Pokopia Bubbly Basin DLC: What Is Actually Confirmed

The Pokopia Expansion Pass went on sale back in June, which means we have had roughly seven weeks of people confidently describing content that The Pokemon Company has never put in writing. Part 1, Bubbly Basin, arrives in August. It is close enough now that it is worth drawing a hard line between the stuff on official storefronts and press pages, and the stuff that came from a single trailer frame and a lot of enthusiasm.

I am going to be annoyingly literal about sourcing here, because this is a case where the official material is unusually thin and the fan reconstruction is unusually confident. If you want the broader picture on the base game first, our release date and confirmed features breakdown covers that ground.

The short version

Bubbly Basin is Part 1 of a three-part paid Expansion Pass for Pokemon Pokopia. It adds an underwater town. It arrives in August 2026. Alongside it, a free update goes out to everybody that adds a new move called Dive, which is what lets your Ditto get down to the ocean floor in the first place.

That free-versus-paid split is the single most misread thing about this DLC, so it gets its own section below.

What the Expansion Pass actually costs

$34.99, listed on the Nintendo eShop, live since June 9, 2026. That is one purchase covering all three parts as they release. There is no per-part pricing — you cannot buy just Bubbly Basin and skip the rest. Nintendo also lists a bundle that packages the base game with the pass for players who have not bought Pokopia yet.

Thirty-five dollars is a real number for a game that was already a full-price Switch 2 release, and right now you are paying it against one dated, described chunk of content plus two parts that amount to a sentence each. That is not a scam — season passes have always worked like this — but it is worth saying out loud rather than pretending the value proposition is settled.

The free update is the part that matters

Here is the bit people keep collapsing into one purchase. Nintendo's own announcement says a free update arriving in August lets players "explore the ocean floor using the new move Dive to plant grass, build structures, and create their own underwater towns alongside Pokemon."

Read that again. Underwater exploration, underwater terraforming, and building your own underwater towns are in the free update. You do not need the Expansion Pass to go under the sea and start laying blocks down there.

What $34.99 buys you in Part 1 is Bubbly Basin specifically — a pre-authored underwater town to develop, plus new furniture, outfits, and Pokemon tied to it.

Worth flagging: a lot of coverage has labelled this free patch "Version 2.0." Nintendo's own wording is just "a free update arriving this August," with no version number attached. The 2.0 label may well be right, but it did not come from Nintendo, and I am not going to launder it into a fact.

You have to earn Dive before Bubbly Basin opens

This is the practical gate, and it is confirmed on the official Pokopia expansion page. To reach Bubbly Basin you need two things:

1. Complete the request "Raise the environment level!" in Bleak Beach.
2. Learn the newly added move Dive, which comes from the free update.

The Pokemon.com news post adds that you need both a jump and Surf already in your kit before Dive becomes learnable. So if you have been coasting through the request board and never bothered pushing Bleak Beach's environment level, that is your homework for the next week or two. Our habitat and comfort guide covers how environment level actually moves, and the Ditto transformations guide covers the traversal moves you will need on hand.

The nice thing about this gate is that it is a gate you can clear right now, before the DLC exists. Do it early and you are not spending launch day grinding a prerequisite.

What is actually in Bubbly Basin

The official description is short enough to quote nearly whole: an underwater town where you encounter Pokemon living beneath the sea, find ocean-floor-themed furniture, and get new outfits for Ditto. The storefront copy frames it as "Develop the underwater town of Bubbly Basin and continue enjoying the slow life."

That is the entirety of the first-party written description. Everything more specific comes from the June 9 Nintendo Direct trailer, and it is secondhand reads of footage rather than a published list:

• Mudkip, Popplio, and Corphish have been identified by multiple outlets from trailer shots. That is a reasonable read of visible footage, but The Pokemon Company has not published a species list for the DLC.
• A brief Manaphy glimpse has been reported. One frame is not a confirmation. If Manaphy is in, it will be announced; if you are buying the pass for Manaphy, you are buying on a hunch. Our legendary and mythical guide sticks to what is actually in the base game.

