Am I the only one that thinks it'll be South Korea? for a few reasons
the way game freak/tpci has been going I feel like they want to make pokemon as "internationally hip" as they can for lack of a better word. Korea seems like it's inline with what theyve slowly doing more and more with modernizing the appeal of their games. swsh and SV had so much pandering in the advertising with stuff like that.
there will be Korean fashion everywhere for the customization theme and every gym leader will be a Kpop idol with a concert stage for a gym stadium like galar with the soccer theme. also assuming they take their paid business expense vacation to the country for research purposes like they did for other regions, South Korea would be easy for them even with covid restrictions. Italy is much harder to enter iirc. don't forget they also based unova off of New York because they went there for some pokemon event. there's lots of pokemon events held in Korea, specifically officially held japan-korea friendly tournaments. and all pokemon eSports have Korea as one of the competing countries with very notable competitors, most famously sejun park winning worlds with his pachirisu, which did more for Play Pokemon's positive image than just about anything else.
also Korea just really seems like an important country for pokemon in the current day, they put a lot into pokemon korea AND it paid off last year. I wouldn't be surprised at all if game freak chose to base the next region off of it.
>tl;dr
south korea is hip and cool and tpci loves them
