Smogon on IRC

Internet Relay Chat is a group chat protocol that has been in use by the Pokémon community for at least seven years. Smogon maintains this tradition by having established a channel, or a room of people online, named #smogon on the synIRC IRC network.

Most of Smogon's culture originates from IRC. You may find that as a result, the nature of #smogon can be a bit more cliquish than the forums. It's strongly recommended to peruse the rules of the channel and lurk a tad before jumping head first into conversation. If you're looking for primarily Pokémon-related chat, drop by #smogon, while it also represents the social side of the community, it is the game that has united us that takes precedence.

How do I connect?

For those experienced with IRC, you can connect to #smogon on irc.synirc.net. SSL is available on port 7001. You will have to register your nick before joining. For those less experienced with IRC (or just how SynIRC works) we provide tutorials for four popular IRC clients: mIRC (Windows), XChat (Windows/Linux), Colloquy (Mac), and Linkinus (Mac). We also have a guide on connecting on mobile devices, which currently covers Colloquy (iOS) and AndroIRC (Android). If you're unable to download a client, Mibbit provides a free in-browser client. It even provides an easy access link to #smogon found here! SynIRC also provides a Webchat client.