Union Arena Re:ZERO Prerelease and Release Date (2026)

Union Arena Re:ZERO release dates

What came in the English set

The booster runs 12 cards a pack, 16 packs a box and 16 boxes a case, with 100 card types plus 6 Action Point types (35 Common, 35 Uncommon, 18 Rare, 12 Super Rare). The chase layer is the collector stuff: foil-stamped autograph cards from six of the anime's voice cast (Rie Takahashi's Emilia, Yusuke Kobayashi's Subaru, Inori Minase's Rem, Rie Murakawa's Ram, Satomi Arai's Beatrice and Maaya Sakamoto's Echidna), new wedding-dress art of Emilia and Rem, serial-numbered signed AP cards, and one of 9 box toppers (6 foil, 3 gold foil) in every box.

The starter deck is 50 cards plus 3 AP cards and a promo pack of 4 R cards you can't get anywhere else. Its two SRs are the reason to buy it.

Image: Bandai, official UNION ARENA card list.

Emilia (UE24BT/REZ-1-027) is a 4000 BP Raid character. When she comes in, your next cheap event (3 or less required energy) costs 1 less AP; with four or more events in your sideline she also rests one of your opponent's front-line characters, and with eight or more it stays rested the next time it would stand up. She's an engine for an event-heavy deck, not a body you splash.

Felt (UE24ST/REZ-1-107) is the cheaper, friendlier one. Pay 1 AP when she's played to make your opponent sideline a card while you draw, or to stand her up and get a Dragon Insignia card back. Once a turn she can also dodge blockers with 4000 or more BP.

Image: Bandai, official UNION ARENA card list.

For which Re:ZERO deck actually won after launch, see the Re:ZERO tier list.

How release week went

At some stores it went short. In an r/Union_Arena_TCG prerelease thread, u/Pctove said their store warned the day before that "allocation was cut", then got just enough for all 10 players to buy a box. Another player's store was told nothing had arrived, then found out a couple of hours later that the stock "came in and sold out right away".

The other release-week argument was hit rates. One opener in a "worse hit rates" thread opened 6 boxes and got one hit in 4 of them. A reply in another thread explained it as case structure: "Half of the boxes in a case are single hit, and the other half have 2 hits." That's a player's read, not something Bandai publishes, so treat a one-hit box as normal rather than as a bad batch.

Union Arena Guides posted this rundown of every Re:ZERO deck during release-event week, and it's still the quickest way to pick a color.

Re:ZERO Vol.2: the next date

Vol.2 [EX17BT] releases October 30, 2026 in Japan (385 yen a pack) and on Bandai's Asia English site. It's a smaller pack (8 cards, 16 packs a box), it adds Green as a new color, and the autograph lineup grows to 10 characters, adding Felt, Crusch Karsten, Ferris, Anastasia Hoshin and Priscilla Barielle.

U.S. players: it isn't on Bandai's U.S. release list at all, which already runs out to an ARKNIGHTS booster in June 2027. Vol.1 took about 15 months to cross from the Asia release to the U.S. one. We wouldn't hold off on Vol.1 cards waiting for Vol.2; if Re:ZERO is your deck, the English pool you have now is the one you'll be playing for a while. Our Union Arena English release schedule will pick up the U.S. date when Bandai posts it.

How we checked this: on October 20, 2026 we re-read Bandai's U.S. product pages and card list for both Re:ZERO products, the Japanese and Asia English Vol.2 pages, and Bandai's U.S. release list.