Pokemon TCG Pocket 2nd Anniversary: Events and Free Packs

Every event, in date order

These are the dates on pokemon.com's Dual Fusion announcement of October 20. The day counts are ours, counting both the first and last day.

Pokemon Zone's calendar lists most of these one day later (the anniversary campaign as October 30 to December 15, for example), so trust the timer on the in-game event banner over any date, ours included.

Image credit: Shonen TCG via our own chart of pokemon.com's published dates (scripts/sims/ptcgp-c1-event-calendar.py).

Laid out like this, the busy stretch is easy to see. From December 5 to 12, five events run at once: the anniversary campaign, Handy Card missions, themed promos, Ranked C1 and Community Week. If you only have a little time each day in December, do the anniversary ticket and the PROMO Reissue drops in November so they're off your list.

What the anniversary itself gives you

Pokemon ties one reward to the anniversary by name, and it's the ticket. Pokemon's wording is "a ticket that can be exchanged for a booster pack guaranteed to include a ★★ card", and the announcement doesn't name which packs it works on, so check the exchange screen before you pick one.

One more free item lands in the same window: everyone gets a new elite deck in their Gifts, a Dragon deck with Mega Rayquaza ex, Dragonair and Gouging Fire. Mega Greninja covers and backdrops also become available from Saturday, October 31, though the announcement doesn't say how you get them. If you want to know how the elite deck plays before you try it, our Mega Rayquaza ex and Dragonair deck guide covers the same core.

Over on r/PTCGP, one player read the run of recent free packs this way: "The free packs we are getting is an anniversary gift to us from DeNa." That's a fan theory. Pokemon's own announcement names only the ticket.

Rental decks now stay for the whole set

Image credit: The Pokémon Company via pokemon.com.

Six Dual Fusion rental decks are available from launch until December 15 at 5:59 p.m. PST, and pokemon.com's image shows Pikachu ex, Mega Mewtwo X ex, Mega Greninja ex, Mega Tyranitar ex, Ribombee and Raboot on the boxes. The bigger change comes from the October producer letter: rental decks now open as soon as a booster pack releases, have unlimited uses, and work in versus battles. When the next booster pack comes out, these six are swapped for new ones.

That makes them the cheapest way to try the new two-type Pokemon. If the Mewtwo X and Greninja rules confuse you, our guide to Pokemon TCG Pocket dual-type cards walks through them with a rental deck in hand.

What changes with the C series

The producer letter, published October 15, lists the bigger changes that start with Dual Fusion:

• Booster packs move from a roughly four-week cycle to a roughly six-week cycle.
• Special Pack: First Partners shows the first partner Pokemon from each of the nine regions. You open it with special pack stamina, which recovers once a week.
• ★1 promo cards come from mission sets added each week for three weeks. That matches the Themed Promo Card Events window above.
• Limited battle events restrict which cards you can use. pokemon.com's October 28 events page says Dual Fusion limited battle decks "can only include cards from Dual Fusion and Promo Card Pack C Series Vol. 1, with some exceptions", and promises "some cool accessories" for winning. Pokemon Zone calls them Mega Mewtwo X ex themed accessories, and pokemon.com's banner for the event shows a Mega Mewtwo X playmat, coin and card sleeve next to a promo pack.
• A Community Decks feature lets you view popular decks and your friends' decks, then copy them with your own cards.

The letter ends with a note that "contents and timing of the update are subject to change", so treat the features without a date as planned, not promised.

Players mostly liked the slower cycle. u/KonoPez wrote: "Currently feels like the competitive season ends just as the meta is really settling in." The ranked season didn't grow with it, though. Season C1 runs November 30 to December 14, and u/half_jase pointed out the same thing: "A tad disappointed that they are still gonna run ranked seasons for only 2 weeks."

PokeGoGo's video on the October 20 C series reveal, if you'd rather watch than read.

Our take

If you play a few minutes a day, here's the order we'd follow. Use the anniversary ticket early so you don't forget it. Clear the PROMO Reissue Drop and Wonder Pick events before November 12, since they close first. Then log in every day from November 13 to 20, because Bonus Week pays a booster pack for each daily login. Handy Card missions run to January 26, so they can wait.

New to battling? The rental deck change is the friendliest thing in this update. You can test Mega Mewtwo X ex in versus battles with a friend before you spend a single pack hourglass on its packs. Our Pokemon TCG Pocket pack points guide covers how free players can stretch their packs further.

How we checked this

We read pokemon.com's Dual Fusion announcement and the October 2026 producer letter in full on October 23, 2026, then pokemon.com's October 28 events page (limited battle rules and rewards) and Pokemon Zone's shop and mission schedule on October 29, the day after the expansion launched. The day counts and the five-events-at-once overlap come from our script, scripts/sims/ptcgp-c1-event-calendar.py, which counts every window from pokemon.com's dates with both ends included. We haven't seen the in-game event screens; the article reports Pokemon's announced schedule.