Palworld trading card game announced with a shockingly soon release date

Palworld, the monster-collecting survival hit from Pocketpair that’s ostensibly “Pokémon with guns,” is officially expanding beyond video games onto tabletops in another move that echoes the broader Pokémon franchise. On Jan. 12, Pocketpair announced the Palworld Official Card Game, set to launch on July 30, 2026.

According to details published on a new official website, the Palworld TCG is a “two-player competitive card game where you can enjoy strategic and tactical battles through deploying various unique Pals.” Like in the video game, players fight alongside their Pals, gather resources, and build bases as part of the experience. An official trailer for the TCG shows a Cattiva Pal in the Palworld video game walking toward a large silhouette of a card back. Then we see the design for a Lamball card before the wooly little guy hops right out of the card. The same happens with a Chillet and an Anubis, and then a Grizzbolt with its minigun electrocutes a poor flock of Chikipis.

The trailer also features a Mimog, Gloopie, Lovander, and plenty of other Pals from across various updates to the game, at least implying that the TCG won’t be limited to just the original 137 Pals included when the game’s early access period launched in January 2024 — though at least some of the footage here is recycled from previous trailers. Official descriptions note that Pals in the TCG “will utilize their own unique traits to lead you to victory,” and since we see Grizzbolt’s Partner Skill in action with its minigun, we can probably expect those abilities to be represented some way in the card game along with more traditional moves.

Exactly how players will “fight alongside their Pal companions,” however, remains unclear. Combat will likely focus primarily on Pal cards, with the player acting as a commander. But since the player meaningfully engages in combat as a core part of the video game experience, that’s also likely the case in the card game. Equipment cards, namely weapons, could allow the player to attack directly.

Likewise, “resource gathering” could take several forms. Resources might accumulate passively each turn, or they could be tied to specific card types that players must commit to the board, similar to land cards in Magic: The Gathering or energy cards in the Pokémon TCG. As for base-building, that’ll likely be an area on the board separate from the combat zone where you play various buildings and crafting benches, just like in the video game.

The Palworld Trading Card Game is being produced by Bushiroad, the Japanese publisher behind card games like Weiß Schwarz and Cardfight!! Vanguard. In Bushiroad’s games, combat typically revolves around units doing the fighting, so it’s unclear how they might adapt the various mechanics involved in Palworld. Pocketpair has yet to reveal any further details about mechanics, but with a firm release date set for July, we can expect plenty more details in the coming months.

By and large, it’s an interesting move for Palworld, which remains in an ongoing legal dispute with Nintendo over alleged patent infringement. Pocketpair also announced in September 2025 that Palworld would finally leave early access with a full 1.0 launch sometime in 2026, so it’s shaping up to be a major year for the franchise.