Pokémon TCG Delta Reign: Dates, Legendary Stadiums, Cards

Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution—Delta Reign is not on shelves until November 6, 2026, but The Pokémon Company has now published enough of it to plan around: a card count, a Prerelease window, eighteen English card faces, and a new kind of card called the Legendary Stadium. Its Japanese counterpart, Storm Emeralda, went on sale in Japan on July 31, and Japan's official card database already carries its card text, plus official rulings for the parts the English reveals have not covered yet.

This is what is confirmed as of September 30, where each piece comes from, and the one date on the calendar worth circling: by the Tournament Handbook's own arithmetic, Delta Reign's cards become tournament-legal on the opening day of the Latin America International Championships.

For the wider fall calendar, and the 2015 history of M Rayquaza-EX that this set is reaching back to, our set-calendar post has it. This post picks up where that one stopped.

The dates that matter

October 24 to November 6 is a 13-day gap, the same one every Build & Battle Box in our Prerelease guide landed on. The press release also promises in-game bonuses for logging in to Pokémon TCG Live when the set arrives there on November 5, a day before paper.

What is actually in the set

The official announcement and the press release give the headline numbers:

• Over 135 cards, including more than 20 Trainer cards and more than 35 cards with special illustrations.
• Four Mega Evolution Pokémon ex: Mega Rayquaza ex, Mega Golurk ex, Mega Malamar ex and Mega Golisopod ex.
• Six Pokémon ex, Heat Rotom ex among them.
• Six Stadium cards that form three Legendary Stadiums.
• 14 illustration rares, 17 ultra rares and 6 special illustration rares.

The card faces fill in one more number. Every English Delta Reign card Pokémon.com has shown is numbered out of 103, and Zinnia's Trust is 103/103, so the printed set is 103 cards and everything past that is a secret card, the structure our card rarities guide walks through. All eighteen of those English card faces carry the set code DLR and the J regulation mark, one of the three marks that are Standard-legal right now per our formats guide.

Storm Emeralda is numbered out of 76 in Japan, so a 103-card English set has to draw on more than that one release. The reveals bear that out. Twenty-one of the twenty-two English card faces shown so far (eighteen set cards and four Build & Battle promos) share a name with a Storm Emeralda card in Japan's database, and the six compared line by line, Heat Rotom ex, Groudon and the four Megas, match their Japanese originals on HP, attack costs, damage, Weakness and Retreat. Delibird is the exception: no Storm Emeralda card carries its name.

The press release also notes that Mega Rayquaza is back in the TCG "for the first time since the XY—Ancient Origins expansion."

Legendary Stadiums: two cards, one Stadium

The Pokémon Company's English description is short. Legendary Stadiums are "created by combining two Stadium cards, played as a pair," the two halves form one extended piece of art when placed side by side, and booster packs that contain a Legendary Stadium include both halves.

The English rules wording is printed on Legendary Summit, the one Legendary Stadium Pokémon.com has shown so far: neither half can be played by itself, and you must combine the two different halves from your hand to play them as one Stadium card. The Japanese cards print the same special rule on each half. Under that sits the ordinary Stadium rule, the same one our Trainer card guide covers: one Stadium played per turn, a new Stadium discards the old one, and you cannot play one with the same name as the Stadium already in play.

Japan's official Q&A has already answered several questions a deck builder will ask. The pairing and four-card rulings are posted for each of the three Stadiums; the rest come from one or two of their Q&A pages:

The second row is the real cost of the mechanic. A normal Stadium at four copies is four chances to put it into play. A Legendary Stadium at four copies is only two pairs, and each play spends two cards from your hand. Whatever these Stadiums do has to be worth paying for twice.

