Report: Side Events at Pokémon NAIC 2026

For the third (and apparently final) time, New Orleans hosted the North American Internationals for Pokémon. As usual, I spent most of my time playing in side events away from the main action. How did that go?

Thursday

Getting to New Orleans involved flying as usual, albeit via a different route than previous years. Instead of flying American via Charlotte and Dallas, I went through O’Hare on United both ways (it was a little odd connecting through an airport I had stayed near the weekend before). I did watch a few episodes of Pokémon Journeys, which I was surprised to find on the IFE. After arriving in New Orleans, I took a ride to my hotel, grabbed a meal at local restaurant Cochon.

Friday

I started my side event experience with a TCG Build-and-Battle, which was a nice experience (especially since I‘ve purposely avoided playing in local prereleases to give space to others),  even if my deck was given little help from the boosters. After a TCG raid or two, I took part in a Chaos Cup, which was made extra interesting when the judge made us play Malamar-style for the third and final round. With side events closed for the day, I headed back to the hotel and ordered food from Oceana Grill.

Saturday

After realizing I had brought the wrong wig for my “Ringo Starr as a Pokémon Trainer” costume, I headed to the convention center and participated in a TCG Raid (I got by with a little help from my friends), then prepared for my Pokémon Center slot. Having spent a fair bit on apparel at the previous weekend’s Go Fest, I decided to focus on other merchandise, including a costume-appropriate Dragonair ring.

Later that afternoon, I participated in a TCG Pocket event, where I actually managed to win a match (admittedly, the 5-heads Misty helped a lot in game two), though I could have done better in the third round with a bit more thought. We did have an issue where there was a long delay between round one and two due to an issue with one of the matches needing its result fixed. Afterwards, I went back to the hotel room and ordered from Daisy Mae’s (no website available).

Sunday

I was getting tired at this point, but I managed to don my Michael Hutchence costume and participate in a few Ditto pack drafts (of course) to close out the weekend. Having collected over 400 tickets over the weekend, I picked up a Detective Pikachu plush (tied to the movie, not the games), some Gen 4 Starter socks, and some packs for the next TCG event at Pegasus Games. Dinner came from Fiery Crab.

Monday

My flight out of New Orleans was at 6:30 am, so I got up around 4:15 (scarfing some leftovers from Fiery Crab) and got a ride to the airport. I decided to peruse the device-based IFE on the flight to O’Hare, and was surprised to find the Detective Pikachu movie on there (it wasn’t on the seat-back screens). The film definitely still holds up. Otherwise, the trip back home was relatively uneventful (a nice change from Anaheim last year).

Overall

As you may have guessed from my summary, side events were extremely smooth this time around, with the issue I mentioned during the TCG Pocket tournament being the only significant issue I encountered. It was really nice that side events were clearly not an afterthought here.

Other Notes:

-I did purchase a pass for the Go Scavenger Hunt, but lost my stamp card, so that’s why that wasn’t included in the report, though I did take some time to play it.
-With the announcement that next year’s NAIC event will be in Chicago, I’m starting to feel really spoiled.
-RK9’s feature to allow match reporting from the website is really convenient and I hope it gets expanded.
-While I had plenty of great food this weekend, the best was probably the Cajun pasta I had from Oceana Grill: