When does Storm Emeralda release, and when was the card list revealed?

The set releases Friday, July 31, 2026. The full card list was published on the official Pokémon Card Game site on July 24, 2026 — exactly one week ahead of release.

What is the chase card in Storm Emeralda?

Mega Rayquaza ex (メガレックウザex) is the headline card, and its Special Art Rare and Ultra Rare treatments are the versions collectors will chase hardest. Rayquaza has a long record of strong secondary-market demand, which tends to pull its premium prints higher than the rest of a set.

How do I get the Mega Gallade ex SAR?

It is tied to an in-store "SAR Get Battle" event campaign in Japan rather than being a standard booster pull. Overseas, the realistic route is the Japanese singles market once players who earn the card at events start listing it.

Is it cheaper to buy a sealed box or singles for the card I want?

For one specific card, singles are almost always cheaper than chasing it through sealed product, because pull rates on SAR and UR cards are low. Buy sealed if you want the opening experience or several different cards from the set.

Will there be an English version of Storm Emeralda?

MEGA-series sets release in Japanese first, and The Pokémon Company sets English timing separately — it typically trails by months, and no simultaneous release has been announced for this set. If you want these cards on July 31, the Japanese set is the only option.

Storm Emeralda Card List Is Out: The Chase Cards to Target

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Japan just showed its hand a week early. The full card list for Storm Emeralda (ストームエメラルダ) went live on the official Pokémon Card Game site on July 24, 2026 — seven days before the set’s July 31 release. That gap is the useful part: instead of guessing what’s in the set and gambling on sealed packs, you can look at exactly which cards exist and decide which single to target. This is a news breakdown of the chase cards and what an overseas collector should do with that week.

Why an early card list changes your play

Storm Emeralda is a MEGA-series booster expansion: ¥200 per pack, five cards a pack, releasing Friday, July 31. For the product structure — box counts, deck tie-ins, and how it fits the release calendar — we already have a full Storm Emeralda set guide. This piece is narrower: the list is public now, so the question shifts from “what’s in it?” to “which card do I want, and is it cheaper sealed or as a single?”

That’s a better question, because the moment a card list is public, the market starts pricing individual cards before any product is in hand. Pre-release asking prices are guesses — often optimistic ones — but they tell you which cards the market thinks are scarce. Reading that a week early is an advantage, as long as you don’t confuse an asking price with a settled price.

The chase cards at a glance

Here are the cards worth knowing from the reveal, with the Japanese names you’ll actually need to search.

Card	Japanese	Type	Why it matters
Mega Rayquaza ex	メガレックウザex	Mega Evolution ex	The set’s face card; its SAR/UR prints are the top chase
Mega Gallade ex	メガエルレイドex	Mega ex — SAR via event	SAR tied to an in-store “SAR Get Battle” campaign, not a normal pull
Mega Golisopod ex	メガグソクムシャex	Mega Evolution ex	The set’s second Mega ex chase
Talonflame ex	ファイアローex	Pokémon ex	Playable and collectible ex
Wishiwashi ex	ヨワシex	Pokémon ex	Playable and collectible ex
Legend’s Summit	伝説の山頂	Stadium (two-part)	Two cards that combine into one — a new mechanic

Official card image of Mega Golisopod ex (メガグソクムシャex), card 009/076 RR from the Japanese Storm Emeralda expansion

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

If terms like SAR and UR are new to you, our guide to Japanese rarities like SAR and AR explains where each tier sits and why the premium prints carry the value.

Mega Rayquaza ex is the money card

Every set has a face, and this one is Mega Rayquaza ex. Its Ability, はしゃのほうこう (Hassha no Houkou), lets you attach a basic Energy from the top four cards of your deck when it’s placed on the Bench, and its attack — fittingly named ストームエメラルダ (Storm Emeralda) — scales its damage with the total Fire and Lightning Energy attached across your Pokémon. Whether it sees competitive play or not, the collector reality is simpler: Rayquaza is one of the most consistently demanded Pokémon in the hobby, and its top-rarity prints in any set tend to run hot.

