Pokopia Emotes Guide: All 47 and How to Unlock Them

Twelve of Pokopia's 47 emotes cannot be earned without another player. Rock Solid, Mermaid, Lieutenant and nine more unlock only when a particular species comes over from another player's island, and seven of those twelve names echo the Gym signs of the original Kanto games. Another 15 are taught by specific Pokemon in conversations you cannot schedule.

That leaves the easy part: six emotes you start with and 14 that come from Human Records. Serebii's emotes page and the emote table on Bulbapedia's Ditto (Pokopia) page both count 47. This guide lists all of them, names the Pokemon behind every taught emote and the habitat that brings it in, and sorts out where the two wikis disagree on the visitor list.

Counts are as of Ver. 2.0.1, still the latest version on Nintendo's update page on October 25, 2026.

All 47 emotes at a glance

The Expansion Pass rows follow Bulbapedia, which marks Roar, Hooray!, Step Dance, Warm-Up Stretches and Hehehe as needing the pass. Nintendo's Ver. 2.0.0 notes name Lie Down and Ready, Set, Go! as the free update's two new emotes. Without the pass, 42 of the 47 are reachable.

Human Record emotes work like outfits: find the magazine, newspaper, letter or other record, interact with it, and Game8 says the emote is yours on the spot. Our outfits guide covers the records and where the two Serebii tables split on them, so this guide spends its time on the other two systems.

Opening and arranging the wheel

Serebii's page gives the basics: press Down on the D-pad to bring up your emotes, which you can use to talk to other players or to set up photos. Game8 and the wheel itself fill in the rest:

The in-game screen matches. Serebii's screenshot shows a page labelled Favorites #1 with tabs 1 to 3 across the top, L and R prompts to flip pages, and View List, Remove, Register and Close prompts along the bottom. Bulbapedia adds that favorite emotes are registered alongside Messages in what it calls the Communication Wheel.

One behaviour came later. Since Ver. 2.0.0 (dated August 4, 2026 on Nintendo's Americas update page), a Pokemon that taught you an emote answers with the same emote when you use it.

The 15 Pokemon that teach an emote

Serebii and Bulbapedia name the same teacher for all 15. The habitat and rarity columns come from each Pokemon's Serebii Pokedex page, and where it lists a habitat in all five areas and on Cloud Islands, the last column says so.

Four teachers come with a catch. Serebii lists Empoleon only in the rain and Haunter only at night, so check the weather and the clock before you decide a habitat has failed. Toxel and Rowlet are the two whose habitats Serebii does not list in every area. And Step Dance is the one taught emote behind the paywall: Totodile's three habitats all sit in the Basin section of Serebii's Habitat Dex. Our Bubbly Basin DLC guide covers what the pass costs.

Red tall grass is the one habitat in that table that draws two teachers. Serebii's habitat page lists both Riolu and Scorbunny there as Common, so four tufts can bring you the teachers of High-Five and Yes. Which one moves in is the game's call, not ours. Serebii lists red tall grass as a natural find on the Clefairy and Arcanine Doll Dream Islands.

How a Pokemon actually teaches you one

Housing the teacher is not the end of it. Four sources describe the next step, and they fit together:

• Bulbapedia: Ditto learns new emotes from specific Pokemon it has already befriended.
• Game8: emotes come from talking to Pokemon. A Pokemon with a speech bubble over its head has something to say, and these conversations happen at random and in any location.
• Bisafans, a German fansite: Pokemon sometimes walk up to you to talk, and rarely, with luck, a teacher shows you its emote. Its list says this needs friendship at what the German game calls at least the Sehr gut (very good) level, and warns the timing is random and can take a while. We could not match that label to an English one, and no English-language source we checked gives a threshold.
• Nintendo's Ver. 1.1.0 notes (June 9, 2026): the update added new conversation variations for Pokemon with a "..." speech bubble and adjusted the timing and topic mix of those conversations. We found nothing saying whether that changed how often emotes come up.

So the loop is: get the teacher living in your town, raise its friendship, and talk to it whenever it has a bubble. Serebii's friendship page says completing a Pokemon's requests and giving it gifts both raise friendship, and our friendship guide covers how matching a gift to its favorites raises it faster.

That is Despair, in Bisafans' screenshot. Serebii, Bulbapedia and Bisafans all credit it to Trubbish, which Serebii rates Common at a Trash collection site.

The 12 emotes you need another player for

Serebii says these are exclusive to inviting certain species to your island from other players' islands, locally, online or through a Cloud Island. Bulbapedia's footnote defines them as Pokemon befriended by other players and invited to visit temporarily. Both definitions rule out your own residents: a Geodude in your Tall grass does not count.

