Version 2.0.0 is available free of charge to anyone who already owns Pokémon Pokopia, according to Nintendo Australia (Nintendo Australia).

The update adds Dive, a move taught by Manaphy. For owners who install the update, the official description says learning Dive lets players move around and build underwater (Nintendo Australia; The Pokémon Company).

That wording places underwater movement and building inside the free update rather than the DLC. It doesn't define where that access applies geographically, and it doesn't say whether it extends on its own into Bubbly Basin's new area once that area is unlocked.

Bubbly Basin is sold as paid DLC. The Pokémon Company's press site identifies it as Part 1 of the Pokémon Pokopia Expansion Pass (The Pokémon Company). The title marks this as Part 1, but the reviewed announcement doesn't detail any later installments or when they might arrive.

Alongside the new underwater area, the announcement describes buoyant blocks, which let players construct structures floating at different depths underwater. The copy calls this a form of three-dimensional building that's only possible underwater, a layout freedom the game's flat, land-based construction doesn't offer (Pokémon.com).

The same announcement introduces underwater farming built around watermelon, a new crop tied to the setting. Players till submerged fields before planting seedlings, matching a familiar Pokopia loop of preparing ground and sowing crops to this new underwater context (Pokémon.com). Once planted, a Water-specialty Pokémon shields the seedlings with air bubbles, and a Grow-specialty Pokémon speeds up germination, before the watermelons are ready to harvest (Pokémon.com).

The announcements reviewed don't explicitly state that buoyant blocks or watermelon farming require buying the DLC. They appear as features of the area Bubbly Basin unlocks, which is a narrower claim than saying they're paywalled everywhere else in the game. It's possible some version of tilling or bubble-based farming works outside that area too. Nothing in the reviewed materials confirms or rules that out.

The table below lays out exactly what each announcement says, and how firmly each feature is tied to a free or paid tier.

Only Dive carries an explicitly stated free entitlement. The new area, buoyant blocks, and farming are all described in the Bubbly Basin material, but none of those three descriptions comes paired with a stated purchase requirement, which is why the access column reads differently for each row.

The announcements reviewed this week don't list a price for the Expansion Pass, don't say whether Bubbly Basin can be bought on its own outside a bundled pass, and don't describe what later parts of the pass will contain (The Pokémon Company). With the release less than a week away, that leaves basic commercial questions unanswered for anyone deciding whether to buy in on day one.

The same press release also contains a fragment referencing content "scheduled for release in late 2026," but the subject of that line isn't identified anywhere in the material reviewed (The Pokémon Company). That's worth flagging precisely because it's tempting to read it as a hint at a second Expansion Pass installment. Nothing in the announcement supports that reading, and treating an unattached fragment as confirmation would be getting ahead of what The Pokémon Company has actually said.

Storage and installation details are similarly absent. None of the reviewed materials specify a download size, storage requirements, or whether Bubbly Basin behaves differently for players who skip installing Version 2.0.0 first. Those are the kinds of specifics that tend to surface on the Nintendo eShop listing or in patch notes closer to launch, rather than in an initial reveal.

What's still open is narrower than it might look at first glance. Price, whether Bubbly Basin sells as a standalone purchase, and the precise boundary between free underwater building and the DLC's expanded systems haven't appeared in any of the announcements reviewed here. Those gaps, not the calendar date, are what to track as August 5 approaches, and they're likely to determine whether the free update alone satisfies casual builders or whether Bubbly Basin is doing most of the actual work underwater.