💡 The base card and the chase card are two different purchases

There will be an ordinary Mega Rayquaza ex in the set and a Special Art Rare version of it. They share a name and almost nothing else in price. When you search, be specific about the rarity you want — a plain メガレックウザex and a メガレックウザex SAR are not interchangeable listings, and mixing them up is the fastest way to overpay or under-buy.

The Mega Gallade ex SAR is a supply wrinkle

One card on the reveal doesn’t behave like the others. Mega Gallade ex (メガエルレイドex) has an SAR treatment attached to an in-store event campaign the official site calls the “SAR Get Battle” (メガエルレイドexSARゲットバトル). Cards distributed through in-store events rather than standard packs enter the market on a different schedule — they show up as Japanese players earn them and list them, not the instant the set launches.

For an overseas buyer that means two things: don’t expect a sealed box to hand you this SAR, and don’t panic-buy the first listings. Event-distributed cards are thin and expensive on day one, then fill in as the campaign runs. It’s the same pattern we saw play out with the preorder scramble in our Storm Emeralda lottery report — early scarcity that eases.

🗼 Buying the one card instead

The hard part of a public card list is that the specific print you decided on only exists in Japanese-language listings — a plain メガレックウザex and its SAR are two different purchases at two different prices. Tell us the exact card and rarity and we check what is actually listed in Japan right now, then send one all-in quote: card, sourcing fee, tracked shipping. Event-distributed cards like the Mega Gallade ex SAR we can only buy once Japanese players start listing them, same as anyone.

Send us the exact card and rarity →

The Tokyo Sourcing Desk is our own service. Editorial policy.

So what for overseas collectors

Strip it down and the week before release gives you a clean decision: sealed or single. The card list makes that call answerable instead of a gamble.

Pin your targetPick the exact card and rarity you want — the plain Mega Rayquaza ex, its SAR, one of the other Mega ex, or the full set. "Something good" is not a target; メガレックウザex SAR is.

Price it both waysNote the current single asking price and roughly what a sealed box costs. For one specific SAR, the single almost always wins on cost; sealed only makes sense for the opening experience or if you want many cards.

Wait for the settleCheck the same search one to two weeks after July 31. Launch-week prices reflect hype and thin supply; the number you actually want to pay usually appears once boxes are open and listings multiply.

The buying mechanics themselves — Japanese search terms, seller etiquette, condition grades — are covered in Mercari and Yahoo Auctions for Japanese cards. The one habit that matters most: search in Japanese. Typing “Mega Rayquaza SAR” into Mercari returns almost nothing; メガレックウザex is the string that surfaces listings.

⚠️ Don't pay launch-week prices, and don't buy a box to chase one card

Two mistakes cost overseas buyers the most on a fresh set. The first is treating the pre-release asking price as the real price — it's a guess that usually softens once supply arrives. The second is buying sealed product to chase a single SAR: pull rates make that a losing trade almost every time versus just buying the single you want. If your goal is one specific card, price the single first and give it a week or two after July 31 before you commit.

Your week, in order

Nothing here is urgent, which is the point of getting the list early. The set isn’t out until July 31, singles won’t settle until after, and the event SAR fills in over time. Use the runway.

✅ Before you spend anything

Have a proxy or forwarding account open and verified now — signup takes days, not minutes.
Decide your one target card and rarity, in Japanese, before you start searching.
Save the sold-listing view, not just active listings — asking prices on an unreleased set are aspirational.
If you plan to play the card, confirm your region's language legality; Japanese cards are usually not legal at non-Japan events.
Batch it with other purchases so one international shipment covers several cards.

The full calendar of what’s coming next in Japan lives on our releases page. For now, the takeaway is that Storm Emeralda’s list being public a week early hands you the one thing sealed-product hype usually takes away: the ability to buy exactly what you want, at a price you chose, instead of what a random pack decides to give you.