Pokemon Home Going Down For Maintenance Tomorrow Ahead Of Sword And Shield: Isle Of Armor DLC

Pokemon Sword and Shield's first DLC expansion, The Isle of Armor, arrives later this week, on June 17. Ahead of its release, the Pokemon Home cloud service will be going down for maintenance. [Update: The maintenance period is over, and Pokemon Home's 1.2.0 update is now live. Here are the patch notes.]

The maintenance period is expected to begin at 2 AM PT / 5 AM ET / 9 AM UTC and last until 7 AM PT / 10 AM ET / 2 PM UTC, according to a news update within the app. During this time frame, both the Switch and mobile versions of Pokemon Home will be inaccessible, and you'll need to update both versions after the maintenance concludes to continue using them.

Presumably, this update is to accommodate the new Pokemon that are being introduced in Isle of Armor, including the new Legendary, Kubfu, and Galarian Slowbro. That expansion is set to arrive that same day, June 17, and while The Pokemon Company has not yet confirmed when it will go live, it likely won't be too long after the Pokemon Home update.

In the meantime, you can snag a new free present from Pokemon Home: all three Galar starters with their Hidden Abilities. This marks the first chance you have to get the Pokemon with these Abilities in Sword and Shield. To claim them, you'll first need to transfer a monster from either version into Pokemon Home; once you do that, you'll find the starters waiting in your gift box.

Sword and Shield players can also claim another free Pokemon ahead of Isle of Armor: Galarian Meowth. Every Gigantamax Pokemon is also appearing in Max Raid Battles again until June 29, giving you another chance to catch them if you missed their previous Wild Area events.