Palworld TCG Masters League 26/27 - Dates, Format, Prizes

The first Palworld TCG Masters League qualifier outside Japan is on 7-8 November 2026 in Kissimmee, Florida. That is eight days after Booster Pack "Legends Awaken" went on sale on 30 October, and Bushiroad's official card database now holds 164 Legends Awaken cards among its 449 rows (fetched 1 November 2026), so the international season opens on a card pool you can look up. Our Legends Awaken card list covers it card by card.

The rest of the international season is public too. Bushiroad's English Masters League 26/27 page lists 24 qualifiers across three regions, a one-day and a two-day tournament structure, a prize ladder that ends in a trip to the Masters World Finals, and an eight-card promo pack. In August our promo cards guide noted that the English site carried no regional schedule and that Bushiroad's two conference recaps disagreed on whether the season started in September or November. The two event pages reconcile them: Bushiroad's Japanese Masters League 26-27 page dates Japan's first qualifier to 22 September 2026 in Kyoto, while the English page's first dated qualifiers are Kissimmee on 7-8 November and Surakarta, Indonesia on 8 November.

Everything below is read off the English page, its Japanese counterpart, Bushiroad's product listings and the official card database. We first read the English page on 28 September 2026 and re-read it on 1 November 2026, when it listed 24 qualifiers, so counts and venues here follow the 1 November version. We also work out the one thing the English page leaves you to infer: which sets each qualifier will actually be played with.

Where the Masters League sits

Bushiroad's English events page sorts its current Palworld TCG events into Competitive and Casual. Under Competitive sit the Masters League 26/27 and the Challengers Cup. Shop Tournaments are filed under Casual, next to the demo sessions and the Legends Awaken Release Tournament.

On the English page, the Masters League has only two levels: Masters League Qualifiers, and the Masters World Finals. Outside Japan there are no regional or national rounds in between. Win a qualifier and you are invited straight to the finals.

Japan runs its own leg of the same season with an extra tier. Bushiroad's Japanese Masters League 26-27 page lists four stops - Kyoto on 22 September 2026, Tokyo Autumn on 3 October, Tokyo Winter on 6 December (Akiba Square, Akihabara UDX 2F) and Chiba (Makuhari Messe) on 23 February 2027. The first two have been played and Bushiroad has published their podium decks: see our Kyoto decklist breakdown and Tokyo Autumn results. Kyoto ran four blocks and Tokyo Autumn six, each block with its own champion; Kyoto's four block champions therefore earned four World Finals places and its podiums twelve Japan Finals places.

On the Japanese page, the top three finishers earn a Japan Finals place, the champion also earns a World Finals place, and the Japan Finals sends its own top finishers on to the World Finals. A note the page added on 30 September says that if a player who already holds a Japan Finals or World Finals place wins another one, the place does not pass down - the opposite of the English pass-down rule covered below. Bushiroad's Japanese Masters Series graphic schedules the Japan Finals for April 2027 and the World Finals for May 2027. The rest of this guide covers the 24 qualifiers on the English page.

The store-level Grand Challengers Cup, which each official tournament store could hold once between 1 and 31 October 2026 (that window has closed), is a separate programme with its own promos, and nothing on the Challengers Cup page mentions a World Finals invitation. The Masters League page is where the invitations live.

All 24 qualifiers, by region

All 24 have a date on the 1 November version of the page (10 Americas, 9 Asia-Oceania, 5 Europe). Dates and venues as Bushiroad lists them:

Americas (10)

Asia / Oceania (9)

Europe (5)

A few listings are worth a second look before you book anything. Our 28 September read of this page had Malpensa as "Fiera Milano (marked tentative)", St. Polten at "Bet-At-Home Arena" and Singapore without a venue, and listed Melbourne, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City as TBC; the 1 November version dates and names all of them above. Bangkok (15 November) is a stop our first read did not have. Go by the live page rather than any copy of it. France changed too: the schedule now gives the city as Creteil and the dates as 20-21 March, while the page's side-events list still says Saint-Soupplets, so confirm the location with Bushiroad before buying travel. Three stops - Surakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Buenos Aires - carry a notice that sponsored invitations are not offered. Houston and St. Polten run the same weekend, 30-31 January. And three stops are single-day events rather than weekends: Surakarta on 8 November, Bangkok on 15 November and Buenos Aires on 14 February.