The two lists name 25 species between them and agree on 20. If you are asking a friend for help, ask for one of those 20; the bold five are each backed by only one wiki.

Neither wiki explains the invite itself, but Nintendo's multiplayer support article does. Link Play opens from the PC at a Pokemon Center once you have about 30 minutes of play and Environment Level 2: Invite Others to Visit to host, Visit a Friend to join, and a Nintendo Switch Online membership for anything online. The same article covers the Pokemon. When you visit another player's town or a Cloud Island you can bring one Pokemon with you: talk to it and select Follow me! before you use the PC, and now and then a Pokemon asks to come along as you leave. So for Mermaid, your friend has their Psyduck or Vaporeon follow them, then visits you while you host. Nintendo's Cloud Island article adds that anyone with a Cloud Island's address (and Link Code, if the owner set one) can join it, even when the owner is away. None of the sources we checked says whether the emote unlocks the moment the visitor arrives or needs a conversation first. Our multiplayer guide covers Link Play and Cloud Islands.

Seven of the twelve echo Kanto Gym signs

Pokopia's areas are the ruins of Kanto cities, as our map guide covers, and the visitor emotes keep the theme going. Bulbapedia transcribes the sign outside each Kanto Gym, and seven of the visitor emote names echo them:

Lieutenant is the one that echoes the leader's rank rather than the title after it. That is seven of Kanto's eight Gyms. The eighth, Viridian, has no legible title on its sign; Bulbapedia's transcription reads "Leader: ..." and says the rest of the text is illegible. Big Bad Boss is an easy guess for its leader, Giovanni, whom Bulbapedia introduces as the boss of Team Rocket, but that one is our read. The game does not say it. The other four names, Ice Queen, Karate King, Madame Ghost! and Dragon-type Champ, are not on any of those signs.

Emotes in photos

Emotes double as poses. Game8 says that in Photo Mode you press Left or Right on the D-pad to use one, but only with the tripod, because otherwise Ditto is holding the camera. Bulbapedia's photography page agrees that Photo Mode lets you change Ditto's expression and pose, and says the Tripod is bought from a PC. Nintendo's Ver. 1.1.1 notes (June 18, 2026) fixed a bug where Ditto's facial expression could fail to change when you used an emote while taking photos. Our photo ops guide covers the shots that pay out frames.

Where the sources disagree

We checked this against Serebii, Bulbapedia, Game8, Bisafans and Nintendo's update notes. Serebii and Bulbapedia agree on the total, the six defaults and every teacher. The sources split on these:

• Five visitor species. Bulbapedia adds Tangela to Princess, Magmar to Quiz Master and Hitmonchan to Karate King, and gives Weezing where Serebii gives Koffing for Ninja Descendant.
• One visitor name. Serebii writes Big Bad Boss; Bulbapedia writes Big Bass Boss. This guide uses Serebii's spelling.
• Ready, Set, Go! Bulbapedia's Ditto page puts its record in Bleak Beach, and Serebii's Human Records table lists Pocket World Weekly #76 in Bleak Beach too, without naming a reward. Serebii's emotes page puts the emote on a Dream Island, and Bulbapedia's own Human Records page puts Pocket World Weekly #76 on a Dream Island and credits it with the emote. Nintendo says the two new 2.0.0 emotes can be obtained in Bleak Beach and on Dream Islands, and both wikis put Lie Down's record (Hearthome Journal) in Bleak Beach, so our best guess for Ready, Set, Go! is a Dream Island. Check Bleak Beach too.
• A friendship threshold. Of the sources we checked, Bisafans is the one that gives one.
• How complete the lists are. Game8's emote page, last updated April 30, 2026, names only three Pokemon emotes (Angry, Proud and Despair) and no teachers. That is a gap, not a contradiction.

Quick Action Checklist

• Open the wheel with D-pad Down, register favorites with X, remove with Y, and flip between three wheels with L and R.
• Build Red tall grass (4 red tall grass) for Riolu and Scorbunny, the teachers of High-Five and Yes.
• Check the conditions: Empoleon needs rain, Haunter needs night, Toxel lives only in Rocky Ridges or on Cloud Islands, and Rowlet only in Palette Town or on Cloud Islands.
• Talk to teachers whenever they have a speech bubble, and raise their friendship with requests and favorite gifts. The emote comes at random.
• For the 12 visitor emotes, find a friend who has one of the 20 species both wikis agree on. They select Follow me! on it before using the PC, then visit you locally, online with Nintendo Switch Online, or via a Cloud Island.
• Expansion Pass owners: Totodile teaches Step Dance, and four more emotes come from DLC Human Records.
• Buy the tripod before you plan emote photos.