30th Celebration cards: every box, date and price we know

30th Celebration is the Pokemon Trading Card Game's anniversary set, and it releases worldwide on September 16, 2026. Pre-orders are live on Pokemon Center. This page tracks every confirmed product and card as they are revealed, and gets updated as more lands.

The one date that matters

September 16 is a same-day worldwide release. Anniversary and premium Pokemon sets usually stagger between Japan and the West by weeks or months; a synchronised global date is a deliberate choice.

Two consequences follow. Demand hits every region simultaneously, so there is no "the other region already sold out" early warning. And it narrows the arbitrage window resellers rely on — buying a Japanese exclusive to flip abroad works much better when the West is three months behind.

Confirmed products

The full English product lineup has been revealed, and additional Pokemon Center products have gone up for pre-order in a second wave.

Target has now started pre-orders too. Polygon reports that an Eevee product is up ahead of the September 16 release. Polygon's report also flags a catch attached to the offer, which the summary we have does not spell out, so read the listing terms carefully before you commit any money. A mass retailer opening pre-orders is usually the point at which a set stops being a Pokemon Center exclusive story and becomes a general supply one.

How the packs are sold

The booster packs are not sold on their own. They only come inside the special products, which is what the Pokemon Trading Card Game does with all of its special sets. So the cheapest way in is whatever the cheapest box turns out to be, and no official price has been published yet.

Each booster pack holds:

• Five foil cards, one of which is always one of 30 different Pikachu
• One foil Basic Energy card
• One code card for Pokemon Trading Card Game Live, the free digital version

A guaranteed Pikachu in every pack sounds better than it is. With 30 of them, you are certain to get a Pikachu and unlikely to get the one you were after. More on what that means for buyers.

What is in the Futuristic Box

At 27,500 yen, or roughly $171, this is the expensive one. PokeBeach says it holds two Pikachu ex promo cards in a finish called Futuristic Rare, one themed after day and one after night, plus a set of premium accessories such as sleeves and storage.

So you are paying mostly for two cards and the packaging. That is normal for a Japanese premium box, and it is also why these boxes are the ones that sell out and stay expensive. There is no English version announced.

Cards revealed so far

Most of the 30 Pikachu are now public. PokeBeach reported 19 of the 30 shown as of mid-August, and more have been revealed since, including another one released alongside the legendary birds. We are not going to put a running total on it, because the count moves faster than the reports do.

Nintendo Life has published a gallery of the Pikachu cards revealed so far. Its write-up repeats the basics we already knew: 30 rare Pikachu, one guaranteed in every booster pack, a mix of reprints of classic cards and brand new artwork, plus the two Pikachu Special Illustration Rares built around the day and night look of the set.

The pattern all summer has been small batches of reveals rather than one big drop, so expect the rest to trickle out over the coming weeks. Worth knowing if you are holding out for one particular Pikachu: pre-orders are already live, and the popular boxes can sell out before the full list is public.

• Two Pikachu ex promos in the Japanese Futuristic Box, one day themed and one night themed, revealed during the Japan Championships
• Espeon ex and Umbreon ex, revealed in the same announcement, which covered two separate products
• Meowth and Alolan Meowth, each with an Illustration Rare, revealed on International Cat Day
• A Pikachu drawn by Ken Sugimori, the original Pokemon artist, marked as the first Pikachu in the set and drawn in the older, rounder style
• The regular day and night versions of Pikachu ex. The promo versions of the same pair go inside Ultra-Premium Collections, one of which also holds Espeon ex
• The Special Illustration Rare versions of the day and night Pikachu ex. PokeBeach reports these were revealed by The Pokemon Company International, and that the plainer Double Rare versions of the same two cards came out earlier

An Illustration Rare is a card with full artwork and no text box over the picture. They are harder to pull and cost more than the plain version of the same card. A Special Illustration Rare is the step above it: the same full artwork treatment, but applied to a card that was already strong, such as an ex. Our guide ranks the whole rarity ladder.

So there are now three versions of day and night Pikachu ex in circulation: the Double Rare you pull from packs, the Special Illustration Rare you pull much less often, and the promo packed inside an Ultra-Premium Collection. If you want one to play with, the Double Rare does the same job in a deck. The other two are collector cards.

The Eeveelution pairing is the commercially significant one. Umbreon in particular has a track record — the Evolving Skies era demonstrated that a single desirable Umbreon card can carry a set's secondary-market pricing for years.

The legendary Pokemon, one generation at a time

The week of August 18 brought a run of reveals, and they follow an obvious plan. The set is walking through the legendary Pokemon of each generation.

A few card details are public. Kyogre is a Water type with 140 hit points, and its Hydro Pump attack does 60 damage plus 30 more for every Water Energy attached to it. Zacian is a Metal type with 130 hit points and two attacks: a cheap one that hits harder if Zacian is holding a Pokemon Tool, and a 120-damage attack it cannot use two turns in a row. Reshiram is a Fire type with 130 hit points whose second attack does 80 damage and more if it has Lightning Energy attached.

A Pokemon Tool is a card you attach to a Pokemon to give it an extra ability, and it stays there until something removes it.

PokeBeach notes that Lugia's attack is a deliberate callback to the original Lugia card from Neo Genesis, the set that came out in 2000. That is the tell for what this set is doing. An anniversary set sells to people who owned the cards the first time, and pointing back at a twenty-six-year-old card is aimed squarely at them.

The Unown detail is the neatest one. Unown are the Pokemon shaped like letters, and arranging them to spell "ANNIVERSARY" in the picture is the sort of thing that only works once every thirty years.

None of these are confirmed as chase cards. Hit points and attack text tell you how a card plays, not what it will cost. The versions worth money are the Illustration Rares and Special Illustration Rares, and which of these Pokemon get one is not yet known.

China gets three products the rest of us do not

Pokemon China has announced its own products for the set, all landing on September 16 alongside everything else. None of these have been announced for North America or Europe.

The coin set has a chase built into it. PokeBeach says there are 120 different Pikachu coins, that the first three colours pull at equal rates, and that the gold coins are 99 times rarer. A chase item with published odds is unusual, and 99 times rarer is a genuinely long shot.

The Charizard box is the one that will travel. Mitsuhiro Arita is the illustrator behind the classic Charizard artwork, so a sculpted figure of that art with a jumbo card to match is aimed at exactly the collector who would pay to import one. Expect resale listings well above 780 yuan, and expect shipping and customs to add to it. If you are tempted, remember that region-exclusive boxes are the ones with no restock.

An honest pre-order read

Three rules that hold for almost every hyped Pokemon set:

1. Sealed product from mass retail almost always restocks. Pokemon Center exclusives and Japan-only boxes often do not. Prioritise the second category if you are pre-ordering to keep.
2. If you want one specific card, buy the single. Opening product to chase a named Illustration Rare is, on expected value, worse than buying it outright once supply settles a few weeks post-launch.
3. Launch-week prices are the peak of attention, not of value. Prices on chase cards from a heavily printed anniversary set typically soften in the first month.

The anti-scalping backdrop

This set arrives as The Pokemon Company escalates against resellers: Japan's official Pokemon Card stores are moving to facial recognition to get in the door and to buy cards, and some 30th Anniversary products are restricted to Japanese residents. If you were planning to source Japanese exclusives through a proxy buyer, expect friction.

Related

• Pokemon Trading Card Game
• Products and merch
• Release calendar