Bushiroad's FAQ is explicit that residence and nationality do not matter: you may play any qualifier in any region and earn an invitation there.

Which sets are legal at each qualifier

The page's card legality rule is one line: "All cards can be used from its official release date." Put that next to the release dates on Bushiroad's own products page and the season splits into three card pools.

Map the 24 qualifiers onto those dates:

Seven qualifiers on the first pool, two on the second, fifteen on the third. Three things fall out of that table.

Houston and St. Polten are the day after a set release. Booster Pack "Eternal Ascent" is dated 29 January 2027 and both stops start on 30 January. Anyone playing them gets one day with a hundred new card types.

Manila is the last stop before the third booster. It runs 23-24 January, five days before Eternal Ascent. Vancouver and Manila are the only two dated qualifiers where the Eternal Ascent trial decks are the newest legal product.

By Duluth in late March, 200 booster card types will be legal - Legends Awaken's 100, already in the database, and Eternal Ascent's 100, which are not, per the two product pages - plus two trial decks whose contents Bushiroad has not listed.

One caveat governs the whole table. Every one of those product pages says "Design and specifications are subject to change", and it has already happened once: Sleeve & Card Set Vol.1 moved from 2 October to 16 October in a notice Bushiroad posted on 28 August. If a release date moves, the pool at the qualifiers either side of it moves with it.

The format: Swiss, then a top cut

The page now describes two structures. At 1-day locations the tournament is one best-of-one Swiss block followed by a best-of-one single-elimination top cut. The two-day structure applies only to locations with a player capacity of 128 or more:

• 1-day locations: best-of-one Swiss preliminaries, then a best-of-one single-elimination top cut.
• 2-day locations, Day 1: best-of-one Swiss preliminaries. The number of rounds depends on turnout and the event schedule, capped at 10.
• 2-day locations, Day 2: the top cut as single elimination, best-of-three.
• Time limits: 30 minutes per best-of-one round, 75 minutes per best-of-three round, and no time limit for the Finals.
• Cut size: the top 8 if total attendance is 32 or fewer, the top 16 if it is 33 or more.
• Deck checks: done at the end of the preliminaries, once the top cut is determined.

The page does not publish capacities, so it does not tell you which stops are the 128+ two-day events. It says only that some events span a second day and to check the event schedule for each location. Players who miss the cut can enter the open side events on Day 2.

Time-up works differently in each phase:

Intentional slow play is prohibited and can draw an immediate game loss. You must also play the same deck for the whole tournament, with no card changes between games, and you pre-register that deck on Bushi Navi.

The prize ladder

The page lists prizes by finish. It lists each tier separately and does not say whether higher finishes also receive the lower tiers' prizes.

The X-2 prize is a consolation for players who go the distance at two losses, and the page is explicit that you have to complete all rounds to receive it. Drop early and it is gone. The pack pictured beside the Cattiva is the purple Special PR Card Pack Vol.1 wrapper.

The three placement cards are Soul cards, not Pals: each is a full-art Soul with the Masters League crest and "1st Place", "2nd Place" or "3rd Place" in large gold lettering, and no text box at all. One numbering quirk if you are cataloguing them: the card faces print 1st as ESOUL-014, 2nd as ESOUL-015 and 3rd as ESOUL-016, but the event page's image files and alt text label 2nd and 3rd the other way round. The printed numbers are on the cards; go by those.

The Special PR Pack Vol.1 is eight reprints with two firsts

It is the participation prize for every player and again the Day 2 participation prize, and the page describes the cards as having "special foiling in an OSR style". The wrapper states the pool on the front: one card per pack, eight types.

I checked each card image on the page against Bushiroad's card database. All eight match an existing printing on cost, text and, for the six Pals, Power and Strike - the same reprint pattern our promo guide found in the first sixteen promos.

The X-2 Cattiva, EPR-020, is a ninth reprint (of ETD02-023) and the only one of the nine with the Masters League crest printed on its artwork.

Two of the eight are Events, and that is new. When we first read the page, all 26 entries filed under the PR2026 promo code in Bushiroad's database were Pals or Souls. The database now lists 35 PR2026 rows, and across promo numbers EPR-001 to EPR-020, Treasure Chest Found! and Found an Egg! are the only Events - the first non-Pal, non-Soul cards in the promo line.

