Pokemon TCG Release Schedule: Every Set Coming in Late 2026

The Mega Evolution era keeps its quarterly cadence into late 2026, but the calendar has a wrinkle: a 30th anniversary set squeezed in between the main expansions.

The first half of 2026 was a steady march of Mega Evolution releases: Ascended Heroes at the end of January, Perfect Order on March 27, Chaos Rising on May 22, and a market that has had to absorb a new wave of chase cards every few months. The back half of the year keeps that pace, with one large exception: the franchise turns 30, and The Pokemon Company is marking it with a standalone celebration set that does not follow the usual rules.

Here is the full schedule for late 2026 as it stands in early July, what each set brings, and how we would think about timing if you are buying or selling. Unreleased-set details can still shift, though at this point all three dates are officially confirmed. If you want a refresher on the era's mechanics first, our explainer on what Mega Evolution ex cards are is the place to start.

The Schedule at a Glance

Set	Type	English release	Headliner
Pitch Black (ME05)	Main expansion	July 17, 2026	Mega Darkrai ex
30th Celebration	Special anniversary set	September 16, 2026	Mewtwo and Mew (Futuristic Rare)
Delta Reign (ME06)	Main expansion	November 6, 2026	Mega Rayquaza ex

Three releases, two of them standard Mega Evolution main sets and one of them a global anniversary event. Below we break each down.

Pitch Black (ME05): July 17

Pitch Black is the fifth main expansion of the Mega Evolution era and releases in English on July 17, 2026, with prerelease events running July 4 to 12 at participating local game stores.

The set brings six new Mega Evolution Pokemon ex: Mega Darkrai ex, Mega Zeraora ex, Mega Chandelure ex, Mega Excadrill ex, Mega Delphox ex, and Mega Slowbro ex. Mega Darkrai ex is the clear headliner and the early chase, with a Special Illustration Rare illustrated by Akira Egawa and a gold Mega Hyper Rare sitting at the top of the set's rarity ladder. Pitch Black is the English adaptation of the Japanese set Abyss Eye, which came out in Japan back in May, so we already have a read on how the chase cards behave from the Japanese market.

The full set runs to about 118 to 120 cards including secret rares. The dark, low-light art direction across the whole expansion has made it one of the more visually distinctive sets of the era. We covered the chase cards and early pricing in depth in our Pitch Black preview.

If you are a player, six new Megas plus a deep Trainer lineup make this a meaningful standard-format set rather than a pure collector release. If you are a collector, Mega Darkrai ex is the card to watch, and history says the highest premiums tend to land in the first few weeks before supply catches up.

30th Celebration: September 16

This is the headline event of the year, and it does not behave like a normal expansion.

The 30th Celebration set marks 30 years of the Pokemon Trading Card Game and releases simultaneously worldwide on September 16, 2026. That global simultaneous launch is itself a first for the TCG, which historically staggered Japanese and English releases by weeks or months. A few things make this set unusual:

• Every card is foil. That includes the Basic Energy cards. There are no plain commons in the set.
• A new rarity debuts. "Futuristic Rare" cards arrive as a brand new rarity tier, and the first ones revealed are Mew ex and Mewtwo ex illustrated by Japanese artist YOSHIROTTEN.
• Thirty unique Pikachu. Each booster pack is guaranteed to contain one of 30 different Pikachu cards, each illustrated by a different artist from the game's history.
• Thirty classic reprints. The set revisits 30 classic cards from across the TCG's history, each carrying a special "30" stamp and foil treatment. They are not Standard-legal, which tells you who this set is really for.

The set runs 150-plus cards (the final count is not locked yet), and packs contain six foil cards (five foil cards plus one foil Basic Energy). Two scheduling wrinkles matter for buyers. First, only the core products land on September 16; the Booster Bundle follows on October 2 and the Ultra-Premium Collections on November 6. Second, the English lineup has no traditional standalone booster box at all. We dug into the format, the new rarity, the full product lineup with prices, and the investment angle in our full breakdown of the 30th anniversary set.

One practical note on timing: anniversary and celebration products tend to be printed heavily, and the "every card is foil" novelty can pull casual buyers in at launch. That usually means strong initial demand followed by a settling period. Be patient if you are buying sealed for the long term.

Delta Reign (ME06): November 6

Delta Reign is the sixth main expansion of the Mega Evolution era and releases in English on November 6, 2026. It is the English counterpart to the Japanese set Storm Emeralda, which launches first in Japan on July 31.

The face of the set is Mega Rayquaza ex, one of the most requested Mega Evolutions in the franchise and a card tied closely to the era's connection with Pokemon Legends: Z-A (Rayquaza is the final legendary of the game's Mega Dimension DLC). The set also introduces something the TCG has never done: a two-part Stadium card with connected art. A Rayquaza headliner alone tends to generate outsized attention, and early community reaction suggests Delta Reign could be one of the more sought-after sets of the entire Mega era. We covered the early details, the naming, and what to watch in our Storm Emerald preview.

Because the Japanese version releases months ahead of the English one, collectors get an unusually long preview window. By the time Delta Reign hits English shelves in November, the Japanese Storm Emeralda chase cards will already have a price history. That is useful for setting expectations, though English and Japanese prices rarely move in lockstep.

How to Think About the Calendar

A few takeaways from looking at the back half of the year as a whole:

The cadence is relentless

Three releases in roughly four months means a lot of new cardboard hitting the market. For sellers, that can pressure prices on older sets as attention rotates to the newest thing. For buyers, it means patience is usually rewarded, because the freshest chase card is almost always the most expensive it will ever be at launch.

The anniversary set is the odd one out

The 30th Celebration set is not part of the standard Mega Evolution rotation, and its all-foil, anniversary-product nature makes it behave differently from a normal expansion. Do not assume it will follow the same supply-and-demand arc as Pitch Black or Delta Reign.

Japanese releases preview English ones

Pitch Black follows Abyss Eye, and Delta Reign follows Storm Emeralda. The Japanese market gives English collectors a useful (if imperfect) crystal ball on which cards matter and how prices behave. Just remember that English print runs, hype cycles, and grading populations differ.

If you are trying to decide whether to buy now or wait, our piece on whether to sell now or wait walks through the timing logic in more detail, and our mid-2026 market read covers where the broader market sits heading into this stretch.

The Bottom Line

Late 2026 gives collectors three distinct events: a standard main set with a strong chase in Pitch Black, a once-a-decade anniversary product in 30th Celebration, and a Mega Rayquaza ex headliner in Delta Reign to close the year. Two of the three follow Japanese sets that already exist, so the surprises are limited and the homework is mostly done. The anniversary set is the wild card, and the one most likely to behave in ways that defy the usual patterns. As always with unreleased products, dates and contents can change, so confirm details before you build a buying plan around them.