Pokémon TCG Louisville Regional 2026: Results and Top 9

Riley McKay of Canada won the Louisville Regional Championships without losing a match. Across 18 rounds he went 14 wins, 0 losses and 3 ties, plus a top-cut bye that Limitless records as a win, for a 15-0-3 finish at the top of a 2,927-player Masters Division. He closed it out by beating Austin Charles's Dragapult/Blaziken ex in the final. His deck was Dragapult ex, and 58 of its 60 cards are the ones Andrew Hedrick registered to win the 2026 World Championships.

McKay is the only winner of the 2027 season's five Regionals so far with no match losses. Dylan Kasturi won Baltimore at 14-1-2, Edmund Khoo won Brisbane at 14-2-0, Tomasz Chałupka won Frankfurt at 16-1-1 and Victor Carreira won Recife at 14-2-1, per each event's Limitless Labs standings.

Louisville was the second North American Regional of the season, after Baltimore, and unlike Baltimore it was played with Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration legal, which it has been since September 25 per The Pokémon Company's TCG Live release notice. The official event page lists October 9-11 at the Kentucky International Convention Center, and RK9's pairings page has the TCG event starting on Saturday, October 10, with 3,430 players across all three age divisions. The Masters field was the second-largest of the five Regionals so far, behind Baltimore's 3,122. It was also overwhelmingly American: 2,795 of the 2,927 Masters carried a US tag in the standings and 99 a Canadian one.

Every standing, record, archetype count and decklist below comes from Limitless Labs, which builds its tables from the RK9 tournament software and shows a decklist for 2,918 of the 2,927 players. The top-cut order was cross-checked against RK9's final standings. Records include top-cut matches and byes, and Limitless's win rates count a tie as a third of a win. Card text is from the Pokémon TCG API.

The Worlds list, two cards changed

Put McKay's decklist next to Hedrick's from Worlds and two lines differ. Everything else, including four Crushing Hammer, two Risky Ruins, Unfair Stamp and the 3-3-3 Energy split, is the same card in the same count:

Pokémon - 19

Trainers - 32

Energy - 9

The Dunsparce swap is a different card with the same name. Hedrick's Journey Together Dunsparce has Trading Places, which switches it with a Benched Pokémon; McKay's Temporal Forces Dunsparce has Dig, which on heads prevents all damage and effects of attacks done to it during the opponent's next turn.

The Judge swap is the one the field made too. Special Red Card is an Item you can use only once your opponent has 3 or fewer Prize cards left: they shuffle their hand, put it on the bottom of their deck, and draw 3. Judge is a Supporter with no such condition: each player shuffles their hand into their deck and draws 4. Of the 141 pure Dragapult ex lists that made Day 2 in Louisville, 132 ran Judge and 34 ran Special Red Card, and 26 ran both. McKay's 32 Trainers are also card for card the 32 Edmund Khoo registered to win Brisbane, per Khoo's decklist, so both Dragapult ex Regional winners this season made the same trade.

The rest of the Day 2 field agreed with Hedrick: 140 of those 141 lists ran Unfair Stamp, the pairing our ACE SPEC breakdown already found across Dragapult lists, and 139 ran Crushing Hammer. How the deck wins, and the hybrid builds, are in our Dragapult ex deck guide.

Eighteen rounds, no losses

McKay's round-by-round results, from his match history on Limitless Labs:

Nine of his 17 played matches were against a Dragapult build, and he went 7-0-2 in them. He beat Evan Campbell twice, in round 11 and again in the semifinal. McKay is no newcomer to the deck either: Limitless Labs has him 137th at the 2026 World Championships on Dragapult ex.

The Louisville Top 9

Louisville used a nine-player top cut. Seven players had a bye in its first round while Austin Charles and Dylan Higgins played in, and Charles then won three straight top-cut matches before losing the final. Order cross-checked against RK9's final standings, Championship Points from Play! Pokémon's Regional payout table:

Five of the nine seats went to a Dragapult build, four of them the pure ex list. Henry Chao, who finished 4th at the 2026 World Championships on Dragapult/Dusknoir per Limitless Labs' Worlds standings, took 5th here on the pure build. The other four seats went to four different archetypes, and three of those had not reached a Regional top cut this season.