None of them is a Lucky Pal, and the chase tier is still out of the pool. The highest base rarity among the eight is Pengullet's R. The serial-numbered Jormuntide Ignis from the Grand Challengers Cup is still the only Lucky Pal among the database's promos, and nothing on the Masters League page adds another.

The "My First" trio runs through the whole prize table. Only three cards in the pool carry "My First Pal" in their name - Lamball, Chikipi and Cattiva - and the Masters League reprints all three: EPR-018, EPR-019 and the X-2 prize EPR-020. The champion's Soul pictures the same three Pals. EPR-018 is also the second promo printing of Lamball – My First Pal, after EPR-001.

All nine - EPR-012 to EPR-020 - are now in the card database under PR2026 with the rarity PR, two of them filed as Events. The three placement Souls are not: the highest ESOUL number among the promos there on 1 November 2026 is ESOUL-008, so ESOUL-014 to ESOUL-016 exist only as images on the event page. For what OSR means on a regular printing, the rarities guide has the full breakdown, including the fact that Bushiroad has not published what the letters stand for.

How a finish becomes a World Finals invitation

Up to three invitations come out of each qualifier on the English page:

• 1st place: a sponsored invitation, except at Surakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Buenos Aires, where the page says sponsored invitations are not offered or issued. The page does not say what 1st place at those three receives instead.
• 2nd and 3rd place: non-sponsored invitations.

Unaccepted invitations pass down the standings, but only as far as 4th place. The sponsored invitation can only reach 4th if both 2nd and 3rd are unable to attend. If the champion of a qualifier has already accepted a sponsored invitation, that qualifier's sponsored invitation passes down; the same applies to 2nd and 3rd place finishers who have already accepted any invitation.

That clause matters more as the season goes on. A player who has already accepted an invitation can keep playing qualifiers, and under those rules their top-three finish passes that qualifier's invitation down the standings instead of wasting it - though never past 4th. The page does not cover a player who holds a non-sponsored invitation and then wins a qualifier. If all 24 listed qualifiers run and every invitation is taken up, that is 21 sponsored invitations (24 minus the three stops that do not offer them) and, taking the 2nd and 3rd-place invitations as offered everywhere, 48 non-sponsored ones from the English-page qualifiers alone.

The invitations come with conditions:

• Bushiroad books sponsored travel. For a sponsored invitation, flights and accommodation are arranged by Bushiroad or its representatives, and there are no reimbursements for arrangements players buy themselves.
• Two weeks to accept. If the completed form has not reached Bushiroad by email within 2 weeks of the qualifier ending, the invitation is treated as declined and withdrawn. The page gives this under its sponsored-invitation FAQ.
• No visa help. Bushiroad does not sponsor or assist with visas for any participant.
• Two weeks' notice to back out. Players who cannot attend must tell Bushiroad at least two weeks before the World Finals, or it counts as a no-show and may be penalised.

The page dates the Masters World Finals to "Spring 2027" and names no city. Bushiroad's English Conference Spring 2026 recap said the World Finals would be held at Card Game Festival 2027 in Tokyo in May 2027; the Masters League page has not repeated that detail.

Rules that are stricter than your shop tournament

Every qualifier and the World Finals are Level 3 tournaments; side events at qualifiers are Level 1. Those levels come from the Bushiroad TCG Advanced Floor Rules. Section 3.1.3 describes Level 3 as the most competitive level, where "all penalties are given strictly", and the penalty guidelines add that strict penalties may be given even to unintentional infractions. The same guidelines recommend Level 1 for shop tournaments, where infractions caused by unfamiliarity with the rules are to be penalised lightly and judges are told to educate players. The same accidental mistake can be penalised far more heavily at a qualifier.

English cards only in the main deck. Only English edition cards are legal, and mixing languages in the main deck is not allowed. Soul cards are the exception and may be in any language. Floor rules 2.3.4 allows translation slips for Japanese edition cards, but that does not help here, because Japanese main-deck cards are not legal at Masters League events outside Japan.

Licensed supplies only. You may use your own sleeves, deck boxes and playmats, but they must be officially licensed products with a copyright on them, and supplies from competing trading card game brands are banned outright. Patterned oversleeves are not allowed; emboss, matte and textured oversleeves of the right size are.