The three Legendary Stadiums, from the Japanese cards

Only one of the three has been shown in English: Legendary Summit, numbered 096/103 and 097/103 on Pokémon.com's announcement page, with the same effect as its Japanese original. The other two are an inference, not a confirmation. Delta Reign has three Legendary Stadiums and Storm Emeralda has three, and Delta Reign's English Groudon checks for "a Stadium that has 'Legendary' in its name," which matches how all three Japanese names read. Treat Trench and Lava Cave, and those two English names, as unconfirmed until the cards are shown. The effects below are translated from the official Japanese card database:

Lava Cave is the one to read twice. Our Abilities guide counted four Ability-lock cards in Standard in August, and every one of them is limited by position, stage or type. Lava Cave covers every Stage 1 and Stage 2 on the table, Active and Benched, for both players, and leaves Basic Pokémon alone. Read it against the last two Regional winners. The Frankfurt-winning Alakazam/Dusknoir list draws with Kadabra's and Alakazam's Psychic Draw and finishes with Dusknoir's Cursed Blast, and all three are Abilities on Evolution Pokémon. The Baltimore-winning Basic Box is built entirely from Basics, so Lava Cave has nothing on its side of the table to switch off. That is a reading of card text, not a prediction about the metagame. Delta Reign's own Kommo-o loses its Beat Scales Ability under it too.

Summit is for Colorless Pokémon. Mega Rayquaza ex is Colorless, and so are Delta Reign's Delibird and Tornadus. With Summit in play, a Knocked Out Mega Rayquaza ex gives up two Prizes instead of three. Two Japanese rulings mark its edges. It only counts damage from attacks, so a Knock Out from Alakazam's Powerful Hand, which places damage counters, pays the full Prize count, because the ruling treats that as an attack's effect rather than its damage (the same distinction our Bench rules guide builds on). And if Delta Reign's Landorus uses Gaia Crush to Knock Out a Colorless Pokémon, its "discard a Stadium in play" text removes Summit before the Knock Out is checked, so the full Prizes are taken.

Trench doubles healing for both players. One ruling to note: moving damage counters is not healing, so it does not double effects that shift counters from one Pokémon to another.

Groudon is the payoff card for any of the three. Brutal Lands costs two Fighting and one Colorless for 100 damage, and if a Stadium with "Legendary" in its name is in play it does 170 more: 270 from a 150 HP, one-Prize Basic. The card does not care whose Stadium it is. 270 is enough to Knock Out a 210 HP Teal Mask Ogerpon ex in one hit, but not a 320 HP Dragapult ex.

The four Megas

All four Mega Evolution Pokémon ex are shown in English on Pokémon.com's announcement page (011, 047, 069 and 084/103), and each matches its Storm Emeralda printing in Japan's official database on stage, HP, type, attack costs and damage. All four print the Mega Evolution ex rule: three Prize cards when Knocked Out, as our Prize card guide covers.

Three things stand out from the text.

Mega Rayquaza ex is a Basic. It goes straight onto the Bench from your hand, and Rare Candy and the evolution timing rules never touch it. It joins the Basic Megas our evolution guide counted. Its attack counts Fire and Lightning Energy across your whole board, and the English reveals already include a Fire-and-Lightning package to feed it: Adventure Lantern searches out one Basic Fire and one Basic Lightning Energy, Heat Rotom ex is a Fire attacker, and the Magmortar promo attaches Fire and Lightning Energy from your hand. One Japanese ruling puts a number on it: a lone Mega Rayquaza ex with three Prism Energy attached does 150 damage.

In Storm Emeralda, Mega Golurk ex shares a set with the Stadium that deletes its drawback. Its "10 or more cards in hand" restriction is an Ability on an Evolution Pokémon, and Japan's Q&A confirms that with Lava Cave in play it can attack with nine cards or fewer.

Mega Malamar ex reads the opponent's Bench. A full five-Pokémon Bench is 350 damage, and a player using Area Zero Underdepths, which raises the Bench to eight for a player with a Tera Pokémon in play, can hand it 560.

The English cards revealed so far

Pokémon.com has published eighteen Delta Reign card faces in English: six on its announcement page (the four Megas and both halves of Legendary Summit, covered above), five in its card preview and seven in its Prerelease article. Here are the other twelve, read off the cards themselves:

A few of these do more than their numbers suggest.

