Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Update Coming This October, as Ruby and Sapphire Speculation Swirls
Nintendo Switch versions of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen will be updated with Pokémon Home support this fall, as speculation mounts that Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald ports are also on the way.
Today, Nintendo officially confirmed that FireRed and LeafGreen would become compatible with the franchise's cloud-based Pokémon storage service via an update scheduled for this October. While we knew that Home compatibility would be added at some point, we didn't know when.
After this update, anyone who has completed their Pokédex will be rewarded with the Mythical Pokémon Celebi, who will pop up as a gift in Home. (Professor Oak will also be very happy.) Luckily, you won't need to actually transfer each species to Home to get that Celebi — the app will simply detect them as caught and update its Pokédex accordingly.
As we've known for some time, transferring Pokémon to Home from FireRed and LeafGreen is a one-way trip once your creatures have journeyed on to other games in the franchise. Additionally, there's no support for Pokémon from other games in the franchise transferring into FireRed and LeafGreen.
But while Home support is commonly added to Pokémon games post-launch rather than on day one, fans think there may be more to Nintendo's October update timing than meets the eye. On social media, speculation is swirling that ports of Pokémon Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire will launch around the same time — giving players another reason to finish off their Kanto Pokédex sooner rather than later.
Why Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire? Well, these were the mainline games launched just before FireRed and LeafGreen, all for the Game Boy Advance generation. Fans suspect that Nintendo is prepping similar ports of these titles, and will only have been spurred on further by the huge sales of FireRed and LeafGreen so far.
In just six weeks, the two retro games sold a combined total of more than 4 million copies. That's an estimated $80 million in revenue, despite an online backlash to Nintendo's release and pricing model for the games — which it previously defended as a "fun" celebration of Pokémon's recent 30-year anniversary. If you want to know why these games aren't just being placed on the Nintendo Switch Online service like other GBA titles, this is — at least partly — the answer.
In other cloud-based Pokémon storage news, today's update confirmed the death of Home's predecessor Pokémon Bank, which began life on the Nintendo 3DS. You have until February 25, 2027 to transfer creatures to/from that and into Home before its servers are switched off and all its remaining Pokémon perish in the ether. If you need it, here's how to transfer your Pokémon from Bank to HOME.
Finally, Pokémon Go creatures caught in Safari Balls will also become Home-compatible in October, just in time for 2026's Wild Area event. It's unclear what the hold-up has been for this to happen, though Wild Area creatures do have extremely high stats, which The Pokémon Company may have been cautious about allowing.
Next up for the Pokémon franchise will be the Switch 2-exclusive 10th generation games Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves, although these are not set to arrive until 2027. There's time, then, for another set of ports to keep sales ticking over in the meantime...
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social