A Pokémon and Van Gogh Museum collaboration is coming our way

Something exciting is being cooked up between Amsterdam and Japan. On Tuesday (12 September), the Official Pokémon YouTube channel released an animation teasing a crossover between the beloved Japanese franchise and the Van Gogh Museum.

The teaser video shows Pikachu and Eevee running through a field of sunflowers in your typical 19th Century Dutch landscape. Before long, the animation morphs into Vincent van Gogh’s post-impressionist style, with great swirls of paint appearing across the sky (to Pikachu and Eevee’s amazement). For a second, we see Sunflowers re-imagined as an artwork featuring Sunflora.

No further clues have been released by the Museum or The Pokémon Company as to what this collaboration will entail; the animation just offers a launch date of 28 September 2023, with the promise that more information will follow.

The Van Gogh Museum has rolled out a host of collaborations in recent years, with some finding new ways to look at the work and life of one of the world’s most famous artists. The 2022 Mud Jeans collection, for example, featured laser details of Vincent’s handwriting. The brand was inspired by a letter Vincent sent to his brother Theo in 1883, reading: “Hoping for better times mustn’t be a feeling but a doing something in the present.”

Last year, Rapha also worked with the Museum on a collection inspired by Vincent’s painting The Yellow House – a location where the artist hoped to live and work with other artists – and its relevance to the cycling brand’s own Clubhouses.

Modern campaigns re-contextualising famous artists’ work might be common, but the first glimpse offered here suggests we might be in for something more unique with the Pokémon takeover.