Cyberpunk TCG Holophone: Factions, Jobs and Launch Date

From 30 October, Cyberpunk TCG will have two different things called Street Cred. One is the sum of the Gig dice in your Gig area, and 13 of the 151 cards in the official database check it. The other is a currency you earn in a companion web app by completing jobs at your store's tournaments, and WeirdCo has not yet said what it buys.

The second one belongs to Holophone. WeirdCo announced it with a trailer on Wednesday 7 October 2026. On Friday 9 October it followed up with a deep-dive video, presented by Pawel Burza and Patrick Mills from CD PROJEKT RED, and a written Q&A with WeirdCo Narrative Lead Emanuel Garcia. A standing Holophone page on cyberpunktcg.com covers the same ground. Everything below comes from those pages plus WeirdCo's Organized Play pages, Comprehensive Rules and card database, all read on 10 October. Holophone itself does not go live until 30 October, so this is what WeirdCo has said about it, not a report on how it plays.

What Holophone is

WeirdCo calls it "an immersive Organized Play experience that connects players to a deep and evolving narrative in Night City as they compete in Cyberpunk TCG." Strip out the marketing and there are four moving parts:

1. A faction. You pledge to Arasaka, Maelstrom or the Aldecaldos, and each faction has its own storyline and characters.
2. A contact who texts you. WeirdCo chose text messaging as "our main method of storytelling," the way crews talk in Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners.
3. Jobs. Your contact hands you jobs "to complete during tournaments." There are two kinds for now: Main Jobs, which follow your faction's storyline, and Side Jobs, which do not.
4. Rewards. "Completing jobs earns you Street Cred, which you can spend on exciting rewards," per the Holophone page.

None of the three sources describes playing cards inside the app. The games still happen at the store, and the app holds the story that runs alongside them.

Two things called Street Cred

This is the one to get straight before launch day.

When Minotaur says "If you have more ☆ (Street Cred) than a Rival," it means your dice, read during that game. Nothing in WeirdCo's three Holophone sources connects Holophone's Street Cred to a game in progress. It is a meta-currency that shares a name with a core rules term. The how-to-play breakdown covers the dice version.

Three factions, one exit

The storyline starts after the events of Cyberpunk 2077: "Arasaka is vacating Night City," and leaked information about its convoys and AVs has reached "a slew of subnets." All three storylines start from that leak, seen from three different sides.

WeirdCo says Holophone lets it "introduce completely new characters into Cyberpunk 2077 lore." None of the three has a card yet: no card among the 151 in the database is named Gunnar, Forge or Monise.

How jobs plug into the store

The mechanism is Melee. In WeirdCo's words: "Thanks to our partnership with Melee, we're able to connect tournament results to Holophone's job and messaging systems." Melee is already where WeirdCo's store events are run. Its Brawl preview requires a Cyberpunk TCG account linked to Melee to sign up for a Brawl, and players log their game results there after each match. So Holophone reads results the store is already collecting. What a Brawl pays out in promo packs is a separate matter, covered in the Night City Brawl and Showdown breakdown.

Two lines in the Q&A matter most if you are deciding whether to show up:

• Losing still counts. "By playing games at Weekly Brawls, all players can learn more about their character, faction, and story, and earn rewards that provide exclusive prizes — even if they lose!"
• It is meant to run month by month. Garcia says the idea started from a question: could WeirdCo enable "player-driven narrative journeys that develop month-by-month as you play in your local store"?

Edgerunner Open Regionals come later. The Holophone page says "In the future, we'll be creating unique Holophone narrative experiences for players at Edgerunner Open Regionals too." The deep-dive video goes further: it lists completing Side Jobs on your Holophone among the activities at Edgerunner Open Regionals, then names Chicago and Warsaw as the first two. No written WeirdCo page yet ties Holophone to a named Regional or says what those Side Jobs involve.

The calendar, side by side

Read the first two rows together and there is a gap. Holophone launches a week before the first Brawl, and WeirdCo's pages name Weekly Brawls as the place jobs get done. The Q&A gives players access to the first Main Job "for Pre-release," and the deep-dive video calls Pre-release your first chance to experience Holophone and says jobs can be completed at any Organized Play event. None of the written pages, though, says outright that a Pre-release result counts toward that Main Job. If the answer matters to you, check again on launch day.

