Pokémon TCG rotation 2026: what left Standard and what could go next

The 2026 Standard rotation took every card with the G regulation mark out of the format. It went live on Pokémon TCG Live on March 26, 2026, and at Play! Pokémon events on April 10, 2026. Since then, Standard has been cards marked H, I and J, plus any newer mark as it releases. The 2026 World Championships were played in this format, and it stays in place until the next rotation.

Below are the dates and the way legality works now. The later section on the H mark looks at what the current top lists would lose if H is the next to go. That part is a forecast, so it's kept apart from what has been announced.

The 2026 rotation, in dates

The Pokémon Company announced the rotation on January 9, 2026. The dates:

• March 26, 2026: G-mark cards stopped being legal in Standard on Pokémon TCG Live.
• April 10, 2026: the same change took effect at in-person Play! Pokémon events.

Expanded didn't change. It still runs from Black & White onward.

How legality works now

A card's Standard legality comes from the regulation mark printed in its bottom-left corner, as it has since the 2022 season. Sets can carry more than one mark. Journey Together has both H and I cards, and Ascended Heroes has cards marked H, I and J. The set symbol isn't enough, so check the letter.

Reprints are the other half. An older printing of a card is still legal as long as a printing of the same card with a legal mark exists. That's why Boss's Orders and Rare Candy survived the rotation: the Mega Evolution set reprinted both with an I mark, so older copies still work. Ultra Ball and Switch were reprinted there too. Pokégear 3.0 kept its place through the Black Bolt reprint, which is why the Scarlet & Violet base set copy still shows up in recent top lists. This only covers reprints of the same card. A Pokémon with the same name but different attacks is a different card, and it rotates on its own mark.

DeckSequence decides legality the same way, from each printing's mark. Card search in the deck builder shows only Standard-legal printings by default, and your collection can be filtered by regulation mark, so you can see which of your cards carry a given letter before you trade or buy for next season.

What left with G

Plenty of staples got no reprint and left. Among the Trainers, Iono, Arven, Nest Ball, Earthen Vessel, Professor's Research, Counter Catcher and Super Rod all rotated. On the Pokémon side, Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex went with them.

When a list loses cards like these, the first thing to recheck is how often it finds what it needs early. Say rotation takes four of the eight cards your deck uses to find its Basic Pokémon. With eight, you open with at least one in your first seven cards 65.4% of the time. With four, it's 39.9%. Those slots need something that does the same job, or the list gets less consistent. The draw odds guide shows how to count this for any group of cards, and building for consistency covers what to fill the slots with.

The next rotation: what H would take (forecast)

As of September 27, 2026, The Pokémon Company hasn't announced the 2027 rotation. Treat everything in this section as a forecast until it does.

The last two rotations followed the same pattern. Both were announced on January 9. Each went live on Pokémon TCG Live in late March and reached in-person events about two weeks later. Each one removed the oldest legal mark, F in 2025 and G in 2026. If 2027 follows the pattern, H is the mark that leaves, sometime next spring.

To see what that would mean, every card in the competitive decklists published here from the 2026 World Championships and the Baltimore Regional Championships was checked against every printing in the card database. The cards below carry an H mark and, at the time of writing, have no printing with a later mark. A reprint before rotation would save any of them.

• The whole Dragapult ex line. Dreepy, Drakloak and Dragapult ex all carry H, so Andrew Hedrick's Worlds-winning list would lose close to half its cards, its main attacker included.
• Fezandipiti ex and Night Stretcher, which are in almost every list. Even the Ascended Heroes reprints of both carry H.
• Buddy-Buddy Poffin, which most of the lists play.
• The Basic Box core. Crispin, Area Zero Underdepths, Latias ex and Teal Mask Ogerpon ex all carry H.
• Dudunsparce and the Dusknoir line, the partners in the Alakazam Dudunsparce, Alakazam Dusknoir and Dragapult Dusknoir builds.

The same lists also show what would stay. Boss's Orders, Ultra Ball, Rare Candy and Lillie's Determination all have I printings. Meowth ex, Poké Pad, Judge and Special Red Card have J printings. Alakazam from Mega Evolution, Crustle from Destined Rivals, Hilda and Mega Kangaskhan ex are all I. Decks built around those have far less to replace than the Dragapult and Basic Box lists do.

Testing a list across a rotation

Treat the post-rotation list as a new deck when it comes to results. The record you built with Poffin and Night Stretcher says little about a version without them, so start a fresh count instead of blending the two.

In DeckSequence, save the post-rotation list as a new version of the deck. The old version and its matches stay where they are, and the new one starts from zero, so nothing from the old format leaks into it. The deck's Odds page shows what the new search count does to your opening hands before you play a single match. Once you've logged enough matches with the new version, Compare Versions (a Pro feature) puts the two versions' records side by side. Give it a real sample first, because a handful of matches is mostly noise.

If you want the numbers ready for when the next format starts, sign up for DeckSequence and add the list you're playing now.