Proposal On WCoP rebranding

[clean]

There are currently no rules restricting how often a team can rebrand in WCoP, and I believe there should be. Below I compiled a table listing out the mascots of every team that is a part of 2026 WCoP from this year dating back to 2019.

Some funny things to note:

- France has changed their mascot every year between 2019-2026. Are y'all serious?
- Germany switched from Quagsire to Urshifu in 2020 - they then went on a kingambit sidequest in 2023-2024 before doing the reverse of their 2020 change - going from Urshifu to Quagsire.
- Greece and Oceania both kept the same mascot for 6 years. Good job resisting the impulse. There may be others who had longer streaks pre 2019.
- Multiple pokemon in this timeframe have been used by two different teams. Moltres Galar by LA (2021-2022) & by Portugal (2025-2026), Ho-oh by LA (2019-2020) & by China (2024-2025), Zarude by Brazil (2022) & by Mexico (2025-2026), Rayquaza by China (2019) & by Mexico (2022-2024), and Marshadow by US Midwest (2023) & by Venezuela (2026). There are apparently other older examples of this (like France using Xard), but I didn't collect data earlier than 2019.
- Multiple teams have switched off a mascot, only to switch back in the future. Greninja by Asia (2019-2020 & 2025-2026), Dragonite by Argentina (2021 & 2023), Quagsire by Germany (2019 & 2026), Urshifu by Germany (2020-2022 & 2025), and Mega Medicham by India (2019 & 2023).
- Some teams have reached the pinnacle of avatar swapping - having used 4 (or more) different mascots across a four (or more) year period. Argentina from 2020 - 2025, Belgium from 2022 - 2025, France from 2019-2026, India from 2021-2024, Italy from 2021-2024, Spain from 2020-2023, and Venezuela from 2022-2026. Shame on you all. Make up your damn mind!


The thing I hate the most about WCoP rebranding is the "one and dones". A team changing their mascot just to change it the next year is stupid. It has lead to a lot of the modern WCoP teams having absolutely no identity because everyone is trigger happy to fully rebrand their team every 1-2 years. My suggestion is we implement a rule that allows for rebrands once every three years. Brand new teams may take some extra time to find their identity - so their first rebrand can happen at any time & then every three years after like the rest. This seems like a fair number that still allows people to rebrand their team after a reasonable amount of time - and more importantly can add a bit of culture & team identity to WCoP. This is one of our premier team tours - yes it is different from spl/scl which is why rebranding is even allowed in the first place - but I think the current state of affairs is a joke. Let's change it.

 

[lax]

Seems like a pointless suggestion to me tbh.

If a team is feeling a certain mon and willing to pay the artist commission, let em cook. Identity is determined by the teams themselves and that makes the most sense to me. Now if there is inner-team controversy and disagreements on the logo consistency, that’s for the team to resolve and doesn’t need to be policed

 

[Oglemi]

Seeing all of Blazenix's (and others) sick new art for the year is kind of a highlight of the year tbh. I get where the OP is coming from to an extent, maybe we could restrict Pokemon choice more (we should actually disallow regions to share representation tbh), but logo changes should not be restricted for wcop teams imo, especially since this tournament has always been more of a "celebration" tournament more than anything.

 

[reyscarface]

Seeing all of Blazenix's (and others) sick new art for the year is kind of a highlight of the year tbh. I get where the OP is coming from to an extent, maybe we could restrict Pokemon choice more (we should actually disallow regions to share representation tbh), but logo changes should not be restricted for wcop teams imo, especially since this tournament has always been more of a "celebration" tournament more than anything.

Click to collapse...

I think that's exactly what clean is suggesting. I reckon nobody wants to limit artistic expression in the logo, teams are free to do whatever they want with that, but I do agree with clean in that we should most definitely be more strict with regards to mascot changes. As someone who has been watching World Cup without participating for a while until recently, the mascot changes have made it somewhat confusing to visually relate teams. This is by no means something huge, but its always nice to be able to do it, personal preference really. I disagree with lax regarding what he means by let them cook. You can always let the teams cook a lot with their logo ideas, you do not need a mascot change for that. For example, in the particular case of my team, I can think of like 10 different things we could have as a logo with the Zarude we currently have, we don't need to be changing Pokemon every single year to achieve that.

The worst part to me is the repeat in team mascots, that shit is so confusing (bit rich coming from a person on a team that has a repeat mon mascot but I am trying to be as unbiased as possible here). I think clean gave good ideas on how to move forward with this but I would also like to limit Pokemon evolution lines to one team for an x amount of time, say 5 years after a team last used it or just straight up don't allow it in the future.

The specifics of what to do can be discussed but I heavily agree with the OP that something needs to be done.

 

[Ewin]

This honestly feels like a non-issue and comes across as nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

WCoP has always been a fluid tournament by nature. Managers, players, and team cultures change constantly from year to year, and branding naturally evolves alongside that. A mascot chosen by one group of managers or players may no longer represent the current roster a year later, so it makes little sense to lock entirely new leadership cores into branding decisions they had no part in making.