Getting in on 30 October

There is no new account. Per the Holophone page:

1. Link your accounts first. WeirdCo's Melee and Player Account FAQ says all players have to link their Melee.gg account to a cyberpunktcg.com account to play in its events anyway, and the sealed deck rules post covers that requirement. Holophone accepts either the Melee login or the linked cyberpunktcg.com one.
2. Log in once the page is live on 30 October.
3. Choose your faction.
4. Complete the short tutorial, then take your first job.

Does your faction touch your deck?

None of the three Holophone sources says it does. They present the factions as story choices and do not tie them to deckbuilding, prizes or event eligibility.

All three factions are also tags printed on cards, though. If you want your Brawl deck to match the side you picked, the card pool gives the three of them very different amounts to work with. Counts below are from the 151-card database on 10 October 2026:

Arasaka is the only faction that can fill all three Legend slots from its own tag. The Embracing Power starter deck already does it: Goro Takemura: Hands Unclean, Saburo Arasaka: Stubborn Patriarch and Yorinobu Arasaka: Embracing Destruction are all ARASAKA. The starter deck comparison covers that box, and the tags breakdown explains why ARASAKA is the best-supported tag in the set.

Maelstrom has two Legends, in two colours: Royce: Psycho on the Edge in Red and Dum Dum: Maelstrom Triggerman in Yellow. The third slot has to come from outside the tag.

The Aldecaldos have exactly one Legend: Panam Palmer: Nomad Cavalry. The tag's other three cards are Panam Palmer: Strength Through Family, Saul Bright: Stormrider and We Gotta Live Together, all Green. An Aldecaldo Brawl deck is a Panam deck with two other Legends beside her.

That is flavour, not strategy. No card in the database names MAELSTROM or ALDECALDO in its rules text, so nothing rewards you for playing those tags as such. Of the three faction tags, only ARASAKA has payoff cards.

What WeirdCo has not said

As of 10 October, the trailer post, the Deep Dive Q&A, the Holophone page and the deep-dive video leave these open:

• What the rewards are. "Exciting rewards" and "exclusive prizes" are as specific as the written pages get, and the deep-dive video adds only that experience points and Street Cred are among them. There is no list, and nothing on whether the prizes are physical cards, digital items or both.
• What Holophone Street Cred costs or buys, and how much a job pays.
• Whether a Pre-release result counts toward the first Main Job, given that Brawls start a week after launch. The deep-dive video calls Pre-release the first chance to experience Holophone, but no written page confirms that a Pre-release result counts.
• Whether Night City Showdowns feed Holophone. The pages name Weekly Brawls now and Edgerunner Open Regionals later and do not mention Showdowns. The deep-dive video says jobs can be completed at any Organized Play event, without naming Showdowns.
• Whether your faction is locked, and whether alpha progress carries into the early-2027 version.
• Price and regions. None of the four mentions a price or any regional limits.

The launch date itself carries a "subject to change" tag on both the Holophone page and the Q&A. Our Organized Play breakdown covers the event ladder Holophone sits on top of.

Quick reference

• What: Cyberpunk TCG: Holophone, a narrative Organized Play web app from WeirdCo, built with CD PROJEKT RED.
• Announced: 7 October 2026 (trailer). Deep-dive video and Q&A on 9 October 2026.
• Launch: 30 October 2026, alpha build, subject to change. 1 Main Job through Pre-release and November. Full narrative content in early 2027.
• Access: web app on desktop and mobile. Log in with Melee.gg or a cyberpunktcg.com account linked to Melee. No new account.
• Factions and contacts: Arasaka (Gunnar), Maelstrom (Forge), Aldecaldos (Monise).
• Jobs: Main Jobs and Side Jobs, completed at Weekly Brawls through Melee results, with rewards "even if they lose."
• Street Cred: Holophone's currency is not the in-game ☆ Street Cred, which is the sum of your Gig dice (Comprehensive Rules 11.2.1).
• Deck tie-in: none announced. On the card side, ARASAKA has 6 Legends, MAELSTROM 2 and ALDECALDO 1.