Three decks reached their first Regional top cut

Before Louisville, Limitless's standings for Baltimore, Brisbane, Frankfurt and Recife show 42 top-cut seats between them, and none went to Sharpedo/Toxtricity, Dhelmise or Mew Box. All three were in Louisville's nine:

Mew Box has a short history because 30th Celebration was not legal for Baltimore. The other two have been registered at all five Regionals this season and had not converted until now. Campbell himself played Sharpedo/Toxtricity in Baltimore and finished 459th.

The Sharpedo deck damages itself on purpose

The deck's attacker is Mega Sharpedo ex, a 330 HP Stage 1 Darkness Pokémon ex. Its Hungry Jaws attack costs two Darkness Energy and does 120, plus 150 more "if this Pokémon has any damage counters on it." The rest of the list exists to put damage counters on your own Sharpedo before it swings.

• Toxtricity's Sinister Surge, once during your turn, searches your deck for a Basic Darkness Energy, attaches it to one of your Benched Darkness Pokémon, and then places 2 damage counters on that Pokémon. That is one Energy and the Hungry Jaws trigger in a single Ability.
• Pecharunt ex's Subjugating Chains switches one of your Benched Darkness Pokémon into the Active Spot and leaves it Poisoned.
• Binding Mochi makes attacks used by the Poisoned Pokémon it is attached to do 40 more damage to the opponent's Active Pokémon.

Read those three cards in order against a Benched Mega Sharpedo ex with Binding Mochi attached and no Energy. Sinister Surge gives it an Energy and 2 damage counters, your normal attachment gives it the second Energy, and Subjugating Chains brings it in Poisoned. Hungry Jaws then does 120 + 150 + 40 = 310. That is 10 short of Dragapult ex's 320 HP, and the gap is exactly what Gravity Mountain covers: "Each Stage 2 Pokémon in play (both yours and your opponent's) gets -30 HP," and Dragapult ex is a Stage 2 while Mega Sharpedo ex is not. Campbell ran one copy, and 3 of the deck's 11 Day 2 lists ran it. That is card arithmetic, not a claim about how any of his games went.

All 11 Day 2 lists ran Pecharunt ex, Binding Mochi, Toxtricity and Team Rocket's Watchtower. Here is Campbell's 60, from his decklist page:

The price is on the card's rule box. Mega Sharpedo ex is a Mega Evolution Pokémon ex, so when it is Knocked Out the opponent takes 3 Prize cards, a trade our Prize card guide covers.

Dhelmise counts the discard pile

Rahul Reddy's 4th place came from a deck that wants its own Pokémon in the discard pile. Dhelmise, a 140 HP Basic Psychic Pokémon from Pitch Black, has one attack: Vengeful Anchor does 30, plus 140 more "if you have 4 or more Pokémon that have the Hide 'n' Sneak Ability in your discard pile." That is 170 for one Psychic Energy.

Four Pitch Black Pokémon in Reddy's list carry Hide 'n' Sneak, which prevents all effects of the opponent's Pokémon's attacks and Abilities done to that Pokémon (damage is not an effect): 4 Poltchageist, 2 Sinistcha, 3 Shuppet and 4 Banette, 13 cards in all. Getting them into the discard pile is the job of Gwynn, a Supporter that discards up to two Pokémon without a Rule Box from your hand and draws 3 cards for each, and of Prism Tower, a Stadium that lets each player discard 2 cards once a turn to draw 1. Reddy ran 4 Gwynn and 3 Prism Tower, from his decklist page.

Sinistcha adds a second threshold. Its Matcha Spin attack places 4 damage counters on each of the opponent's Pokémon if you have 6 or more Hide 'n' Sneak Pokémon in your discard pile. Those are damage counters, not damage, so a Benched Tera Pokémon such as Dragapult ex is not protected from them, as our Bench rules guide explains.

Dhelmise's printed Weakness is Darkness, ×2. At Louisville the archetype had 114 players, sent 22 to Day 2 (19.3%, against 18.7% for the field) and won 50.73% of its matches.

Mew Box, and where Mew ex went

Sawyer Melban's 8th-place deck is the Basic Box shell that won Baltimore with Mew ex built in. Every Pokémon in it is a Basic, and like Kasturi's Baltimore list it runs four Mega Kangaskhan ex, three Meowth ex, two Latias ex, two Lillie's Clefairy ex and four Area Zero Underdepths. To that it adds three Mew ex, whose Memory Helix Ability lets it "use the attacks of any of your Benched Pokémon" as long as it has the Energy, plus a Jirachi ex and an Unown from 30th Celebration, per his decklist page. Its Tera Pokémon, two Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex and a Koraidon ex, are what switch Area Zero Underdepths on and raise the Bench to 8.