Bulbapedia describes Bubbly Basin as what remains of Cerulean City after the weather catastrophe that wrecked Pokopia's Kanto. That is a community wiki reading, not publisher text, but it is a tidy fit with the game's premise and with a Cerulean-adjacent underwater zone — file it as very plausible, not as confirmed.

The August 5 date is not first-party

Every official channel — Nintendo's news post, the Pokopia expansion page, the eShop listing — says August 2026. No day attached.

The August 5 date that is now all over the internet traces back to Serebii, who reported it from a Japanese TV commercial for the game. That is a decent source and it may well hold. But it has not been echoed by Nintendo or The Pokemon Company in English marketing, and it is not on the eShop product page. Treat it as a strong lead, not a locked date, and do not book time off work around it.

The bonuses, and the deadline nobody reads

Two purchase bonuses ship with the Expansion Pass, and both have dates on them:

• A recipe for dynamic Ditto print blocks and wallpaper, redeemable in-game as soon as you buy.
• 30 rare Pokemetal ingots, delivered as a code. Buy the pass by August 31, 2027 to get the code, and claim the reward in-game by September 30, 2027.

Those are generous windows, so nobody needs to panic-buy. But the ingots are the kind of thing that quietly expires while a game sits in a backlog. If you own the pass, redeem the code the day it arrives instead of leaving it in an inbox.

Also note the base-game onboarding requirement Nintendo lists: you need roughly 30 minutes of play before workbenches and Mystery Gift are available, so a brand-new save cannot claim bonuses immediately. Our beginner guide covers that first half hour.

Parts 2 and 3 are nearly blank

I will quote what exists in full, because it is not much.

Part 2, late 2026: "additional new features to help develop your Pokemon utopia," plus new crafting recipes. No town, no theme, no date beyond the half-year.

Part 3, 2027: "a new town to explore and rebuild," plus additional features. No name, no theme, no date beyond the year.

That is it. Two thirds of what you are buying is described in eleven words and a shrug. Anyone telling you what Part 2 or Part 3 contains is writing fan fiction with a confident tone.

Buy now or wait

There is no functional benefit to buying before August. The pass is not going up in price that we know of, the ingot bonus window runs to August 2027, and nothing about Bubbly Basin gets cheaper or richer by preordering it.

The honest read: if you are still playing Pokopia daily and the idea of an underwater town makes you want to fire up a save, $34.99 is fine and you will get Part 1 immediately. If you drifted off after the first hundred hours, wait. The free Dive update is going to let you go underwater and build regardless, which is a real chunk of new play for exactly zero dollars. Try that, see whether it pulls you back, and buy the pass afterward if it does. You lose nothing by waiting except a couple of weeks of owning a recipe for wallpaper.

Confirmed vs not confirmed

Confirmed by Nintendo / The Pokemon Company:

• Expansion Pass is $34.99 on the eShop, on sale since June 9, 2026, covering all three parts.
• Part 1 Bubbly Basin releases August 2026 — an underwater town with new furniture, outfits, and Pokemon.
• A free update in August adds the move Dive, enabling underwater exploration, planting, building, and player-made underwater towns for everyone.
• Access requires completing "Raise the environment level!" in Bleak Beach and learning Dive; Pokemon.com notes jump and Surf as prerequisites for Dive.
• Bonuses: dynamic Ditto print block and wallpaper recipe; 30 rare Pokemetal ingots via code, purchase by August 31, 2027, claim by September 30, 2027.
• Part 2 in late 2026 (new features and crafting recipes); Part 3 in 2027 (a new town).

Not confirmed:

• The exact August day. August 5 comes from Serebii citing a Japanese commercial, not from Nintendo or the eShop.
• The "Version 2.0" label for the free update.
• Any Pokemon roster for Bubbly Basin. Mudkip, Popplio, and Corphish are outlet reads of trailer footage; Manaphy is one glimpse and pure speculation.
• The Cerulean City identity of Bubbly Basin (community wiki reading, not publisher text).
• Anything at all about Part 2 or Part 3 beyond the sentences quoted above.
• Whether the Bubbly Basin demo shown at PokemonXP in San Francisco, August 28-30, differs from the shipping version.

If a post promises you more than the first list, it is guessing. That is fine as speculation. It is not fine as a shopping guide.