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A Pokémon fan visiting the Vatican had a unique experience with new Pope Leo XIV. The individual, who works as a TCG League leader, visited His Holiness with a Popplio card from the English Lost Thunder expansion. Another person presented the card, and the Pope graciously signed it. The photos since gone viral, and as of writing has been reposted over 5000 times, received 47,000 likes, and is being reported on major news sites.

Runs of two Pokémon games are scheduled to feature in the Summer Games Done Quick 2025 charity marathon, which is being held live at the Hilton Minneapolis Downtown from July 6th to July 12th. As always with SGDQ, the event will be raising money for Doctors Without Borders, a nonprofit and non-government organization that provides humanitarian health care across the world. The marathon can be watched live on the GDQ Twitch channel.

After taking a year off for reorganizing, the European Speedrunner Assembly will be returning on Saturday, June 28th live out of the Quality Hotel View in Malmö, Sweden. The event will feature a week of speedrunning, ending on July 5th, raising money for Alzheimerfonden - the Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation. This year's event will be returning to a non-stop format for the primary stream after the events in 2024 which had scheduled breaks overnight, although stream 2 will continue to have breaks. Runs of four Pokémon games are scheduled to take place across the two streams. The main stream is available here, while the secondary stream can be watched here.

The Halo speedrunning community are coming together this weekend for a marathon of non-Halo runs. It's a little counterintuitive at first thought for sure! Every run in the marathon will be performed by a member of the Halo community and feature a non-Halo game. Among the speedruns performed will be a run of Pokémon Red. The event can be watched from the Halo Races Twitch channel.

Various members of the speedrunning community will be coming together for roughly 12 hours today of speedruns that could end in disaster. Examples include massive luck factors, tricks that can softlock a run, or simply ones that aren't safe to have in a marathon. One of the runs in this will be a run of Pokémon Trading Card Game for the Game Boy Color that starts with and uses the Squirtle & Friends deck. The event can be watched from the Twitch channel of the marathon host, Junkyard Dave.

The Summer 2025 edition of Bingothon is scheduled for this weekend from June 13rd to June 15th. The event will be raising money for Doctors Without Borders. A playthrough of Pokémon Rumble will be featured in the event, in which the runner will attempt to complete five objectives on a bingo card. The event can be watched from the Bingothon Twitch channel.

The fifth Prevent-A-Thon event is scheduled to take place between June 5th through June 8th. This is a primarily speedrun-focused event that will also feature a number of other things, including a score attack New Pokémon Snap focusing on the Durice Island stages. The event can be watched from its official Twitch channel.

RPG Limit Break 2025 is scheduled to begin tomorrow, May 18th, running through until May 24th for close to a week of nonstop RPG speedruns. Two Pokemon speedruns are scheduled to be a part of the marathon: Pokémon Crystal, and a co-op diploma run of Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu/Eevee. The event will be held live out of Denver, Colorado (with some runs performed remotely) and will be raising money for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The event will be available to watch on both Twitch and YouTube. Individual runs will be available on-demand from the latter at a later point.

On a post on social media this Thursday, Palworld developer Pocketpair officially confirmed that several changes in the game were made due to the ongoing lawsuit with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in Japan. These changes were done to "avoid disruptions to the development and distribution of Palworld." One of these was the ability to summon Pals with "Pal Spheres", which was removed in v0.3.11 in late November. As of the latest v0.5.5 patch, the ability for a player to glide using their Pals has also been removed.

Link to the Cure 2025 is taking place this weekend from May 2nd to May 4th. A blindfolded run of Pokémon Red is scheduled for the first day of the marathon, not long after this article goes up. The marathon, which is raising money for Child's Play charity, can be watched from its official Twitch channel.

On April 18th, 2025, Nintendo of America filed a DMCA subpoena against Discord Inc. in attempt to discover the identity of the user who were able to gain unauthorized access to Gamefreak's servers. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has ordered Discord to provide any information they can about the user behind the data breach, who went by GameFreakOUT. The hack came to be known as the "Freakleak".

The Finnish speedrunning community is coming together this weekend from April 18th to April 20th for FINNRUNS Quest, a marathon exclusively featuring role-playing games. The event is being held live out of GamePit Pro near Jamk, Jyväskylä. A run of Pokémon X is scheduled to be the first run of Saturday, and can be watched from the FINNRUNS Twitch channel.

The 2025 edition of Game Over, Cancer! is set to take place this week, from April 14th through to April 20th. A run of The Indigo Disk in Pokémon Violet is scheduled for the final day of the event, which can be watched from the Twitch channel of marathon organizer strizer86.

The Midwest Speedfest 2025 marathon is now live at the Crowne Plaza Minneapolis West as part of VGM Con: Dimensional Riff, set to continue until April 13th. A run of Pokémon HeartGold is scheduled for the first day of the marathon, which can be watched from their Twitch channel.

The spring 2025 edition of Fukuoka RTA Forum will be taking place this weekend from April 12th to April 13th. Pokémon Snap is scheduled as the penultimate run of the event, which can be watched from the official fukuoka_rta Twitch channel. Proceeds from Twitch subscriptions and merchandise will be used to fund their events and donate to various charitable organizations.

NSG Spring 25 is being held live out of the Gjerdrum Kulturhus in Gjerdrum, Norway this weekend from April 11th to April 13th, with the nearby #2ETG also being utilized as a secondary venue. The event will be raising money for Norges Blindeforbund, an organization that supports blind and partially sighted people in Norway. The marathon will feature a run of Pokémon Red/Blue and can be watched from their official Twitch channel.

The inaugural Austro Runs speedrun marathon will be taking place this weekend on April 5th and 6th. Speedruns of Pokémon Blue and Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen are scheduled for Saturday. This event will be raising money for Tafel Österreich, a food bank in Austria, and can be watched from the event's official Twitch channel.

Multithon 2025 will be taking place from March 27th to March 30th. This year's marathon will feature Pokémon Emerald in a multiworld format using Archipelago, alongside Timespinner, A Short Hike, and Lufia II: Ancient Cave, scheduled as the first run of Saturday. Like all previous Multithon events, it will be raising money for BluePath Service Dogs, an organization that provides service animals to autistic individuals, offering them safety, companionship, and opportunities for independence. The event's stream will be active on the Multithon Twitch channel from 12:00pm (PDT) to around 12:00am (PDT) each day.

The Pokémon Don't Catch'em All Exclusive Kanto Edition charity event is now live. It is the latest of Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta's side-events, wherein participants will each receive six random Pokémon families from the Kanto region and must play through the game using only them. The Generation 1 games, FireRed/LeafGreen, and Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee are all supported in the challenge.

Gamers for Hope will be hosting the latest installment of their Gamers Against Cancer marathon this weekend from March 14th to March 16th. The event will be raising money for the Stand Up 2 Cancer Foundation. A blindfolded speedrun of Pokémon Red is scheduled for the final day of the event, which can be watched from their group's official Twitch channel.