Pre-registration is live. After being teased back at Digimon Con 2026 in March, Bandai Namco Entertainment has officially opened global sign-ups for Digimon UP — a free-to-play monster-raising RPG built specifically for mobile, with a confirmed worldwide launch on July 28, 2026. Both the App Store and Google Play listings flipped over this week, and a fresh teaser trailer dropped alongside the announcement.
This is the closest thing the franchise has had to a true successor of the original 1997 virtual pets in over a decade. And the framing is striking: Bandai Namco isn't pitching it as a spin-off or a tie-in, but as the canonical mobile Digimon experience — the always-on companion piece that sits next to the bigger console releases like Digimon Story: Time Stranger.
A Digimon Journey That Moves With Your Life
That's the official tagline, and it's doing more work than corporate copy usually does. Digimon UP is openly built around the original 1997 virtual-pet rhythm — feeding, training, sleeping cycles, evolution paths that branch based on care quality — and translates the entire loop into a modern free-to-play wrapper. You start by picking a Digi-Egg, hatch a Partner Digimon, and raise it through every Digivolution stage from Baby to Mega over the course of weeks.
The confirmed Partner roster covers twelve fan-favorites at launch: Agumon, Gabumon, Biyomon, Tentomon, Palmon, Gomamon, Patamon, Gatomon, Veemon, Guilmon, Renamon, and Terriermon. That's the original eight DigiDestined picks plus the four second-wave partners — a deliberate signal that this is aimed straight at the 30-something audience who watched Digimon Adventure on TV and never quite let go.
Pixel Art on Purpose
Visually, Digimon UP is going retro. The world is rendered in chunky pixel art that looks closer to a Game Boy Color RPG than a 2026 mobile release, and the UI deliberately echoes the chiclet-button virtual pets the franchise was born on. Battles play out in a side-on, turn-based view with sprite animations and special moves rendered as full-screen pixel cut-ins.
It's a striking choice. The mobile market has spent the last five years racing toward photorealistic anime models and Live2D hero portraits — see Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, even Bandai Namco's own Tales of mobile entries. Digimon UP swims hard against that tide. Bandai is betting that nostalgia for the format itself is more powerful than another pretty 3D gacha would be.
How Battles Actually Work
The trailer shows a turn-based system where your Partner Digimon leads, but Support Digimon — secondary monsters you collect and train — fight alongside them. Each Partner has a unique skill tree, and Digivolution paths branch based on stat allocation and care quality, exactly like the old Digimon World games on the original PlayStation. Wrong food, missed sleep, ignored training — your Patamon devolves into something like Sukamon. Right inputs, right relationship — Seraphimon.
That's the kind of system mobile games usually water down for retention metrics. The fact that Digimon UP is keeping it suggests Bandai is confident the friction is the feature.
Pre-Registration Rewards
The headline milestone is 100,000 sign-ups, which unlocks Gekkomon for every player at launch. Smaller tiers along the way add Summon Tickets and DigiEmeralds, the premium currency. The counter is climbing fast since the trailer dropped, and the Gekkomon unlock looks like a near-certainty before launch given how aggressive the western Digimon community is on social platforms.
You can pre-register now on both the App Store and Google Play. Bandai is also pulling pre-launch testers from the same pool — opting into the survey at sign-up keeps you in the running for closed beta invites in the weeks before July 28.
What Makes It Different From Recent Digimon Games
The franchise has had a busy two years on console. Digimon Story: Time Stranger launched late 2025, Survive 2 is in development at Witchcraft, and Digimon World: Next Order Reignited ported to Switch 2 in March. Digimon UP deliberately doesn't compete with any of those: it's free-to-play, it's mobile-first, it leans on raising-sim mechanics instead of plot-heavy JRPG storytelling, and it's monetized with cosmetics and Summon Tickets rather than DLC.
Bandai is essentially treating it as the franchise's Pokémon GO moment — the always-on, daily-routine companion piece that runs alongside the bigger console releases. Whether that translates to the kind of retention Niantic got from Pokémon trainers is a different question entirely. But the audience is real: Digimon trends on Japanese social platforms basically every week, and the western fandom has been hungry for something built specifically for them since ReArise shut down in 2023.
July 28 isn't far. Two and a half months. If you spent any time worrying about your Tamagotchi between 1998 and 2002, this one is going to find you.
