30th Celebration: All 30 Pikachu Cards Tracker

August 7, 2026 by Shopify API

The Pokemon TCG has never built a set around a single Pokemon quite like this. When 30th Celebration launches worldwide on September 16, 2026, every single booster pack will contain one of 30 different Pikachu cards — and each of those 30 is illustrated by a different artist. That is not a bonus insert or a chase subset buried behind pull rates. It is the guaranteed contents of every pack in the set, and it makes the artist list the single most interesting unknown in Pokemon collecting right now.

As of September 5, 2026, twenty of those 30 artists are confirmed from official card images, with ten slots still hidden and launch eleven days away. The headline addition since our last update is the biggest name possible: Ken Sugimori, Pokemon's original art director, drew card 01/30. This page tracks every slot. Bookmark it — we update the table with every confirmed reveal between now and launch.

Why 30 Pikachu is the set’s signature mechanic

Anniversary sets usually lean on reprints. 30th Celebration does that too, but its structural idea is different: instead of one commemorative Pikachu, the set commissioned thirty, one per artist, and made them mandatory in every pack. Open a pack and you are guaranteed five foil cards plus a foil basic Energy, and one of those five is always a Pikachu carrying a separate 1/30 through 30/30 subset stamp alongside its main-set number.

What that guarantee actually does to the set

It converts a normal pack opening into a set-completion problem. Nobody chasing the full run can stop at one box, because the odds of hitting all thirty distinct Pikachu without heavy duplication are brutal. It also means the artist list functions as the set’s real rarity ladder. Every Pikachu in the subset shares the same slot and the same special "Pikachu rare" symbol — none of them is printed rarer than another — so the only thing separating a $2 card from a $60 card will be whose signature sits in the bottom-left corner.

The tracker: all 30 Pikachu cards

Below is the full 30-slot subset. Confirmed rows come from official card images released by The Pokemon Company, and the artist credit on each is read directly off the printed Illus. line. The subset runs as a single block, cards 023 through 052 of the 128-card main set, so each slot's main-set number is fixed even before its art is shown. Empty slots stay marked TBA until an official reveal lands.

How to read this tracker

Twenty of thirty is a very different picture from the three we had in early August, and it is worth being precise about how we got here. The June 1 reveal showed the set's structure and three sample Pikachu. Ken Sugimori's card arrived on August 11, three more followed on the official Pokemon site on August 12, and a wave of Japanese-side reveals in the following days filled most of the remaining confirmed rows. We only fill a row when an official card image names the artist on its Illus. line. The ten still-hidden slots may not be shown until packs are opened on September 16, and any "complete" 30-artist roster circulating before then is unverified.

Artist spotlight: Ken Sugimori — 01/30

If you could pick one signature to open the subset, this is it. Ken Sugimori is Pokemon's original art director, the person who drew the official artwork for the original 151 and has illustrated more than a thousand cards since. Giving him slot 01/30 is not a coincidence, and neither is the composition: his 30th Celebration Pikachu is a direct homage to the Pikachu from the Jungle expansion, the second set ever released, centered in a ring of foliage, with electricity crackling around it this time. The Pikachu itself sits somewhere between the round 1990s design and today's slimmer one, a deliberate nod to how the character has changed over three decades.

Card 023/128 is a 70 HP basic with a single attack, Thunder Shock. For collectors this is the slot that turns the whole subset into a story: the first Pikachu in the set, drawn by the first Pokemon artist, referencing one of the first Pikachu cards ever printed.

Artist spotlight: Atsuko Nishida — 25/30

This is the one that matters most, and it is worth explaining why rather than assuming everyone knows. Atsuko Nishida is a Game Freak graphic artist who worked on Pulseman alongside Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori before the first Pokemon games, and she is the character designer credited with Pikachu itself. She has described the earliest Pikachu design as looking like a vertically long daifuku rice cake with ears, and modelled the cheeks on squirrels storing food.

What else Nishida designed

Her range inside the franchise is enormous. She designed the entire Charmander line plus Mega Charizard X, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Eevee and nearly every Eeveelution except Jolteon and Flareon, along with Vulpix, Ninetales, Ponyta and Rapidash. On the card side she has illustrated roughly 448 Pokemon TCG cards, generally in a soft airbrushed style that puts the Pokemon comfortably inside its environment rather than posed against it.

Her 30th Celebration entry, card 047/128, is exactly that: a small round Pikachu bounding through a pastel flower field with mountains behind it. No lightning, no action pose. It is the most understated Pikachu in the subset so far, which is fitting for the person who drew the first one.

