Pokémon Pokopia is about to get a lot deeper — literally. On August 5, 2026, a free Dive update lands alongside the game’s first paid expansion, opening up an entirely new layer of gameplay beneath the surface of the water.
The headline here is the Dive ability, which lets you explore underwater indefinitely rather than gasping your way back up on a timer. Once submerged, you’re not just sightseeing: you can build structures below the waves and interact with water-type Pokémon in their own habitat. It’s the kind of feature that quietly doubles the size of a game, turning what was a coastline into a full three-dimensional playground.
Getting there takes a little legwork, though. To unlock Dive you’ll need to complete the Raise the Environmental Level mission in Bleak Beach and learn two moves — Jump and Surf. Consider it a rite of passage before the ocean opens up.
The free update arrives in tandem with the paid Pokémon Pokopia Expansion Pass, priced at US$34.99. It’s a three-part DLC, and the pieces roll out over time rather than all at once:
- Part 1 — Bubbly Basin: an abandoned underwater town to discover and revive, launching August 5, 2026.
- Part 2: a batch of Pokémon accessories, arriving later in 2026.
- Part 3: an all-new town, launching in 2027.
That staggered structure means buying the Expansion Pass is a long-term commitment — you’re investing in content that stretches well into next year. The upside is a steady drip of new places and things to build, which suits a game that’s really about settling in and making a corner of the world your own.
Bubbly Basin is the piece worth paying attention to first. An abandoned underwater town carries a very different mood from the sunny beach-building that’s defined Pokopia so far, and it pairs neatly with the new Dive ability that makes exploring it possible in the first place. The free update and the expansion clearly hang together as one package — one gives you the tools, the other gives you the destination.
If you’ve been dipping in and out of Pokopia, the Dive update alone is reason enough to reinstall it, since it costs nothing and fundamentally changes how you move through the world. Whether the Expansion Pass earns its keep will depend on how much life those three drops breathe into the underwater setting over the coming months.
