30th Promo Card Pack: 7 Cards, Handed Out Until Jan 31, 2027

Japan finally put dates on the anniversary promo everyone was asking about, and the answer is the one thing an overseas collector cannot solve with a proxy account. The 30th Promo Card Pack is handed out for playing a Gym Battle in Japan between Wednesday, September 16, 2026 and Sunday, January 31, 2027 — one pack per entry, one random card from a pool of seven, and the wrapper is stamped 非売品, not for sale. There is no product to preorder and no retail price to compare. What there is: a 4.5-month window, a second distribution route at a free-but-lottery-gated event in October, and a set of requirements that are worth knowing before you book anything.

When and where the 30th Promo Card Pack is handed out

Two confirmed routes, plus a third that has been announced without details. Everything below is from the official 30th anniversary site.

The replacement mechanic in row one is the detail most summaries get wrong. A Gym Battle participation prize normally hands you two single-card Promo Card Packs. During this window, one of those two becomes a 30th Promo Card Pack. You do not get two 30th packs, and you do not stop getting the regular one.

The standard prize caveats are printed on the same page and they matter for planning: quantities are limited and distribution ends when stock runs out, prizes may change without notice, and the cards may later be distributed by other methods. January 31 is the outer edge, not a guarantee.

How a Gym Battle actually puts one in your hand

A Pokémon Card Gym is a card shop authorized to run official events. The 30th site describes Gym Battles as in-person battle events run “in various formats depending on the store” — which is the official way of saying there is no single national rule set, entry fee or start time to look up.

Step 1 is where this gets uncertain rather than difficult, and we would rather say so than guess. players.pokemon-card.com returns 403 to automated requests, so we could not verify what the Players Club signup form accepts from a non-resident — whether it takes an overseas address or a foreign phone number is unverified here. What we can say is that nothing on any of the official pages we read states a nationality or residency requirement for a Gym Battle. Our longer breakdown of the account and entry layer is in Pokémon tournaments in Japan: entry requirements.

The seven cards

All seven are Pokémon that also appear in the 30th CELEBRATION expansion, printed here with different illustrations. The pack art itself carries the 全7種 (seven types) and ランダム1枚入り (one random card enclosed) marks, so a pack is a single card — not a mini-booster.

Official product image © The Pokémon Company (from the linked official page).

Greninja ex runs cheap attack costs: おんみつぎり hits one of your opponent’s Pokémon for 30 damage per damage counter already on it (bench hits skip Weakness and Resistance), and アクアエッジ does a flat 160 for two Water. Sylveon ex is the swingier one — カラフルハーモニー deals 50 damage times the number of basic Energy types attached across your whole board, which the official page prices at 400 damage if you get all eight types online.

Official product image © The Pokémon Company (from the linked official page).

So can a visitor from overseas actually get one?

Here is the honest state of it. No official page we read states a nationality or residency rule for either route, and the 30th CELEBRATION EVENT page lists a passport among the accepted photo IDs at the door — alongside a driver’s license, a residence card, a photo My Number Card and a photo student ID. That is a meaningful signal, because it means the day-of ID check is not built around documents only residents hold.

What no page says is that a visitor may take part. So we are not going to write that you can. The gates that are actually documented are administrative, not national:

Note also the identity-verification layer that arrived in the Players Club in August 2026: My Number Card verification is used for priority Pokémon Center Online lotteries and some official tournaments held in Japan. Neither the Gym Battle promo page nor the 30th CELEBRATION EVENT pages list it as a requirement here. That is a real difference from the Pokémon Center Online lottery route, where the check is unavoidable.

The 30th CELEBRATION EVENT, where the packs come in tens

If you are going to be in Japan in late October, this is the route with real volume behind it. The event runs 9:00–19:30 with reception closing at 17:30, at Makuhari Messe International Exhibition Hall 4–7 in Chiba on Sunday, October 25, and at Intex Osaka Hall 6 Zone B on Saturday, October 31 and Sunday, November 1.

Admission is free and by advance lottery. Applications for both passes opened September 4, 2026 at 14:00 JST and close Thursday, September 18 at 12:00 JST, with results at 17:00 on October 2. Applications are made inside the LINE app via Sekanavi — you add the account 《ポケモンカードゲーム イベント運営》 (LINE ID @pokemoncard_sb) and apply from the talk screen. Scramble Battle applicants must also link a Players Club profile before the same deadline.

Planned winner counts, per the official entry page:

The Scramble Battle is Open League with no age limit, 60-card Standard, real-time Swiss, up to seven matches with an automatic drop at four losses. Prizes are where the promo packs pile up: a sticker for participating, a sticker plus 5 30th Promo Card Packs at four wins, and a sticker plus 10 packs at seven wins, a commemorative medal for the top 30 by battle points in each session, and special “lucky” tables that hand out medals and packs. One application per person — and if you apply for both passes, only the Scramble Battle entry counts.

How this differs from Promo Card Pack Vol.5

Easy to conflate, so: these are two separate programs running side by side. Promo Card Pack Vol.5 is the regular, rolling Gym Battle promo series with its own seven-card pool and its own prize table; the 30th Promo Card Pack is a one-off anniversary pack that temporarily takes the place of one of those regular packs in the participation prize, with different cards and a fixed end date of January 31, 2027.

There is one more Gym-side thread worth knowing if your trip is long: the Gym Entry Campaign that started September 1, 2026 gives digital Gym Stamps for attending gym events, cashed in for separate promos (「リーリエの決心」 at two stamps, メガタブンネex at four). Those prizes are handed over only at a shop you have registered as a My Gym, which you can only do for gyms you have played at, up to three. That is a different reward track from the 30th pack, and it needs a return visit to the same store.

What happens to these cards afterward

The same thing that happens to every Japanese gym promo: players open them, keep the one or two they wanted, and list the rest. Prize promos do reach the Japanese secondary market — Mercari Japan, Yahoo Auctions and card shops — and they do so on a supply curve that keeps rising for as long as distribution runs. Nothing here is fixed on day one.

We are not going to quote you a number, because the honest version is that no price exists yet for cards that have not been handed out. When they do start appearing, check them the way you would check anything else out of Japan: how to check a Japanese card’s real market price covers the sold-listing sources that actually reflect what people paid, rather than what sellers are asking in week one.

Search in Japanese when you get there. ゲッコウガex プロモ, ニンフィアex プロモ, and the card numbers 151/M-P and 153/M-P are the strings that surface listings; the English names return close to nothing on Japanese marketplaces.