Artist spotlight: Yuu Nishida — 15/30

No relation to Atsuko, despite the shared surname — a coincidence worth stating outright because it confuses people constantly. Yuu Nishida is a freelance illustrator from Akita prefecture who still teaches art part-time at her former high school. She entered the Pokemon Card Game Illustration Grand Prix, won, and her submission became her debut card: a Gardevoir promo. Since Celebi in Shining Fates she has illustrated regularly, now roughly 69 cards in the main game plus 28 more in Pokemon TCG Pocket.

Why collectors already track her name

Nishida has become one of the reliable premium signatures in modern Pokemon. Her work carries a bright, sparkly, motion-heavy energy that reproduces beautifully on foil, which is why her Special Illustration Rares consistently sit above the field. Her 30th Celebration Pikachu, card 037/128, is a mid-leap pose with a lightning bolt tearing off the tail against a blue sky — unmistakably hers.

Artist spotlight: OKACHEKE — 14/30

OKACHEKE is a freelance illustrator whose Pokemon TCG debut came with Shuppet, Skwovet and Ice Rider Calyrex V in Chilling Reign. There is a good story attached: he entered the Illustration Grand Prix as a semifinalist with a Slowpoke illustration, and four years later was commissioned to officially illustrate the Slowpoke in the 151 expansion. Outside cards he did visual development on Pokemon: Twilight Wings and concept and set design for Detective Pikachu & the Mystery of the Missing Flan.

His style is soft lines, painterly texture and mood lighting, and his 30th Celebration card leans into it hard. Card 036/128 shows Pikachu peering down through the banisters of a wooden staircase in a patterned interior. The attack name — Slight Intrusion — makes the joke land. It was the only one of the original three reveals with a domestic, narrative setting instead of an outdoor one, and sowsow's pillow-fort Pikachu has since joined it.

The August wave: seventeen more names

The official Pokemon site followed Sugimori's reveal with three more cards on August 12, and Japanese reveals over the following days confirmed a further batch. A few of the new names are ones collectors already track.

sowsow (06/30) is the one that will draw the most attention after Sugimori. sowsow's warm, soft-focus interiors have made those Illustration Rares some of the most sought-after in the modern game, and this 30th Celebration entry is exactly that: a lone Pikachu sunk into a pile of decorative pillows, hugging a Friend Ball cushion. The card's ability is even called Lonely Gaze. Expect this to be one of the first slots to separate from the pack in price.

Akira Komayama (20/30) is a long-running TCG regular whose bright, poster-like style shows up across nearly every era. His Pikachu bounds across a pink plain under halftone-dotted clouds, with pastel streaks in the foreground giving it a breezy sense of motion. Shimaris Yukichi (28/30), a fan favorite for expressive, slightly mischievous Pokemon, drew a Pikachu with its cheeks stuffed full of Berries inside a white-bordered frame, and gave it the subset's hardest-hitting attack at 100 damage.

Among the rest: Tomokazu Komiya (10/30), whose deliberately rough, hand-painted style has a cult following of its own; Shinji Kanda (18/30), whose bold, chunky Pokemon are instantly recognizable; Tetsu Kayama (16/30) and Teeziro (17/30), two of the more painterly modern regulars; and Nurikabe (27/30), OOYAMA (21/30), Narumi Sato (11/30), Takeshi Nakamura (04/30), satoma (03/30), DOM (08/30), USGMEN (12/30), Rianti Hidayat (19/30) and Akagi (22/30). That is a genuinely broad cross-section of the current illustrator roster rather than thirty variations on one house style, which is the point of the exercise.

Outside the subset, the set also carries four Pikachu ex: a Day version (053/128, 5ban Graphics) and a Night version (054/128, takuyoa), each with a Special Illustration Rare counterpart at 149/128 and 150/128 drawn by Kantaro. Those are separate chase cards with normal pull rates, not part of the guaranteed-per-pack thirty.

Which Pikachu will command a premium?

Since every card in the subset shares one rarity tier, pricing will be driven almost entirely by artist demand, and the modern market gives a fairly clear read on how that sorts out. There are now two obvious ceilings instead of one. Atsuko Nishida’s 25/30 is a commemorative Pikachu drawn by the person who designed Pikachu, in the set marking thirty years of the game. Ken Sugimori’s 01/30 is the first card in the subset, drawn by Pokemon’s first art director, as an homage to one of the first Pikachu cards ever printed. Both are the kind of narrative that outlives set rotation, and sowsow’s 06/30 is the clear third contender on artist demand alone. Expect those three to be the first slots people complete and the last ones they trade away.

