What Do SAR and AR Mean? Japanese Pokémon Rarity Chart (2026)

You’re looking at a Japanese Pokémon card and there’s a little code, “SAR”, “AR”, “UR”, printed near the number, and it means nothing to you. Japanese cards use a letter-based rarity system, and once you can read it, you know instantly whether a card is a common, a mid-tier holo, or a premium chase card. No Japanese required. Here’s the whole ladder, what AR and SAR actually are, and the one naming trap that trips up English collectors.

What do SAR and AR mean on Japanese Pokémon cards?

SAR means Special Art Rare, the tier English sets call a Special Illustration Rare (SIR), and AR means Art Rare, the tier English sets call an Illustration Rare. In the same set, Storm Emeralda, the ARs sold for ¥320 to ¥780 in Japan and the SARs for ¥680 to ¥34,800, read off Tokyo shop yuyu-tei (遊々亭) on October 16, 2026.

Here is how many of each tier the newest regular expansion has, and what they cost in Japan:

Counts come from the official Pokémon Card Game card database, checked October 18, 2026. Prices are yuyu-tei’s tax-included asking prices from our daily snapshot of its Storm Emeralda list. Two things the ranges show. First, the tiers overlap at the bottom: the cheapest SAR (the ギリー Supporter, ¥680) costs less than the three dearest ARs (Kyogre, Groudon and Kecleon, ¥780 each). Second, five of the six SARs were under ¥5,000, and one card, the Mega Rayquaza ex SAR at ¥34,800, carries the range. That card was ¥39,800 a month earlier, so check the date on any price you’re quoted. The full set, card by card, is in our Storm Emeralda price tracker.

What does SAR mean on a Japanese Pokémon card?

SAR stands for Special Art Rare — スペシャルアートレア, the term the official Pokémon Card Game site uses for it. It’s a premium full-art card with a textured, embossed finish, far scarcer than the ordinary art cards, and it’s the exact tier English collectors call a Special Illustration Rare, or SIR.

SAR arrived alongside AR in the Japanese high class pack VSTAR Universe in December 2022, and the official site marked the launch with interviews with the 16 illustrators behind that first wave.

Here is the full Japanese Pokémon rarity chart for Scarlet & Violet and MEGA era cards, from most common to rarest. The code column is exactly what’s printed on the card:

Read the bottom row twice: a Japanese UR is not an English Ultra Rare. That trap has its own section below. The newest sets add one more code above the chart: Storm Emeralda’s top card is a gold MUR, covered further down.

What does AR mean on a Pokémon card?

AR stands for Art Rare (アートレア): a full-art version of an ordinary card, with the illustration running edge to edge instead of sitting boxed inside a frame. It’s the most attainable of the Japanese chase rarities, and it’s the exact tier English sets call an Illustration Rare.

An AR is mechanically the same card as its plain version — an AR Pikachu attacks for the same damage as the common Pikachu, so the whole difference is artwork and print treatment. The fast tell against the tier above it is texture: an SAR carries an embossed, ridged surface you can feel, and it’s far scarcer.

Pokémon SAR cards in the current Japanese sets

Storm Emeralda (ストームエメラルダ), the MEGA expansion released July 31, 2026, has six SARs: Mega Golisopod ex, Raikou ex, Mega Golurk ex, Mega Rayquaza ex and two Supporters. They sit at 107/076 to 112/076 in the official Japanese card database, above every AR and SR in the set.

That numbering is the pattern to learn. The set’s official count is 076, and everything numbered past it is a secret rare. We pulled the list from the official card search on October 1, 2026:

Two things in that table catch people out. First, there is no UR in this set: the gold top slot is printed MUR, so search and price the gold Rayquaza as an MUR, not a UR. Second, the SAR and the MUR Mega Rayquaza ex share a Japanese name, so searching メガレックウザex alone mixes the plain card, the SAR and the gold one. Add the number (110 or 113) to your search. Our Storm Emeralda chase card guide covers which of them people actually chase.

The newer 30th CELEBRATION set (September 16, 2026) goes a step further: its official product page introduces a brand-new FUR (フューチャリスティックレア, Futuristic Rare) mark for its Mew ex and Mewtwo ex. The chart above still covers everything else you’ll see.

The first four, C, U, R, RR, are the bulk of any set, and the action starts at AR. None of this needs Japanese: find the code, match it to the ladder, done.

SIR vs SAR, and why a Japanese UR is not an Ultra Rare

Same tier, two abbreviations. SAR (Special Art Rare) is the code physically printed on Japanese cards; SIR is how English-speaking collectors shorten Special Illustration Rare, the English name for that tier. So “is it SAR or SIR” depends entirely on which printing is in front of you.

English sets don’t print letter codes at all — rarity there is a symbol in the bottom corner, so SIR is collector shorthand, not a stamp. Japanese sets do print the letters, which is why “SAR” turns up in Japanese shop listings and set lists while “SIR” almost never does. A Japanese SAR and an English SIR of the same Pokémon are one illustration in two languages, and any price gap between them is a market difference, not a rarity difference.

That mapping is why Japanese sets work as a preview: the AR and SAR cards in a Japanese release are the exact cards that become English Illustration Rares and SIRs months later. Our JP-to-English set mapping guide breaks down the timing.

Japanese Pokémon rarity chart: the letter codes and the older symbols

The letter codes only go back to the Black & White era. Before that, Japanese sets used the same three symbols English collectors know — ● circle for Common, ◆ diamond for Uncommon, ★ star for Rare — printed in the same spot at the bottom of the card.

Bulbapedia dates the switch precisely: beginning with the Black Collection and White Collection sets, Japanese releases dropped symbols for bolded letters. So the kind of mark dates a card before you’ve read the rarity at all.

The position never changes: bottom edge of the card, beside the collector number.

RRR, CHR, CSR and K: codes that aren’t in the current ladder

RR is in the ladder above. It means Double Rare, the non-full-art ex. RRR, CHR, CSR, HR, A and K are real Japanese rarity marks too, but they belong to the Sword & Shield era and were dropped when Scarlet & Violet simplified the ladder.

A second naming trap hides in that table: JP HR (Hyper Rare) is the rainbow card, JP UR is the gold one, and it’s UR that English calls Hyper Rare. Two Japanese marks, one English word.

Two codes people search for don’t belong on the list at all. SSR circulates in English as “Shiny Super Rare” for the Sword & Shield shiny sets, but PokeGuardian’s own rarity guide flags that name as unconfirmed — The Pokémon Company has never published it. LR appears in neither rarity list we checked, so if you’re reading an “R / SR / SSR / UR / LR” ladder, it isn’t one either source treats as Pokémon’s.

How rare are Japanese Pokémon cards?

Nobody outside The Pokémon Company can put a number on it: no official pull rate or insertion ratio has ever been published for any Japanese set. What collectors have documented is the box-level pattern. Roughly one SR plus several ARs and multiple RRs in a standard 30-pack expansion box, with SAR and UR landing on top at unknown odds.

So an AR is a nice pull but a common sight, while a named SAR or UR is the reason people rip cases, which is also why buying the single is usually cheaper than chasing it in sealed product. What a box does and doesn’t guarantee is in our box odds guide; the sealed-versus-singles math is in our JP vs EN cards comparison.

Our guide to buying Japanese cards from overseas covers the routes, and the JP release calendar shows what’s landing next.