It’s the moment every Pokémon TCG fan has been waiting patiently for all year: The Pokémon Company has lifted the lid on its 30th anniversary product and given us a release date. The commemorative anniversary pack ’30th Celebration’ is arriving on September 16, 2026, and as promised, it’s coming to every part of the world simultaneously.
Just like it did for the 25th anniversary, Pokémon is throwing reprints of classic cards into this product. And, since they did 25 of these for the previous milestone, it only makes sense that they make it an even 30 this time around.
A press release reveals two of these classics: Base Set Charizard, the original holy grail rare Pokémon card; and Pikachu & Zekrom GX from Pokémon Team Up. If you missed these cards when they were originally released, this could be a good way to get your hands on a piece of TCG history – with a special stamp that marks it out from the original, of course. We’ll have to wait for more news to see what the other 28 cards are.
As for what else is in these packs, well every card is foil, and there look to be brand new Standard cards, as the Greninja and Drifloon seen here are not reprints of previous Pokémon. As we reported last week, there are 30 different Pikachu cards in total, and you’ll find one in every 30th Celebration pack you open – making it a challenging but theoretically feasible mission to catch ’em all!
Finally, there’s also a new rarity type tailor-made for this new pack. The Futuristic rare cards feature illustrations by the Japanese graphic artist YOSHIROTTEN and according to a press release they “will depict Pokémon in striking artwork evocative of hope toward an unknown future”.
I’m not sure what that means, but if the Mew and Mewtwo shown in the trailer are anything to go by, they’ll be weird colors and surrounded by different energy symbols. While the trailer reveals just these two Futuristic rares, the wording of a press release on the Pokémon website certainly seems to imply there’ll be more – but we just can’t be sure.
Overall, there are only going to be six cards in each anniversary booster pack. So don’t be too shocked and horrified when opening them up expecting the usual ten!
Though we have the release date, we don’t yet know the price of the packs for this set – we’ll have to wait and see for that particular detail, as well as the identities of the rest of the classic cards!
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Source: Wargamer
