Pokémon Worlds Promo Cards: Every Year, 1999 to 2026

59 cards

Every Pokémon World Championships since 2004 has handed each competitor a participation card carrying the Worlds logo and year: Tropical Wind or Tropical Tidal Wave from 2004 to 2010, Tropical Beach in 2011 and 2012, Champions Festival from 2013 to 2022 and Paradise Resort since 2023. The best finishers also get copies stamped Top Thirty-Two to Champion, event staff get STAFF copies, and since 2023 a Worlds Pikachu has gone to players at local store tournaments.

Worlds 2026 ran from August 28 to 30, 2026 in San Francisco. Competitors got Paradise Resort MEP 092; badge holders, spectators included, received a PokémonXP-stamped Rayquaza, which Pokémon had announced on June 14, 2026 for every Worlds and PokémonXP attendee; and the Pikachu MEP 093 went to players of Worlds Celebration tournaments in local stores from August 21 to 30. Before 2004, the Tropical Mega Battle in Hawaii had cards of its own, listed here from 1999.

Worlds 2026: the four cards

The Rayquaza is the ordinary Ascended Heroes card, 153/217 by nagimiso, with a PXP stamp in the corner, and stamped copies were already selling online on August 29, 2026, the second day of the event. Without the stamp it is a set rare worth $1.96 raw (8 sales) as of September 25, 2026: the stamp is the whole difference.

Rayquaza#153

The 2026 Paradise Resort, drawn like every Paradise Resort by Naoki Saito, is set on Lombard Street. The Pikachu has a San Francisco background and a 2026 World Championships logo, which the WINNER copy replaces with a Play! Pokémon logo. The US Pokémon Center online store gave a Pikachu coin with orders of $50 or more, not the card. In Japan the same Pikachu, 133/M-P, goes to Pokémon Card Gym players from June 20 to September 30, 2026, and in Asia-Pacific a copy stamped with the Pokémon Game On! logo has been handed out at Pokémon TCG Gym events since September 1, 2026.

The next Worlds is at Singapore EXPO from August 13 to 15, 2027. Our Worlds 2027 guide covers qualifying, travel and the World Championships Decks, the boxed reprints of winning decks that this page leaves out. It also leaves out Ishihara-GX, given only to the guests of a private party for the 60th birthday of Tsunekazu Ishihara, The Pokémon Company's president, on the sidelines of Worlds 2018 in Nashville.

Every Worlds participation card, 1999 to 2026

Every Japanese print of these cards, 1999 to 2025, is an unnumbered promo, except the 2001 and 2002 Tropical Wind, 008/P.

The Worlds Pikachu, 2023 to 2026

Since 2023 a Pikachu, the same 70 HP card with Scrappy Spark each year, has marked Worlds for players who are not there. Since 2024 its art shows the host city, and since 2025 each age division's winner at each Worlds Celebration gets a WINNER-stamped copy.

The Japanese prints went to Pokémon Card Gym events in Japan.

Pikachu#101Pikachu#190Pikachu#120/SV-PPikachu#197/SV-PPikachu#291/SV-P

What Worlds cards are worth

Short of qualifying, a participation card comes from someone who was there: a competitor, a staff member or, since 2023, a side-event player. The Worlds Pikachu is the easy one, given to anyone who plays a Worlds Celebration while supplies last. Prices for the plain English copy:

Real completed sales, as of September 25, 2026. Each figure rests only on sales of the English card without a placement or STAFF stamp. "Mixed" means the recorded sales for that version also include stamped, STAFF, other-language or graded copies. The Tropical Mega Battle cards have no price on the site.

Three checks before you pay a Worlds price:

• The stamp. Top Thirty-Two to Champion and STAFF copies sell for more than the plain card and are often listed under the same number: look for the placement or STAFF stamp.
• The language. Every competitor received one copy in each of the pack's languages, so non-English copies far outnumber English ones, and they sell for much less.
• The back. Most Tropical Beach copies sold for under $150 are World Championships Deck reprints, which have a different back and are not legal in tournaments.

How the competitor pack and the stamps work

Each competitor gets one copy of the card in every language it is printed in. From 2004 to 2013 they came in a binder of nine cards, the card in English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian plus two special cards; from 2014 the prints came in a sealed plastic wrapper. 2022 added Traditional Chinese, Thai and Indonesian; the 2023 Paradise Resort came in eleven languages, Korean included, and with Simplified Chinese from 2024 and Latin American Spanish from 2025 it reached thirteen. Since 2005 every copy carries the Worlds logo and year on the art; 2004 alone also had an unstamped version, for spectators.