Most people identify WCoP teams by their players and performances anyways, not by whether or not they kept the same PNG for six consecutive years. WCoP teams do not need “identities” like SPL or SCL teams because they aren’t supposed to. If the issue is people not recognising players based on their custom avatars, I fear that is not a branding issue but rather an issue with teams not representing their regions in their customs properly.

WCoP is also unique among official team tours because it gives managers and players full creative freedom to represent their teams however they want. That freedom is part of what drives community involvement within each region and makes the tournament feel personal and distinct. Adding restrictions like a mandatory rebrand cooldown would only undermine that flexibility and remove part of what makes WCoP fun in the first place and also kill community participation in each region.

 

[ChrisPBacon]

Taking the controversial stance to strongly agree with Ewin here.

There are currently no rules restricting how often a team can rebrand in WCoP, and I believe there should be. Below I compiled a table listing out the mascots of every team that is a part of 2026 WCoP from this year dating back to 2019.

View attachment 833945

Some funny things to note:

- France has changed their mascot every year between 2019-2026. Are y'all serious?
- Germany switched from Quagsire to Urshifu in 2020 - they then went on a kingambit sidequest in 2023-2024 before doing the reverse of their 2020 change - going from Urshifu to Quagsire.
- Greece and Oceania both kept the same mascot for 6 years. Good job resisting the impulse. There may be others who had longer streaks pre 2019.
- Multiple pokemon in this timeframe have been used by two different teams. Moltres Galar by LA (2021-2022) & by Portugal (2025-2026), Ho-oh by LA (2019-2020) & by China (2024-2025), Zarude by Brazil (2022) & by Mexico (2025-2026), Rayquaza by China (2019) & by Mexico (2022-2024), and Marshadow by US Midwest (2023) & by Venezuela (2026). There are apparently other older examples of this (like France using Xard), but I didn't collect data earlier than 2019.
- Multiple teams have switched off a mascot, only to switch back in the future. Greninja by Asia (2019-2020 & 2025-2026), Dragonite by Argentina (2021 & 2023), Quagsire by Germany (2019 & 2026), Urshifu by Germany (2020-2022 & 2025), and Mega Medicham by India (2019 & 2023).
- Some teams have reached the pinnacle of avatar swapping - having used 4 (or more) different mascots across a four (or more) year period. Argentina from 2020 - 2025, Belgium from 2022 - 2025, France from 2019-2026, India from 2021-2024, Italy from 2021-2024, Spain from 2020-2023, and Venezuela from 2022-2026. Shame on you all. Make up your damn mind!


The thing I hate the most about WCoP rebranding is the "one and dones". A team changing their mascot just to change it the next year is stupid. It has lead to a lot of the modern WCoP teams having absolutely no identity because everyone is trigger happy to fully rebrand their team every 1-2 years. My suggestion is we implement a rule that allows for rebrands once every three years. Brand new teams may take some extra time to find their identity - so their first rebrand can happen at any time & then every three years after like the rest. This seems like a fair number that still allows people to rebrand their team after a reasonable amount of time - and more importantly can add a bit of culture & team identity to WCoP. This is one of our premier team tours - yes it is different from spl/scl which is why rebranding is even allowed in the first place - but I think the current state of affairs is a joke. Let's change it.

Click to collapse...

This entire post can be summarised into "A team changing their mascot just to change it the next year is stupid." Did you fluff it out because you knew this was basically just based on personal preference and so inconsequentially minor? Trying to call it 'a joke' might be the real joke --- it is not that serious we are not the olympic games man. are we doing shit just because we're bored? just enjoy the tournament man im sure after a week you will not be pissed that france is using a charizard x instead of a kyurem for their logo this year

WCOP teams have identity by virtue of being WCOP teams and often having the same players year over year - I'm not sure who thinks Germany has more identity surrounded to 'the team with the Urshifu logo' compared to 'the team with michael and mind and conflict and ...." That's just the first example I thought of but unlike SP(C)L where players rarely spend more than 3 years in a row on the same team some ppl have been on the same shit for almost a decade straight now. While there's a need to keep consistent branding for those tours I think we can afford to loosen up here. I don't know who would meaningfully benefit from this enough to be worth the random ass ruling although the puerto rico case was also rejected so maybe 2026 smogon is past taking actions that benefit its users anyways

 

[blank]

I agree with this proposal, but start keeping track next year so teams can be more intentional about picking what mascot they want to lock in for the next 3 years. I also agree with locking other teams out of a Pokémon/evolution line used by another team for 5 years.

If anything, maybe let teams who got kicked down to qualifiers get an exemption from the 3 year rule as a way to rally the troops with a new mascot or something? Totally not biased when I say this haha…

 

[LBN]

I agree with this proposal as well. I think being more stringent on mascots is completely fair when a lot of officials value branding as much as we do, but this comes with one prerequisite.

If a new gen drops and we get some new fitting mons to pick, that should be an allowed exception to the 3 year lockin. If a team picked to change a mon right before a new gen, and suddenly Gen 10 drops like Convergent Daschsbun made of Baguettes and Cheese France shouldn't be screwed out of picking it because they just happened to make a switch before a new gen hit.

I also agree with Blank that teams knocked to qualifiers need some special approach given to them. What that system should be I don't really know nor do I have any clear suggestions on that front, but there should be something imo