Gundam Card Game Area Finals 2027: Format, Dates, Prizes

Bandai's 2 October qualifying route had one blank at the end of it: the Area Finals themselves. The earlier qualification guide could only say "January" and "details forthcoming". Since then Bandai has posted a World Championships 26-27 Area Finals page, rewritten its prize table after players raised concerns, and published a notice explaining why the top cut is best-of-three.

The page now gives all four finals a date and a venue, puts a best-of-three top cut with a sideboard in writing, and lists a prize ladder that differs by area. It is also a page that changed without changing its date stamp, which is worth knowing before you quote anyone's copy of it, including this one.

How I checked

On 1 November 2026 I read Bandai's WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 26-27 AREA FINALS event page and the news notice "Regarding Area Finals Prizing and Top Cut Format" dated 29 October. To see what changed, I compared the live page against the Internet Archive's capture of the same URL, timestamped 23 October 2026 at 13:07 UTC. I also read the BANDAI CARD GAMES Fest pages for Orlando and London, the BO3 Match Rules page, the Tournament Rules Manual (last updated 10 July 2025), and the official card database entries for the prize cards. The Oceania organiser's ticket listing was read for local detail. The Latin America registration page needs JavaScript to show anything and I could not read it.

This post is about the finals, not the route to them: Regionals, Store Championships and Last Chance Qualifiers are in the qualification guide, and the match rules themselves are in the tournament rules guide.

Four finals, four dates

Two caveats on reading that table. The Orlando and London dates are the dates of the whole Fest weekend, not of the Gundam finals. Bandai's page does not say which days inside the weekend the main event, the Last Chance Qualifier or the top cut fall on, and the Fest pages themselves give no schedule: the Orlando page is stamped 6 August and the London page 28 August, and each lists "Championship 26-27" events with the side-event line reading "Coming Soon".

Oceania is the one area where a local listing fills a gap. TAK Games' ticket page runs the event from Saturday 16 to Sunday 17 January at the Marvel Stadium function venues, with qualifying rounds and side events on Saturday and the top cut on Sunday. That is a two-day event even though Bandai's own page lists a single date. It also says the event is capped and that tickets are sold first to residents and citizens of Oceania, with non-resident purchases refunded and waitlisted until a week before the event. That is TAK's rule for its own listing, not a Bandai rule, and nothing equivalent is published for the other three.

North America and Europe register through BANDAI TCG+. Both "Register Here" buttons on Bandai's page go to the BANDAI TCG+ home page rather than to an event, so there is no sign-up list to read yet. The Bandai notice says players in those two areas must hold an invitation earned through a Regional, a Store Championship or a Last Chance Qualifier. Oceania and Latin America have no qualification requirement.

Swiss in best-of-one, top cut in best-of-three

Bandai's page lists two formats for every Area Finals:

Those clocks match the table in the tournament rules guide, so nothing about the clock is new. What is new is where it is written down. The World Championships 26-27 Level 1 pages I read for the October guide list best-of-one, and the Regionals page does not address a top cut either way. The Area Finals page is the first of those to put a best-of-three top cut in writing. Oceania's organiser confirms it in the same terms: Swiss rounds in best-of-one, and a best-of-three cut at 60 minutes plus 10.

How many players make the cut, and how many Swiss rounds are played, are not on the page. The Tournament Rules Manual's table of rounds and cut sizes by attendance applies once Bandai says how many people each final seats.

One more unsettled line. The manual lists the top two of a Championship as best-of-three with no time limit. Bandai's page gives 60 minutes for the whole top cut and does not mention an exception for the final, so I would not assume either.

Register the sideboard before round one

The line that changes how you prepare is a footnote on the page: your sideboard must be registered along with your deck before the event, "regardless of whether you advance to top cut or not."

The tournament rules guide correctly said the sideboard does not exist for qualifying rounds, because qualifying is best-of-one. That is still true for play. What the Area Finals page adds is that you have to commit to your sideboard when you register, on a day when most of the field will never use it. The Oceania listing says deck lists are submitted electronically through BANDAI TCG+, with instructions sent to registered players, so expect the sideboard to be part of that submission.

The sideboard rules themselves come from Bandai's BO3 Match Rules page, last updated 3 July 2026: exactly 10 cards, and the four-copy and two-colour limits apply across your 50-card deck and the sideboard together. A 50-card deck plus a 10-card sideboard is 60 cards to sleeve before your resource deck, and the sleeves and accessories guide works out which products cover that plus spares. The deckbuilding guide covers building a 50 that has to survive a best-of-one room first and a best-of-three bracket second.

What the 29 October notice says

Bandai's 29 October news item is its reply to criticism of the prizing and the top cut. It does four things.

1. Explains why prizes differ by area. Japan's final is reached through store qualifiers, store area qualifiers or a qualifier at a large event of more than 2,000 players, such as GCG EXPO. North America and Europe need a Regional, Store Championship or Last Chance Qualifier invitation. Oceania and Latin America are open to public registration. Bandai says Japan's approach cannot simply be copied to the other areas.
2. Admits the feedback and changes two areas. It says the concerns about prize differences will be considered for future events, and that North America and Europe prizing "has been updated to better reflect their qualification requirements."
3. Defends best-of-three in the top cut. Bandai describes it as part of evaluating ways to improve official events, a way to see what a sideboard format adds to competitive play, and says what it learns may inform later large tournaments.
4. Asks for survey responses. Players who take part are asked to fill in an event survey about the format and the event.