The best finishers also receive copies stamped with their placement, English prints in every year from 2004 to 2022. From 2005 each player got two copies of every tier reached, in each of the three age divisions, and since 2023 the stamps also go to the top VGC and Pokémon GO players, and the top three tiers to Pokémon UNITE:

In 2004 the stamps stopped at Top Sixteen and each player got only the stamp of their best placement. STAFF copies go to the people who run the event. The 2009 card has a misprint: an unknown number of its English STAFF and rank-stamped copies carry the 2008 number, DP25, instead of DP48, while the plain competitor copy is not affected. Since 2023, players of the side events at the venue can also earn the plain card (in 2023 it took 500 Championship Points earned in those events).

1999 to 2002: the Tropical Mega Battle

Before Worlds, the international final was the Tropical Mega Battle, held every August from 1999 to 2002 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu for invited young players from Japan, the Americas and later Europe. It was small, 42 players in 2000, 23 in 2001 and 13 in 2002, and so were its print runs.

• 1999: every player received a bilingual Exeggutor, drawn by Kouichi Ooyama (credited Dr. Ooyama), on regular card stock; an estimated fewer than 50 were printed. The magazine Pokémon Card Trainers Vol. 3 gave away a second print on glossy stock on October 1, 1999, and both prints carry the same line calling the card that magazine's bonus, so the stock is what tells them apart. A non-glossy Imakuni? card was a participation prize at the event on August 25, 1999.
• 1999, Japan: Sumiyoshi Kizuki's Tropical Wind, a Psyduck in a hammock, was the participation card of the Japanese qualifying tournaments, Challenge Road '99, as its bottom line says: all 576 players got one, and 10 more went out by magazine lottery. The American players in Hawaii did not get it.
• 2000: a bilingual Lucky Stadium, again by Ooyama, for the players in Honolulu (fewer than 50 printed, by estimate), and eight regional Lucky Stadiums for the players of Japan's World Challenge Summer qualifiers, from July 1 to August 6, 2000: Lugia in Kantō, Ho-Oh in Kansai, Pikachu in Hokkaidō, Zapdos in Chūbu, Mew in Hokushin'etsu, Onix in Kyūshū, Gyarados in Chūgoku and Shikoku, Diglett in Tōhoku.
• 2001 and 2002: each player got a 30-card half deck, Japan's Tyranitar Half Deck with its Tyranitar and Darkness Energy swapped for a new card: Tropical Breeze, unnumbered, in the decks of the other languages, and Tropical Wind 008/P in the Japanese ones. The half decks went only to the 23 players of 2001 and the 13 of 2002.

Exeggutor (Tropical Mega Battle 1999)Exeggutor (Pokemon Card Trainers Magazine 1999)Non-Glossy Imakuni? (Tropical Mega Battle 1999)Tropical Wind (Challenge Road 1999)Lucky Stadium (Tropical Mega Battle 2000)Tropical Wind#8/P

Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)Lucky Stadium (World Challenge Summer 2000)

Japan's qualifying tours also gave trophy cards, the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 Trainer, to their top finishers; the one below is the No. 3 Trainer of the 2000 Japanese final, dated August 26, 2000. These cards print the winner's name and photograph, which we mask.

No.3 Trainer (World Challenge Tropical Mega Battle Best in Japan 2000)

The first card-game World Championships was Wizards of the Coast's, in Seattle on August 3 and 4, 2002: competitors got a t-shirt and a cap, not a card, and its two division champions were invited to the Tropical Mega Battle three weeks later. There was no event in 2003, when Wizards' license to the card game ended, and Pokémon's own World Championships began in Orlando in August 2004.

2004 to 2010: Tropical Wind and Tropical Tidal Wave

Orlando 2004 brought back Kizuki's hammock as Tropical Wind 026, now with the Hoenn starters around the Psyduck; its coin flip either heals both Active Pokémon or puts them both to sleep. Until 2010 it alternated with Tropical Tidal Wave and its surfing Pikachu, whose coin flip discards Trainer cards in play, each year redrawn with Pokémon from the newest games. Kizuki drew every Tropical Wind and Tropical Tidal Wave, from 1999 to 2010.

