2024 Pokemon World Champion Luca Ceribelli says he and two other qualified competitors have been effectively banned from the 2026 Pokemon World Championships. The incident resulting in the ban has not been officially confirmed by the Pokemon tournament.

Ceribelli had qualified to compete again in 2026, as had fellow Italian players Ruben Gianzini and Luca Lussignoli. In an August 28 statement, Ceribelli said all three were unable to compete at Worlds after their event passes were confiscated during a Friday dispute involving the Pokemon Center line, describing what followed as having "effectively" turned a Pokemon Center sanction into a ban from the event itself. Ceribelli said he and Lussignoli allowed Gianzini to join them in line because Gianzini has a documented disability that makes crowded spaces "severely uncomfortable" for him. Ceribelli acknowledged that letting Gianzini join them was their mistake, citing that as the reason the group did not dispute the resulting decision to bar them from entering the Pokemon Center. His complaint instead centers on what allegedly happened after security took their event passes.

According to Ceribelli, security confiscated the passes to ensure the three players could not return to the Pokemon Center, while repeatedly assuring them that replacement passes could be printed so they could compete in the Pokemon World Championships the following day . Ceribelli noted that the group complied because it accepted the ban from the store and did not expect it to affect its tournament participation. However, they later learned that passes confiscated by staff could not be reprinted, he said.

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