Trade, do not sell. Players may trade cards at the venue but may not buy or sell cards from each other, and only Bushiroad card games may be played on site unless another sanctioned card game tournament is running at the same venue.

Eligibility. Everyone may enter except the tournament's organiser, staff, head judge and judges.

Registering, and what to bring

• Bushi Navi, SMS-verified. Registration runs through the Bushi Navi app, and your account must be authenticated by SMS before you register for any Masters League event.
• Pre-registration is recommended but not required. Each event has a maximum capacity. If it fills before the day, you can join a waitlist and check in in waitlist order; if it does not, you can register on site.
• Pre-register your deck on Bushi Navi. The page says players must register a deck that meets the construction requirements there, and that registering it wrongly may bring penalties or disqualification.
• No entry fee for any qualifier, though side events may charge and a qualifier hosted inside another ticketed event may carry that event's admission fee. General admission for spectators is free, but may not open until tournament check-in closes.
• Bring: your main deck and soul deck sleeved in distinct sleeves, a life counter, Material and Ingredient markers (dice or flat glass beads are accepted as substitutes), and a fully charged phone with Bushi Navi for pairings and result reporting. Venue Wi-Fi is not guaranteed; players without a connection can check pairings and report results with the Tournament Organizer.
• Pack food, or at least plan for it. There are no planned breaks in the schedule, food policies vary by venue, and open food and drink are not allowed in the tournament area.

The deck-and-marker rules are the same ones the floor rules already require, which our promo cards guide covers in more detail, and the rules walkthrough covers what the markers are tracking.

What Bushiroad has not published

• A venue name for Sydney (the page gives only a street address in Bankstown), and a settled location for France (Creteil in the schedule, Saint-Soupplets in the side-events list).
• Which stops are two-day events. The page says only locations with a capacity of 128 or more run two days, without listing capacities.
• The champion prize. It is still marked "Coming Soon".
• What 1st place receives at Surakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Buenos Aires, where sponsored invitations are not offered.
• The World Finals city and exact date on the Masters League page itself.
• Card lists for either Eternal Ascent product in the official card database, which has entries for Legends Awaken but none for Eternal Ascent.
• Database entries for the three placement Souls, ESOUL-014 to ESOUL-016. They exist only as images on the event page.

Quick reference

• 24 qualifiers on the English page: 10 in the Americas, 9 in Asia-Oceania, 5 in Europe. All 24 dated; Sydney lists a street address but no venue name.
• Japan: a separate four-stop leg (Kyoto 22 September 2026 and Tokyo Autumn 3 October, both played; Tokyo Winter 6 December; Chiba 23 February 2027) feeding a Japan Finals in April 2027; block champions also earn a World Finals place and places do not pass down.
• First qualifiers outside Japan: Kissimmee, 7-8 November 2026, and Surakarta, 8 November 2026. Last dated: Duluth, 27-28 March 2027.
• Card legality: everything from its official release date. Legends Awaken (released 30 October) is legal from the first qualifier outside Japan; the Eternal Ascent trial decks (18 December) from Vancouver; the Eternal Ascent booster (29 January) from Houston and St. Polten.
• Format: 1-day stops are best-of-one Swiss plus a best-of-one top cut; only 128+ capacity locations run two days with a best-of-three Day 2. Top 8 at 32 players or fewer, top 16 at 33 or more. 30-minute Bo1 rounds, 75-minute Bo3 rounds, Finals untimed.
• Invitations (English-page qualifiers): 1st sponsored (except Surakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Buenos Aires); 2nd and 3rd non-sponsored; unclaimed invitations pass down to 4th at most.
• Level 3 enforcement at every qualifier and the World Finals.
• English cards only in the main deck; Souls may be any language.
• No entry fee. Register on SMS-verified Bushi Navi.
• Participation prize: a Special PR Pack Vol.1 - eight reprint promos, including the first two Event promos.
• World Finals: Spring 2027 per the Masters League page; Card Game Festival 2027 in Tokyo in May per Bushiroad's spring conference recap.

If you are choosing one qualifier to travel to, pick by card pool, not just by distance. The first seven international stops are Legends Awaken events, Vancouver and Manila add the trial decks, and Houston onward is an Eternal Ascent season. Legends Awaken is now in the official card database and Eternal Ascent is not, so the first seven stops are the ones you can prepare for from official card data.