• Heat Rotom ex feeds itself. Strong Flare discards 2 Energy, Rewarm counts the Basic Fire Energy sitting in your discard pile and then shuffles it back into your deck. The two attacks are one loop.
• Incarnate Solidarity is a four-card condition. It needs Tornadus, Thundurus, Landorus and Enamorus all in play, which is four of your six board slots, and in return it ignores every Colorless symbol in their attack costs. The Pokémon Company's own Prerelease article spells out the payoff: Landorus's Gaia Crush for one Fighting Energy, and Tornadus's Corkscrew Dive for nothing at all.
• Druddigon's Drag Off is a gust attack. It belongs on the list of ways to reach the Bench in our Bench rules guide.
• Zinnia's Trust is a switch that moves Energy forward. Retreating discards Energy, as our Energy guide lays out. This Supporter swaps your Active Pokémon out and carries an Energy onto the new one.

The Build & Battle Box and its four promos

Per the Prerelease announcement, each Build & Battle Box contains four Delta Reign booster packs, a 40-card ready-to-play deck "featuring key cards from current and prior expansions," and one of four foil promo cards. Prerelease games are played with 40-card decks for four Prize cards, which changes more than it sounds like it should, as our Prerelease guide explains. If you miss a Prerelease, the same boxes go on general sale at launch.

The four promos, all numbered in the MEP promo series and stamped with the Delta Reign logo:

Magmortar is the interesting one for deck builders. Buddy Boost attaches Energy from your hand on top of your normal once-per-turn attachment, and it can split Fire and Lightning, which is exactly the pair Mega Rayquaza ex's attack counts.

When it goes tournament-legal, and why LAIC cares

Section 4.1.2 of the TCG Tournament Handbook, in its September 1, 2026 revision, makes new cards legal "on the second Friday following" the US release date. November 6 is a Friday, so the second Friday after it is November 20, 2026. That is the same arithmetic The Pokémon Company applied to Pitch Black, which released Friday, July 17 and became legal on July 31 per its rule-changes notice.

November 20 is also the first day of the Latin America International Championships, which run November 20-22 at the Centro de Convenções - Distrito Anhembi in São Paulo. It is the first International of the 2027 season, it pays 500 Championship Points for first place, and its top four in each division earn direct invitations to Worlds, per the International Championships page. How those points fit into a season is in our Championship Points guide. If the Handbook's rule is applied as written, LAIC is the first major event with Delta Reign legal, Legendary Stadiums included.

Three things are not settled yet, and they are worth keeping separate from the date:

• There is no Delta Reign rule-changes notice yet. Pitch Black's was dated July 2, fifteen days before that set released. Nothing equivalent for Delta Reign was on Pokémon.com as of September 30.
• The English deck-limit ruling for Legendary Stadiums is not published. The English Legendary Summit prints the pairing rule but not a deck limit, and the September 1 Handbook revision does not mention Legendary Stadiums, so the four-card ruling above is Japan's official ruling, not yet an English one.
• Two of the three Legendary Stadiums have not been shown in English. Legendary Summit is on Pokémon.com; the Trench and Lava Cave rows above are still Japanese card text.

Quick Action Checklist

• Prereleases start October 24 at select Play! Pokémon Stores. Check the Event Locator rather than assuming your store is running one.
• Pokémon TCG Live gets the set November 5; retail gets it November 6.
• Tournament-legal on November 20 by the Handbook's rule, which is day one of LAIC. Watch for the official rule-changes notice to confirm it.
• A Legendary Stadium is two cards, and the pair shares one four-card limit under Japan's ruling. Four copies is only two pairs.
• On the Japanese card, Lava Cave switches off every Ability on an Evolution Pokémon, both sides. Basic-only decks have nothing for it to hit.
• Summit saves a Prize on Colorless Pokémon, but only against attack damage, and Landorus's Gaia Crush can discard it before the Knock Out counts.
• Mega Rayquaza ex is a Basic on both its English and Japanese printings, with an attack that counts Fire and Lightning Energy across your board.
• Groudon hits for 270 with any Legendary Stadium in play, including your opponent's.