Starbucks Japan x Pokemon: the Pikachu Latte and all 41 items

The Pikachu Honey Cream Latte (ピカチュウ ハニークリーム ラテ) is an iced espresso drink sold in Tall only. It is on sale from Wednesday September 30 to Thursday October 8, and Starbucks notes it may sell out before then.

Honey and caramel sit over espresso, finished with honey flavored whipped cream, a chocolate drizzle and small heart shaped toppings styled after Pikachu’s red cheeks. Each drink comes with a sticker carrying the collaboration artwork, one per drink, while they last.

The recipe came out of an internal competition. Starbucks took more than 700 entries from baristas across Japan, shortlisted six, and put the winner into national production. It belongs to Junko Nitta of the Koriyama Asaka store.

Three things are buyable in person, the latte, the warm gray reusable cup at 1,300 yen with the Coffee Connection design and a Starbucks Card, in one of three designs.

Everything goes on sale on September 30 and stays on sale until stock runs out. Starbucks publishes no end date for the merchandise. What does end is the purchase limit. For the first three days, September 30 to October 2, you may buy one of each item per person, covering every collaboration item sold in a shop except the drink.

Everything else in the collaboration exists only on the Starbucks Japan online store: the six reversible TOGO bottles, the laser-etched stainless bottles, the stacking mugs, the kettle, the aprons, the Poke Ball-lidded straw tumbler, the totes and the art prints. Getting any of it home takes planning rather than luck. You have three main options to purchase.

The cleanest one utilizes a physical Starbucks Card which you can purchase at any Starbucks. The online store’s terms list the Starbucks Card as a payment method, and require that whatever you pay with was issued in Japan and carries your name. A physical card bought over a counter in Tokyo is both of those things. Buy one, load it with cash, register it to your online account, and you can check out with no Japanese bank and no Japanese credit card. The collaboration card designs are themselves one of the three things sold in shops, so the card you pay with can be part of the set.

Delivery is inside Japan, and a hotel counts. Add it as a shipping address before you order, and be sure you are still checked in when the parcel lands. Allow at least five days between ordering and dispatch. That is the importatt part, don't order on your last morning and the box arrives after you have flown home. If you want any of this, order in the first days of the trip.

Foreign credit cards can be tricky. The published terms say plainly that cards must be issued in Japan, and Starbucks reserves the right to cancel an order it is not satisfied with. In practice international cards do clear checkout and can be used to top up your Starbucks card. That is worth knowing and it is not a guarantee, so where the item actually matters to you, pay with the Starbucks Card and remove the question.

If you are reading this from outside Japan, a forwarding service is the remaining option. Tenso gives you a Japanese address, receives the parcel and ships it on to you. You pay the domestic leg, the international leg and a handling fee on top of the item, which suits the 6,600 yen bottles rather better than the 1,500 yen charms. We earn a commission if you sign up through that link, at no cost to you.

This is not the only Pokemon collaboration in Tokyo right now. The adidas Pokemon collection, out since September 15, 2026, is sold in physical shops rather than online only, which makes it the easier one to bring home if the Starbucks online store defeats you.

The artwork is by illustrator Hikaru Ichijo, who drew twelve original pieces for the release along with eight short written stories, from "Our adventure begins with a cup of coffee" to "Our adventure continues beyond the cup". Two of the twelve became the design themes named on the boxes, Coffee Connection and Coffee Adventure, and the six card gifts carry one story each.

Ichijo does not draw faces on the human figures. Starbucks gives the reason directly, saying the approach lets anyone see themselves in the scene rather than watching someone else in it. The same flat treatment carries across the Pokemon, and that is what the highest liked replies under Starbucks Japan’s own announcement post are asking about.

The drink and the reusable cup are sold at Starbucks across Japan, with the qualifier that some stores are excluded. Starbucks does not publish which ones, and asks customers not to contact stores about stock, so no list of branches can promise you availability and this one does not try. The official store finder at store.starbucks.co.jp is the current record of which branches exist and when they open.

What a list can do is point you somewhere worth sitting. Two of the five below are destinations in their own right, one inside a national garden and one a glass pavilion on Imperial Palace land, and the other three are simply central and easy to reach. Reserve stores and the Nakameguro Roastery run their own menus and their own merchandise lines, which makes them the likeliest of the unpublished exclusions and a poor first stop for this particular drink.

If you came for the Pokemon rather than the coffee, the Pokemon card shops guide covers where to buy and trade the TCG in Tokyo, and the gachapon guide covers the capsule machines, which carry their own Pokemon lines.