Nothing in the notice changes the schedule or the format. It changes the North America and Europe prize table, and that is visible on the page.

The prize ladder, before and after

The page still carries its "current as of October 23, 2026" stamp, but its prize section no longer matches the 23 October capture. The 23 October version had one prize table. The current page has two, one for North America and Europe and one for Oceania and Latin America, and both show the Top 512 tier as applying only to events over a 512 cap. Here are all three, with the finishes where nothing changed grouped at the bottom.

The rows that did not change, in all three versions: everyone who takes part gets the EXBP-031 EX Base promo, the EXRP-020 Hatsune Miku EX Resource and two 1st Anniversary Event Packs. (Bandai also glosses the 1st Anniversary Event Pack as the pack that holds those two cards, so the page does not make clear whether they are separate from the packs.) Top 32 is a World Championships 26-27 playmat and a Sleeve Set (Amuro Ray). Top 16 is an EXBP-013 EX Base, a GD05-085 Amuro Ray and two sleeve sets. Top 8 is a Gundam Card Game uncut sheet. Top 4 is a jumbo card of GD05-002 Strike Freedom Gundam. Third place, second place and the champion each get their own version of GD05-017 Nu Gundam.

What the edits amount to, read neutrally:

• Oceania and Latin America are the old table with one change: the Top 512 tier doubled from one pack of each kind to two.
• North America and Europe moved the Amuro Ray promo from Top 64 down to Top 256, which puts it in the hands of more finishers, and moved the EXBP-013 EX Base from Top 256 down to Top 128. Top 128 now has one Event Pack where it had two, and Top 64 swapped its Amuro promo for an Event Pack and a second sleeve set.

Bandai does not say whether a finish also receives the rewards listed for the tiers below it, the same ambiguity as in the Regionals prize tables. The page also does not say how many players each Area Finals will seat, and the Top 512 tier is labelled as applying only to events over a 512 cap, so the deepest tiers apply only if an event is that large.

The 1-on-1 Automatching side event changed too. On 23 October its description promised rewards for the number of matches played, win or lose. The current page says only that prizing will be announced at a later date. The side events themselves are unchanged: Newtype Challenge 1 on 1, Newtype Challenge 2 on 2, and Automatching, with no pre-registration needed. The page does not give rules for the 2-on-2; the qualification guide covers the earlier competitive 2v2 rule set Bandai used at Season 1 Regionals.

The champion card is half a pairing

The Season 2 Regionals prizes were one Zeong board handed out in pieces, as the qualification guide put it. The Area Finals do the same trick with a different pair.

The top three finishers get GD05-017 Nu Gundam, in a Third Place, Second Place or Champion version. In the card database it is a green Legend Rare Unit: Lv. 7, cost 5, 5 AP and 5 HP, with the Breach 5 keyword and a When Paired effect that exiles three (Londo Bell) cards from your trash so you can start a damage-step-only battle against an enemy Unit. Its link requirement is [Amuro Ray].

GD05-085 Amuro Ray, the Pilot that answers that link, is a prize in the same list: Top 256 and Top 16 in North America and Europe, Top 64 and Top 16 in Oceania and Latin America. Printed in the booster it is a Burst Pilot at Lv. 5, cost 1, +2 AP and +2 HP, whose effect recovers 2 HP when its Unit destroys an enemy Unit with battle damage during your turn. Paired, Nu Gundam is a 7/7 with Breach 5. The champion's Unit and the Pilot that powers it sit at opposite ends of the same prize list, and the Link Units guide explains how that link requirement works. Nothing in the list or notice says the pairing was deliberate, but it is the same shape as Season 2's Zeong and Char Aznable.

The other cards are not deck cards at all. EXBP-013 is a promo EX Base, a starting Base rather than a card that goes in your 50. The Top 4 prize, a jumbo card of GD05-002 Strike Freedom Gundam, is a Blue Legend Rare Lv. 8, cost 6 Unit whose link requirement is [Kira Yamato].

Which cards are legal in January

By the January finals, everything printed through Stardust Trails [GD06], released 30 October, is in the pool. Bandai's Tournament Rules Manual keeps a seven-day bar on new card numbers at premier events, and every area's final falls more than two months after GD06. Cosmic Crisis [EB02] is listed for 26 February 2027 and Unicorn Awakening [ST15] for 16 April 2027, both after the Area Finals, and I found nothing else with new main-deck card numbers on Bandai's news list between now and then. Build around the cards in the GD06 card list, plus the banned and restricted entries covered in the tournament rules guide. If Bandai changes the banned list or the rules before January, this page will not have caught it.

What Bandai has not published

• How many players each final seats, and so how many Swiss rounds and how big the top cut is.
• Which days of the Orlando and London Fest weekends hold the Area Finals, the Last Chance Qualifier and the top cut. Bandai's Fest pages list the Area Finals and a Last Chance Qualifier but no schedule.
• Last Chance Qualifier details: date, cost, format and number of invites.
• How many Grand Final invitations each area earns, and where the 13-14 March 2027 Grand Final is held.
• Latin America's local details. Bandai lists the date and venue; the registration page I could not read.
• Prizing for the Automatching side event, which Bandai says will be announced later.
• Whether the best-of-three is a one-off. The notice calls the top cut part of an evaluation and asks for survey feedback, which is not a commitment either way.

Everything here is as of 1 November 2026. Bandai's page carries a "may be subject to change without notice" line, and it has already changed once since its stated date.