What artist cards actually sell for

Concrete comparables, using recent market data rather than guesswork. Yuu Nishida’s shiny Pikachu from Paldean Fates trades around the mid-$80s, and her Iono’s Bellibolt ex Special Illustration Rare from Journey Together sits near $40 — both well clear of what their rarity slots alone would justify. Atsuko Nishida’s Pikachu from Generations is a plain common, and it still moves around $4 raw and near $16 in reverse holo, which is the artist-and-nostalgia premium showing up on a card with no rarity story whatsoever. For contrast, OKACHEKE’s Paldean Fates Pikachu common trades for pocket change, because commons from a two-year-old set generally do.

The lesson those numbers teach

The premium attaches to the name plus the occasion, not to either one alone. The 2021 Celebrations Pikachu illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita — the artist behind Base Set Charizard — still trades meaningfully above the rest of its set five years on, because it is an anniversary card with a headline signature. Every Pikachu in 30th Celebration has the anniversary half already. The artist half is now mostly decided, with ten slots still to be shown.

The context nobody in this hobby ever forgets: the single most valuable trading card ever sold is an artist-linked Pikachu. Pikachu Illustrator sold for $16,492,000 through Goldin in February 2026. That is not a comparable for anything you will pull from a booster pack, but it explains why an artist credit on a Pikachu is treated as a pricing input at all.

Confirmed versus rumored, stated plainly

Confirmed: 30 Pikachu cards, one guaranteed per pack, each by a different artist, numbered 023 through 052 in the main set; a September 16, 2026 simultaneous worldwide release; twenty named artists as listed in the table above, headlined by Ken Sugimori (01/30), sowsow (06/30), OKACHEKE (14/30), Yuu Nishida (15/30), Akira Komayama (20/30), Atsuko Nishida (25/30) and Shimaris Yukichi (28/30); four separate Pikachu ex cards; and the new Futuristic Rare rarity with art by YOSHIROTTEN.

Not confirmed: the artists for the ten hidden slots (02, 05, 07, 09, 13, 23, 24, 26, 29 and 30), whether those will be revealed before launch at all, and any secondary-market price for a card that has not been opened yet. If you see a complete 30-artist roster before The Pokemon Company publishes one, treat it as a rumor.

What we stock while you wait

We are not carrying 30th Celebration, so this page is coverage rather than a sales pitch. If you want the fuller picture on why the pre-order window for this set has been such a mess, we broke it down in our pre-order chaos coverage, and there is more anniversary background in our history of 30 years of Pokemon cards.

What we do have in stock right now is the Pitch Black Booster Box, plus the rest of our sealed Pokemon collection. Shipping is a flat $9.99 and free over $300.

Frequently asked questions

How many Pikachu cards are in 30th Celebration?

Thirty. The subset runs 1/30 through 30/30, each card illustrated by a different artist, and each also carries a standard main-set number — the subset occupies 023/128 through 052/128 in order, so 01/30 is 023/128 and 30/30 is 052/128. All of them are basic Pikachu, between 50 and 80 HP, sharing one special "Pikachu rare" symbol, so no single card in the subset is printed rarer than any other by design.

Who designed the original Pikachu?

Atsuko Nishida, a Game Freak graphic artist who worked on Pulseman with Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori before the first Pokemon games. She is credited as Pikachu’s character designer and has said the earliest version resembled a vertically long daifuku with ears. She also designed the Charmander line, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Eevee and most Eeveelutions. She illustrated card 25/30 in this subset, which is why that slot draws the most attention.

Are the Pikachu cards guaranteed in every pack?

Yes. The Pokemon Company has confirmed that every 30th Celebration booster pack contains five foil cards including one of the 30 Pikachu, plus one foil basic Energy card. There is no pull rate to beat — the only uncertainty is which of the thirty you get, and whether you can avoid duplicates while completing the run.

Which Pikachu card will be the most valuable?

Nobody can price an unreleased card honestly, and anyone quoting you a number is guessing. The structural argument favors Atsuko Nishida’s 25/30 and Ken Sugimori’s 01/30, because original-creator provenance on an anniversary card is the most durable premium in the hobby, with sowsow’s 06/30 the likeliest to follow on pure artist demand. Real prices will not exist until packs are opened after September 16, 2026.

Last updated September 5, 2026. Twenty of thirty artists confirmed. We update this tracker as reveals drop — check back at launch on September 16.