How to unlock all Special Coaches in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet didn’t have much post-game content to grind through in the base game, but The Indigo Disk added deep new features you can discover once you finish the DLC’s story. One addition is League Club Special Coaches, NPCs you met throughout the game that you can interact with in new ways. 

With Coaches, you can battle, trade, and talk to characters you’re already familiar with from your journey through Scarlet and Violet. This is mostly centered around important people from Paldea such as the Elite Four and Gym Leaders. It is also one of the most confusing and poorly explained features in the game, so buckle up for a few lessons. 

What are Special Coaches, and how do they work in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk?

Special Coaches are NPCs you can invite to the League Club room after beating the main story of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk. Each Coach is an important character from the Paldea region and can interact with you, along with the other Coaches when summoned at the same time. 

Summoning a Coach requires 200 Blueberry Points (BP) per summon from the League Club’s PC. When a Coach is visiting the club you can talk with them to increase your friendship and battle them. After you talk to a Coach three separate times on different visits, that trainer will offer to trade you one of their Pokémon—and it will have a special Partner Ribbon.

You can have any two Coaches present in the League Club at a time and you don’t have to battle them to befriend them. Just make sure you talk to them every visit up until the third visit, when you unlock the ability to trade them for their special Pokémon. You need 600 BP per Coach to reach that point, so get ready to grind a lot of BP, since there are almost two dozen coaches. 

All Special Coaches and how to unlock them in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk

There are 23 total Coaches available in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk’s League Club, ranging from Gym Leaders to Champions of the Paldea region. Most you unlock naturally as you progress through the system, but there are a few that require you to meet external criteria before they will join you in the League Club. 

For example, while Top Champion Geeta is technically the last of the Special Coaches you can unlock, we got her to visit the League Club with seven other spots still missing before her, along with three after her. This is because after Professor Jacq and before Geeta are spots for every other teacher from Naranja/Uva Academy in Paldea. 

They seemingly didn’t appear for us because you need to finish each teacher’s respective set of classes at the academy during Scarlet and Violet’s base game. Those optional classes are mandatory if you want to complete your Special Coaches board, and there are extra steps for some of them too. 

Here is a full list of Special Coaches in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk, with an additional note for each trainer that has an unlock condition.

For all of the Academy Professors not named Jacq you have to complete all of their subject courses and exams before they become available as Special Coaches. This also means you can complete the befriending quests tied to the class progression for those teachers, too, and get extra rewards. 

Nemona, Arven, and Penny all become available to bring to the League Club after you complete the Mochi Mayhem epilogue story that released on Jan. 11. This is a separate piece of content to The Indigo Disk that you need to unlock.

There are also interactions you can have with the Blueberry Elite Four, Carmine, and Kieran too. They just don’t count as Special Coaches.

How to get more Special Coaches Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk

Now that you know the available Special Coaches, you might be wondering how you can get more to visit the League Club. 

You can only have two Coaches visit the League Club at a time, which is important because you need to interact with the characters you’ve unlocked to get more. During each visit, make sure you talk to the Coaches you invite, as this is how you befriend them and get new interactions. After you’ve visited and talked to each character three times, they should get a gold border on the Special Coaches menu and offer you a Pokémon trade.

Just keep getting all of your available Special Coaches to the point where you can trade and they have a gold border in that menu, which should eventually open up more characters to invite. The only time this doesn’t work is if a character is not invitable until you do something outside of the club, like the professors who require you to complete their courses at the academy first.

Aside from these, you should be able to get every Special Coach by putting in the time and BP. And even if you don’t want to unlock everyone, you can get a free Shiny Blitzle by inviting everyone who is naturally available without other steps.