Smogon on IRC

Internet Relay Chat is a group chat protocol that has been in use by the Pokémon community for at least seven years. Smogon maintains this tradition by having established two channels, or rooms of people online, named #smogon and #stark on the synIRC IRC network.

Most of Smogon's culture originates from IRC. You may find that as a result, the nature of #smogon can be a bit more cliquish than the forums. It's strongly recommended to peruse the rules of the channel and lurk a tad before jumping head first into conversation. If you're looking for primarily Pokémon-related chat, drop by #stark. While #smogon represents the social side of the community, in #stark it is the game that has united us that takes precedence.

How do I connect?

For those experienced with IRC, you can connect to #smogon and #stark on irc.synirc.net. SSL is available on port 7001. You will have to register your nick before joining. For those less experienced with IRC (or just how SynIRC works) we provide tutorials for two popular IRC clients, mIRC (Windows) and XChat (Windows, Unix variants). If you're unable to download a client, Mibbit provides a free in-browser client. SynIRC also provides a Webchat client.