With the cancellation of all in person tournaments by The Pokemon Company International, many have been requesting access to spectator mode for battles done online, to allow for tournament hosts to stream battles.

While that feature has not been implemented yet, nor has their been any word of that feature coming, there is a workaround that allows for tournament organizers to stream their tournaments on platforms such as Twitch and Youtube.

In order for this method to work, participants must edit their connection details in the switch settings and download a program to run on their individual computers, and one person must be hosting a server on a PC or through a dedicated server hosting platform. If that doesn’t scare you off, feel free to keep reading to figure out how to get everything set up.

The first thing that needs to be done is for the host to go to THIS GITHUB LINK and download the compiled files based on what operating system you are going to run the server off of.

The second step for the host to do is make sure they port forward port 11451. If you don’t know how to do this, google how to port forward the router you have, and follow those instructions. The exact instructions for how to port forward will differ based on router.

Once the port is forwarded, the person hosting the server will then run the executable file. The server is now up for people to connect to.

EVERYONE, including the host, should visit the LAN play website HERE to follow their instructions on downloading and setting up the software. The HOST, should assign people an individual number to put at the end the IP address as listed on the website in order to not have conflicting IP’s for the participants. For example, the host can give themselves 0.1 and go up for each participant.



Once players have ran the Lan-Play client, they can enter the public IP of the server that the tournament will be hosted off of. From there, in the Pokemon game, you can register for the tournament and run it under the local play options.