Pikachu revealed
Every booster pack of 30th Celebration contains exactly one of the thirty, each drawn by a different illustrator. Ten are still unannounced. The set launches worldwide on 16 September.
How the numbering works
Each of these cards prints two numbers. One is its place in the Japanese set. The other is a Pikachu silhouette followed by its rank out of thirty, and that is the number shown above, because it is the one that tells you how far along the run you are.
The two move in lockstep, sixteen apart: 01/30 is card 017, and 30/30 is card 046. The ten still missing are 018, 021, 023, 025, 029, 039, 040, 042, 045 and 046. The bounds hold from the other side too, since 015 is Greninja ex and 047 and 048 are Pikachu ex, which are a different thing entirely.
One design detail is easy to miss at thumbnail size: on these cards, Pikachu's cheeks are shaped as a 3 and a 0.
The names on the cards
The credits are not filler.
01/30 is by Ken Sugimori, who designed the original 151 Pokémon and drew the Base Set. Giving him the first slot of thirty is not an accident.
25/30 is by Atsuko Nishida, who designed Pikachu itself. There is a certain logic in handing the character back to the person who invented it.
Around them sits a deliberately wide range: Tomokazu Komiya and Akira Komayama from the classic era, Narumi Sato and Shinji Kanda from the modern one, and a set of illustrators known by one name only, sowsow, Teeziro, OKACHEKE, DOM, USGMEN, akagi, satoma and Nurikabe. The lowercase and uppercase forms above are how each name is actually printed on its card.
A subset, not a rarity
Worth keeping straight, because it changes how you read the pack. A Pikachu is not a chase pull. It is what fills a slot that would otherwise hold something else, in every single pack you open. The guaranteed slot is not a rarity tier, it is a subset of thirty.
English versus Japanese numbering
Five of the thirty have now appeared with their English numbering, which is enough to fix the conversion between the two printings:
| English | Subset | Illustrator | Japanese |
|---|---|---|---|
| 028/128 | 06/30 | sowsow | 022 |
| 040/128 | 18/30 | Shinji Kanda | 034 |
| 042/128 | 20/30 | Akira Komayama | 036 |
| 043/128 | 21/30 | OOYAMA | 037 |
| 050/128 | 28/30 | Shimaris Yukichi | 044 |
The English number is the Japanese one plus six, and it holds for all five. Do not carry that offset outside the Pikachu block: the English set splices in cards Japan sells separately in its Premium Deck Set, so the gap widens as the numbering climbs, from six here to twenty-five by the end of the set. Useful if you want to match a Japanese reveal to the card you will actually open.
We will keep this page and our 30th Celebration card list updated as the remaining ten arrive.
Card images and every illustrator credit come from the official artwork published by The Pokémon Company on 30th.pokemon-card.com, read off the printed Illus. line rather than taken from a secondary listing. The subset numbering was read the same way.