It’s time! With The Pokémon Presents on Pokemon Day 2026, we finally get the news we’ve been waiting for: how the company plans to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Let’s rip into this one!

It's hard to believe that 30 years ago, I was in elementary school, clutching my copy of Prima's 1999 Strategy guide to Pokemon Red and Blue, reading over all the maps and notes of every town, gym, and route, figuring out how to navigate the games, optimizing your time building a team that could sweep the Elite Four without an issue. It wouldn't be until middle school a few years later, when I discovered websites that have downloadable emulators with emulations of the Pokémon games, that I finally played the games on my own, waiting till college to play them on handheld devices for the first time.

Since then, the franchise has come a long way, becoming one of the most popular franchises in the world, with the centerpiece of their empire being the Ash Ketchum TV shows, the video games, and the trading card game.

There is a split in the audience now: children and adults who grew up loving Pokemon. And The Pokémon Company clearly recognizes this, with the release of their first LEGO sets, geared toward adult fans.

Which means, as the video games become delineated between their two distinct consumer populations, every other vertical will start to split to appeal to both audiences. This includes the trading card game, which I believe will shift drastically in 2026.

Here are some predictions I have about The Pokémon trading card game for this coming year.

This is by far the most likely scenario. With rumors of the next generation of Pokemon games looming over Pokemon Day, we will transition out of Mega Evolutions and into whatever the newest games will be called.

I don't believe Mega Evolutions was ever meant to carry the TCG for years, but it was meant to be a placeholder between the end of Scarlet and Violet and the beginning of generation 10. And with the 30th Anniversary, there's bound to be a set or two dedicated to celebrating this momentous occasion.

Pokemon has been diligent with cancelling bot orders since the start of Mega Evolutions, so we should fully expect restocks coming for all Mega Evolutions sets. But given how short of an era this is going to be, I fully expect the company's focus to shift heavily toward the next generation, while maintaining its focus on the more popular Scarlet and Violet sets that have risen astronomically in value on the secondary market.

What does this mean for us, the average Joe, frugal collector?

Well, for one, you should focus a lot of your money toward PC ETBs, booster boxes of anything Destined Rivals and newer, and the Mega Charizard X UPC and the Prismatic Evolutions SPCs for long-term holds. For a quick flip, buy booster bundles of Ascended Heroes, Prismatic Evolutions, Destined Rivals, and Phantasmal Flames and flip them locally. You could also flip ETBs, since most of the popular set's ETBs are worthwhile flips.

Once Pokemon shifts their focus to the next generation of cards, we'll still see reprints here and there but will most likely see a significant reduction in printing. And I would sell off any extras that you have before the end of this summer because...

With a new printing facility up and running, it will obviously take time to get it going smoothly. However, there will be a huge amount of pressure to get product ready for a massive Black Friday restock.

Why Black Friday? Well, in terms of retail holidays, Black Friday into Cyber Monday is a massive one that requires a ton of planning from a logistics point of view.

Retailers have come to anticipate floods of consumers heading to stores for sales and deals. But shelf space, and even aisle space, is extremely limited. It takes a lot of time and planning to produce special packaging, to design and build cardboard displays, and even wrapping, labeling, and packing pallets of products and displays to ship to your Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and other big-box stores that partake in Black Friday. When I say early, I mean the majority of Black Friday product is ordered by March and shipped by August.

Pokemon is ramping up production to meet demand, and with the growing number of stores that are stocking Pokemon cards, that printing facility is more than likely already prepped for packing and shipping Black Friday.

Announcing the printing facility only made it official. The layout, the build-out, all that was most likely completed, with test runs being done prior to the announcement.

So then, with the new printing facility coming online and demand at an all-time high, it's only right that we eventually get...

They've experimented with this already in China: a Mew Ex Promo card given only to tournament goers, limited to 1,510 copies, is climbing to the $10K+ territory, and you can forget about buying a PSA 10.

But this was a limited distribution, not a serialized card. So there is a chance it could re-release as a promo in a different language, which would eat into the value of the Chinese copy. But regardless, seeing Pokemon even attempting a limited distribution could signal a step toward serialized cards.

The First Partner boxes that were announced for the 30th anniversary featuring exclusive promo cards of the 27 starters of The Pokémon games isn't a new gimmick, but it's one that could introduce hits or chases that are serialized. Take the Kanto starters, for instance. Maybe included in the total population of promos, there are 151 secret rares that are numbered out of 151, and the Pokedex numbered card would be the top chase even out of those, similar to jersey number cards in sports cards.

Exclusivity is key to collecting anything, and the only way to settle the market on competitive cards would be to turn the collector's attention away from mainline sets and draw them into something entirely different.

I know, this prediction is a huge stretch. But Pokemon's dilemma is not necessarily meeting demand. It's balancing card availability with their competitive scene. Relieve the attention on the competitive cards by including smaller specialty sets made up of exclusively full art, illustration rare, and special illustration rare cards that have even rarer serialized cards for every special illustration rare.

If Pokemon wants to learn how to create collectible cards, they'll have to look at sports cards and take direction from them. And this step of serializing cards would take Pokemon as a collectible TCG over the top, in my opinion.

Sure, it would be near impossible to get these serialized cards, and the market for them initially will be super heavy. But then the consumer has a choice: rip the standard mainline packs for those hits, or go full chase mode and try to collect the impossible to collect.

It's wild to think we're already at 30 years of Pokemon. Long gone are the days of toting around Prima's Pokemon Red and Blue Strategy guide, wishing I could own a gameboy color to play the games myself. We're entering a new era of Pokemon, and as first-generation Pokemon fans and collectors, our responsibility is to ensure that the love for Pokemon continues well beyond our time, allowing our own collections to grow more valuable while enjoying the new that Pokemon has to offer alongside this new generation of fans and collectors.

Catch deals. Pull grails.