Sonic in the Philippines: 2025 Recap

As we move on to what lies ahead for 2026, let's take a look at the year that just wrapped up. 2025 has been a big year for Sonic the Hedgehog in the Philippines and there's a lot to run through! Starting off...

Sonic Movie 3 makes its way to PH

While the US release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 took place the month before, January 2025 marks the moment Filipinos get their turn to see Shadow the Hedgehog on the big screen, as it was heavily promoted during SEGA ATLUS Festival 2024. It kicked off with an exclusive premiere screening at SM Megamall (please invite us next time, Paramount!) and special promotions from cinema chains SM Cinema and Robinsons Movieworld, as well as the promotional (and playable!) Happy Meal from McDonald's. As the screenings go on, we cap off the eventful Fearless: Year of Shadow campaign for what is to arrive next.

IT'S SONIC RAAAACIIIIIIIING

Immediately after SEGA ATLUS Festival 2024, we would get our first sneak peek at what is to become Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds at The Game Awards 2024. We would then get a full trailer with release date at Summer Game Fest 2025, showing off a new entry into the Sonic Racing series; no longer developed by Sumo Digital, but by Sonic Team and the SEGA Arcade Racing team. It's cross-platform, cross-world, cross-franchise even.

"Also, unlike another kart racing game, this game will have online cross-platform matchmaking,"
— Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team

2025 is year of "Racing Around the World"

Sonic would see a lot of collaborations and projects across the world with its new 2025 campaign, "Racing Around the World". This includes collborations with K1 Speed San Diego, McLaren Racing, Asphalt Legends Unite, Waze, and more!

For our side of the world in Asia, this means Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Sonic Rumble updates to the Sonic and AirAsia collaboration AirAsia X Airbus A330.

But first, we Blitz!

Completely out of nowhere, SEGA and (newly-acquired) Rovio cook up a surprise: a mobile card game themed after the Sonic universe titled Sonic Blitz. And Pinoy Sonic Fans get to try out the game first, as Sonic Blitz started with a limited technical launch in the Philippines, and later a soft launch in Brazil. Right now, only both of these countries can download Blitz from the App Store and Google Play Store, so we're hoping that more people get to try out Blitz soon!

More merch to go around!

Merchandise of all kinds are also speeding around, with more updates to official lines such as the DC X Sonic collab having new products out.

For our side, there are also campaigns from big companies such as the SM Store with giveaways for purchasing Sonic T-shirts.

We'd also like to acknowledge the fan-merch being sold at art markets and artist alleys; from small ones like Taiyo Day to bigger events such as the recently-held Cosplay Matsuri 2025. Not only in Manila, but we also saw fan merch in places like Cebu through events like Otakufest 2025! Fan merch were also being given away at events like SEGA ATLUS Festival 2025.

CrossWorlds Racing through the Philippines

Some Filipinos were able to access the Closed Network Test exclusively for PlayStation players. The Philippines was finally included as a participating country to CrossWorlds' Open Network Test after further confirmation from the SEGA SEA Discord.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds fully launched worldwide on September 25, 2025, with promotions all over the Philippines. Here are some of the pictures we took around Manila and the South:

Some streamers and influencers represented the Philippines for the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Asia Tour, including Filipino actress, artist, cosplayer, and gamer Myrtle Sarrosa.

Local game store Game One PH also promoted CrossWorlds where branches had playable demos of the game and giveaways for demo players.

Green Hill or Greenhills? Why not both!

Look, we weren't really serious when we joked about one of Metro Manila's oldest shopping centers (and the barangay it belongs to) sounding a lot like a certain Sonic zone...

Oh, but they definitely took it seriously.

To celebrate Halloween taking place at the mall and promote Sonic in the Philippines, Greenhills Mall in San Juan, Metro Manila together with sponsors held a meet-and-greet session for Sonic the Hedgehog on October 26, 2025 at various times of the day. We saw a lot of families and kids in Halloween costumes taking their pictures with Sonic. Not only them, but we also saw local Sonic fans of all ages taking part to take their picture with Sonic!

It is interesting to note as well that this is Sonic's first exclusive mall show in the Philippines where he is the sole focus, as well as the first time that the Sonic Mascot from SEGA Japan's Tiktok appeared in the Philippines. Here's to many more mall shows featuring Sonic!

Let's get ready to Rumble!

Sonic Rumble, after being available to the Philippines under the beta, after being available for demo at SEGA ATLUS Festival 2024, and after several delays, finally gets released on November 5, 2025 worldwide on both mobile and PC via Steam. In that sense, the hype has died down a bit locally since we've already played it for a while, but with the devs cooking up new collabs such as the Godzilla crossover, there's plenty of opportunities for Pinoy Sonic fans to jump back in to Rumble!

SEGA ATLUS Festival goes Round 2 in Manila

It's like if Thrilla in Manila had a sequel; SEGA and Sonic came back for round two with another edition of the SEGA ATLUS Festival. Same month, same place, but with a whole new vibe thanks to the Festival and in turn the SM Mall of Asia also being the center stage for the Philippine leg of the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Asia Show Tour 2025-2026.

Hosted by SEGA SEA Ambassadors Myrtle Sarrosa and Cholo Tolentino, alongside other SEGA SEA Ambassadors, SEGA ATLUS Festival 2025 showed off the best of SEGA's offerings for 2025 including Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Sonic Rumble, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, Persona 3 Reload, Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, and Demon Slayer - The Hinokami Chronicles 2.

CrossWorlds was definitely the theme of the Festival this time around, with many demo stations ready for gamers, families, and gamer families celebrating Christmas to come and have a try at what the blue speedster's been up to on the track. With a crazy competition, and add on to that the slew of fans and cosplayers who attended, and you know for sure that SEGA stole the show for Pasko 2025.

Watch out for our full article about SEGA ATLUS Festival 2025 coming to SonicPH.org real soon!

In memoriam

We'd also like to take the time to acknowledge the passing of legendary local voice actor Jefferson Utanes, who passed away at the age of 46. He has been the Filipino dub voice actor for Knuckles and his variations in the Netflix series Sonic Prime. He has also been instrumental for the Filipino voice acting scene and is most famous for being the "Goku ng Pinas". And most importantly, he will be missed.

Sonic Philippines took full speed in 2025!

Of course, we do have to talk about the loads of cool stuff we did over the past year! The Sonic Philippines pages have been a lot more active in 2025 (majority of the material was from JERNiX), got to do our first couple photo albums and video documentation, and even got to start up our own site! We hope you'll stick around with us for 2026 and beyond, because we've got a lot more we want to accomplish to bring together local Sonic fans from all across our thousands of islands.

Happy New Year, and let's run through 2026 together, Pinoy Sonic Fans!