consoles in the same room with no server involved. Those Pokémon then sit in a Generation 5 save with nowhere to go.

What Is Already Gone

The February deadline is the last step of a shutdown that started three years ago, and the earlier steps matter more for most people.

The 3DS and Wii U eShops closed on 27 March 2023. On the same date, Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter became free to use, having previously required a paid annual subscription. That only helped players who already had the software downloaded. Nintendo then switched off 3DS and Wii U online services on 8 April 2024, naming Bank and Poké Transporter as the two exceptions that would keep connecting. That reprieve is what is now ending.

Nintendo's shutdown notice closes with the line that decides the issue for a lot of readers: "Please note Pokémon Bank is not currently available for download."

                The practical position: if Pokémon Bank is not already installed on a 3DS you own, treat the transfer route as closed now rather than in February. The deadline is real only for people who downloaded the app before March 2023. The same applies to the Virtual Console releases of Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal.
            

What You Need

If you do still have the software installed, the full kit for a Generation 3 rescue run is:

The GBA cartridge. A dead internal battery breaks berry growth and some events but does not erase the save, and Pal Park still reads it.
An original DS or DS Lite, for the GBA slot. This is the hardest item to substitute, because no later Nintendo handheld has one.
A Generation 4 game with the National Pokédex, which for most saves means finishing the main story first.
A second DS-family system and a Generation 5 game. A 3DS can host the Generation 5 side, since it plays DS cartridges.
A 3DS with Bank and Poké Transporter already installed, plus an internet connection and the linked Nintendo Network ID.
A Pokémon HOME Premium Plan.

Bank itself is free. HOME is the paid part, and only Premium can pull from Bank: £2.69 for one month, £4.49 for three, £14.39 for a year. The free Basic Plan holds 30 Pokémon and cannot do the transfer at all. Premium storage rises from 6,000 to 9,000 Pokémon in the October 2026 HOME update at no change in price, which is worth waiting for if you are emptying a large account.

                If your Pokémon are already in Bank: you do not need a working 3DS for the last step. Nintendo's HOME support notes that Pokémon stored in Bank can be moved to HOME using the linked Nintendo Network ID, without a Nintendo 3DS system. A dead or sold console is not necessarily the end of the line, provided the Pokémon made it into Bank at some point and you can still sign in.
            

After the Deadline

The offline half of the chain keeps working indefinitely, because it never depended on a server. Pal Park and Poké Transfer are local operations between two consoles you own. Generation 5 simply becomes a terminus: a Pokémon caught on a GBA in 2004 can still be walked forward into a copy of Black 2 in 2030, and there it stops. No replacement route has been announced.

The timing is odd, because the same announcement opened something else. FireRed and LeafGreen arrived on Switch on 27 February 2026, and from October 2026 those versions connect to Pokémon HOME directly. That connection is one-way: once a Pokémon is brought to another game it cannot return, and Pokémon from other games cannot be sent into the Kanto titles at all.

                The distinction that matters: the Switch releases of FireRed and LeafGreen are new copies of the game, with new save files. They do not read a 2004 cartridge. A Kanto Pokémon caught on the Switch version can reach HOME after October. The one you caught on a GBA twenty years ago still has to make the old journey, and only until February.
            

That is the shape of the ending. The games are coming back. The save files are not.