Tropical Wind#26Tropical Tidal Wave#27Tropical Tidal Wave#36Tropical WindDP05Tropical WindDP25Tropical WindDP48Tropical Tidal WaveHGSS18

Tropical Wind (World Championships 2004)Tropical Tidal Wave (World Championships 2005)Tropical Tidal Wave (World Championships 2006)Tropical Wind (World Championships 2007)Tropical Wind (World Championships 2008)Tropical Wind (World Championships 2009)Tropical Tidal Wave (World Championships 2010)

2011 and 2012: Tropical Beach

Naoki Saito, who has drawn every participation card since, took over in 2011 with Tropical Beach, a participation card that players still take to tournaments: once during each player's turn, that player may draw until they hold seven cards, and if they do, their turn ends. As of September 25, 2026 it is legal in the Expanded format, internationally and in Japan, and still turns up in Expanded decklists; Japan had banned it from its Hall of Fame format in 2014 without giving a reason. The 2011 art has the Unova starters on a beach, the 2012 art Pikachu, Pansage, Pansear and Panpour dancing on a stage.

Tropical BeachBW28Tropical Beach (World Championships 2011)Tropical BeachBW50Tropical Beach (World Championships 2012)

2013 to 2026: Champions Festival and Paradise Resort

From Vancouver 2013 to London 2022, the card was Champions Festival: once during each player's turn, a player with six Pokémon in play may heal 10 damage from each of them. Since Yokohama 2023 it has been Paradise Resort, whose effect only touches Psyduck: the Retreat Cost of each Psyduck in play, yours and your opponent's, is one Colorless Energy less. Psyduck is in the art of every participation card since 2004 (in 2014 as a Psyduck-shaped boat), and in 2023 it made it into the rule text. Saito draws each year as a postcard of the host city:

Champions FestivalBW95Champions FestivalXY27Champions FestivalXY91Champions FestivalXY176Champions FestivalSM78Champions FestivalSM148Champions FestivalSWSH296

Champions Festival (World Championships 2013)Champions Festival (World Championships 2014)Champions Festival (World Championships 2015)Champions Festival (World Championships 2016)Champions Festival (World Championships 2017)Champions Festival (World Championships 2018)Champions Festival (World Championships 2019)Champions Festival (World Championships 2022)#365/S-P

Paradise Resort#045Paradise Resort#150Paradise Resort#503/SV-PParadise Resort#507/SV-PParadise Resort#511/SV-P

FAQ

What promo cards were given at Worlds 2026?

Paradise Resort MEP 092 to competitors, a PokémonXP-stamped Rayquaza (Ascended Heroes 153/217) to Worlds and PokémonXP badge holders, and the Pikachu MEP 093 at Worlds Celebration tournaments in local stores and with purchases at select US retailers from August 21 to 30, 2026, with WINNER copies for each tournament's division winners.

How do you get the Worlds Pikachu promo card?

Play a Worlds Celebration tournament at a Play! Pokémon store around Worlds (August 21 to 30 in 2026), while supplies last; each age division's winner gets a WINNER copy. Select retailers have also given it with a Pokémon TCG purchase, and it is cheap second-hand: the 2025 card is $5.47 raw (6 sales) as of September 25, 2026.

Do spectators get a promo card at Worlds?

In 2026, yes: Worlds and PokémonXP badge holders received a PokémonXP-stamped Rayquaza. The participation card itself had a spectator version only in 2004, the unstamped Tropical Wind, and since 2023 spectators can also earn the Paradise Resort in the side events.

What is the rarest Worlds promo card?

The top stamps: from 2012 to 2022 only six Champion copies a year were given, two per division winner, and the 2009 DP25 misprint exists only on some STAFF and rank-stamped copies. Among plain cards, the scarcest come from the Tropical Mega Battle: an estimated fewer than 50 each of the bilingual Exeggutor (tournament print, not the glossy magazine one) and Lucky Stadium, and a half deck with Tropical Breeze or Tropical Wind 008/P for each of the 36 players of 2001 and 2002.

More promo series from places and events: Pokémon Center, PokéPark, Pokémon Wonderland, the Pokémon Museum, Celebratory Fanfare and, from the magazines, CoroCoro.