How many generations of Pokémon are there?

How to get close to this number

Divide the franchise lifetime by the generation length. It started in 1996 and a new generation arrives roughly every three years, tied to new hardware and a new pair of flagship games. Three decades at that cadence gives a count of around nine, and this decomposition works for any franchise with a regular release rhythm.

What a generation means is the part to get right. It is not a game; it is a batch — a new region, a new set of species, and usually a new console. Counting individual releases would give a much larger number, because remakes, spin-offs and third versions all sit inside a generation rather than starting a new one.

The species figures in the explanation give the other axis of growth: from 151 in the first generation to over a thousand across all of them. That is roughly a hundred new creatures per generation sustained for three decades, which is a design output most franchises could not maintain, and it is why the total species count is now larger than most players can name.