Limitless counts 18 Mew Box players at Louisville. Six made Day 2 (33.3%), and the archetype's 55.14% win rate was the highest of any deck with at least 15 players. Eighteen players is a small sample, so read that as one good weekend for a small deck. Melban also handed McKay one of his three ties.

Outside that deck, Mew ex kept the shape it had at the earlier Regionals with 30th Celebration legal: mostly a one-copy card in other decks. 51 of the 547 published Day 2 lists ran it (9.3%), 73 copies in total, and 35 of those lists ran exactly one. By archetype that was Slowking 22, Lopunny/Dudunsparce 13, Basic Box 6, Mew Box 6, Lopunny/Dusknoir 3 and one other. None of the 141 pure Dragapult ex lists in Day 2 ran it. For comparison, our Recife recap counted Mew ex in 12 of 195 Day 2 lists there (6.2%), and the Frankfurt and Brisbane recap counted 54 of 508 in Frankfurt (10.6%).

The Louisville metagame

These are the 14 archetypes with at least 70 players, per Limitless Labs' Louisville metagame page. Share is of the 2,918 published lists; 548 of the 2,927 players made Day 2, 18.7% of the field.

The three main Dragapult builds came to 768 of 2,927 players, 26.2% (Limitless files 17 more under smaller Dragapult labels). That sits inside the 23.7% to 32.9% range our Recife recap's scoreboard recorded for the first four Regionals. Where Dragapult stood out at Louisville was conversion. The pure build sent 26.0% of its players to Day 2 against the field's 18.7%, the Blaziken ex hybrid 25.0%, and together the three builds held 186 of the 548 Day 2 seats (33.9%), more than their share of the room. The Dusknoir hybrid was the exception at 15.0%, and none of its 113 players made the top cut. Dragapult has now won two of the season's five Regionals, Brisbane and Louisville.

N's Zoroark, the second-most-registered deck at three of the first four Regionals, was fifth here with 150 players and did not make the top cut. Our N's Zoroark ex guide covers its first four events.

What it paid, and what is next

Per Play! Pokémon's Regional Championships page, McKay's win pays 350 Championship Points and, as the Masters champion, a direct invitation to the 2027 World Championships regardless of his final point total. With 2,927 Masters, Louisville cleared every Kicker in that table, the highest being 2,049 competitors for the 513th-1,024th bracket, so every finish down to 1,024th earned Championship Points, 22 of them for 513th-1,024th. How those points add up over a season is in our Championship Points guide.

Next on the official calendar are three more Regionals: Nice on October 17-18, Puebla on October 24-25 and Gdańsk from October 31 to November 1. After them come the Buenos Aires Special Championships on November 14-15 and the Latin America International Championships in São Paulo, November 20-22. Mega Evolution—Delta Reign is due at retail on November 6 and, under the Tournament Handbook's second-Friday rule, becomes tournament-legal on November 20, the day LAIC opens, so it misses all three of those Regionals and Buenos Aires. Our Delta Reign guide has the dates.

Quick Action Checklist

• Louisville (2,927 Masters, October 2026): Riley McKay won with Dragapult ex at 15-0-3, the only winner of the season's five Regionals with no match losses. He beat Austin Charles's Dragapult/Blaziken ex in the final.
• The winning list is Hedrick's Worlds 60 with two changes: Judge in for Special Red Card, and a different Dunsparce printing. 132 of the 141 pure Dragapult ex Day 2 lists ran Judge.
• Dragapult builds were 26.2% of the field but 33.9% of Day 2 and took five of nine top-cut seats. The Dusknoir hybrid took none.
• Three decks made their first Regional top cut of the season: Sharpedo/Toxtricity (3rd), Dhelmise (4th) and Mew Box (8th).
• Sharpedo/Toxtricity puts damage counters on its own Mega Sharpedo ex to turn on Hungry Jaws: 310 with Binding Mochi, which Gravity Mountain turns into a Dragapult ex Knock Out by card text.
• Mew ex was in 51 of 547 Day 2 lists, mostly single copies in Slowking and Lopunny, and in none of the pure Dragapult ex lists.
• Next up: Nice (October 17-18), Puebla (October 24-25), Gdańsk (October 31-November 1), the Buenos Aires Special Championships (November 14-15), then LAIC on November 20-22, when Delta Reign becomes legal under the Handbook's second-Friday rule.