2026 Pokémon World Champions Preview: Pokémon TCG Power Rankings - Pokemon.com

The 2026 Pokémon TCG World Championships follow a long legacy of Worlds competitions, where a singularly powerful deck is the easy frontrunner going into the weekend. Now we have to see whether the second half of the legacy comes true—that an unexpected deck marches through the field to seize the title of World Champion, as has happened so many times in the past.

When you hunker down to watch live from San Francisco from August 28–30, keep in mind the following decks that our expert Power Rankings panel has identified as strong contenders to the throne. And read on to get better understanding of how each of these decks works and where they fit in the ever-evolving metagame.

Be sure to watch all the action at Pokemon.com/Worlds-Broadcast, including the exciting Grand Finals live from Chase Center on Sunday, August 30!

Once again, Dragapult ex is sitting comfortably at the top of the format as we head into the World Championships. The Mega Evolution—Pitch Black expansion is here to shake up the metagame, but none of the new cards have so far found their way into most Dragapult ex lists. The card with the most potential for Dragapult ex seems to be Dark Bell. Confusing the opponent’s Active Pokémon adds another layer of disruption and could force a retreat, or in the worst case, a huge coin flip for the attack.

Mega Evolution—Pitch Black also introduces Mega Excadrill ex to the format, another somewhat problematic deck for Dragapult ex to deal with. With its huge HP and attack that can easily one-hit KO Dragapult ex, it might force more lists to include Moltres to deal with the new threat.

It seems like players have reached a consensus on three main ways to play Dragapult ex: Straight with no partners, with Dusknoir, or with Blaziken ex. The variations all come with their strengths and weaknesses. The straight variant has more space and often includes Crushing Hammer to gain an edge in the mirror matches but lacks options against decks focused on Lillie’s Clefairy ex.

Dusknoir is generally useful against most decks but seems to fall somewhat short against other Dragapult ex decks. Blaziken ex gives Dragapult a much better chance at beating Mega Excadrill ex thanks to its Fire weakness but takes up a lot of space and is difficult to build efficiently. — Tord Reklev

Sometimes, big power comes in small packages! Festival Lead is a merry band of misfits in many ways, and at the start of the season, I don’t think I’d have believed that this Power Rankings group would view it as the #2 choice for the World Championships. At its base, there are a lot of attractive things here: single-Prize Pokémon that can hit for a lot of damage with single-Energy attacks are generally pretty good! Thwackey really brings the full picture together, enabling players to stitch together dizzying combos and enabling relative immunity to Unfair Stamp and other hand disruption. Bug Catching Set, too, is a super unique and powerful Item card that helps bring everything together in an orderly fashion. While the deck has had its moments this season, it generally has been held back by low HP and being (generally) capped at 200 damage per turn.

Sometimes, an old deck does learn new tricks, and that’s exactly what’s happened for Festival Lead going into Worlds. Gladion’s Final Battle is almost tailor-made for Dipplin and Thwackey: suddenly, even the bulkiest Pokémon ex are within range of two hits with Do the Wave, and Thwackey makes the “last card in your hand” requirement both more achievable and less punishing. The largest issue I see is the deck probably needs to dedicate at least three cards to anti-Bench damage technology in the form of Rabsca and Shaymin. It’s a lot of deck space, but the best deck in the format does have a penchant for picking off weak Bench-dwellers, so it’s a necessary choice.

I’m not sure I totally believe Gladion’s Final Battle will make up for the fact that the deck is ultimately a tad slow and a teensy bit gimmicky (you’re allowed only four Festival Grounds, after all), but I have to say: it sure would be fun to see Dipplin and Thwackey reign over the 2026 World Championships. — Christopher Schemanske

N’s Zoroark ex finally makes an appearance in our Power Rankings. For NAIC, I wrote that the deck had the potential to win the whole tournament, and I think that’s even truer for these World Championships. It’s one of the only decks to be favored against the top deck, Dragapult ex, while also maintaining a good matchup spread against the rest of the field.

Transformation Tome from Mega Evolution—Chaos Rising expansion elevated this archetype by giving it something that other decks lack: the ability to alter one’s board state in a way that forces the opponent to change their Prize mapping. For example, it’s possible to play Meowth ex for its Last-Ditch Catch Ability, then swap it for N’s Zorua, removing the liability from the Bench. It also becomes possible to play down N’s Darmanitan in one turn (by transforming a Pokémon that’s been in play for at least one turn into N’s Darumaka, then evolving it), and use Flamebody Cannon when the opponent doesn’t expect it.

What makes N’s Zoroark ex particularly dangerous is its unpredictability. There are plenty of builds and techs for the deck, so when playing against it, you never know what to expect. Tord Reklev and Liam Halliburton, two of the best players in the world today, both made Top 16 at NAIC with N’s Zoroark ex, but their deck lists were very different. Maybe a new take on the deck will allow it to win on the highest stage this year? — Stéphane Ivanoff

Mega Excadrill ex is one of the strongest new decks to come out of the new Mega Evolution—Pitch Black expansion, and I think it has the potential to be one of the few decks solidly favored into Dragapult ex. The main appeal to Mega Excadrill ex is its stats: 340 HP is massive, and with a maximum of 330 damage, you have a massive tank that Knocks Out almost anything thrown at it. Five Energy is a lot to get attached for Maximum Drilling, but you have Metang’s Metal Maker Ability to sift through your deck and attach extra Energy, alongside Genesect ex’s Metallic Signal Ability to find all of your Evolution Pokémon.

Drilbur even shines as a consistency card in this deck, with the Call for Family attack grabbing you two Basic Pokémon from your deck!

This deck is unique in the format in that there is no onboard draw engine—you just rely on the Pokémon you have in play to see you through the whole game. This seems scary at first, but the main appeal of Mega Excadrill ex is that it is actually very difficult for many decks to Knock Out, especially when faced against a bunch of Jumbo Ice Cream. Mega Excadrill ex itself is so strong against the regular Dragapult ex decks, thanks to always being able to one-hit KO a Dragapult ex, healing with Jumbo Ice Cream, and constantly accelerating Energy to make their Crushing Hammers ineffective.

Many players see this deck as a potential Dragapult killer, making it very appealing for anyone competing at the World Championships! — Natalie Millar

After quite some time, Slowking finally has all the right pieces to compete against the top decks in the metagame. As a Psychic type, this Pokémon could already benefit from the Ability of Lillie’s Clefairy ex in the Dragapult ex matchup, and now the recent addition to the deck of Metagross from the Mega Evolution—Chaos Rising expansion enables it to more comfortably Knock Out other high-HP Pokémon ex like N’s Zoroark ex in one hit, too.

By using Kyurem ’s Trifrost, Slowking can trade Prize cards favorably with decks that prioritize single-Prize Pokémon such as Festival Lead and Alakazam, and aggressively Knock Out multiple evolving Basic Pokémon in one turn to prevent decks built around Evolution Pokémon from setting up. However, competitors could struggle to execute this strategy, and Prize card mapping in general, at the World Championships if the popularity of Shaymin rises in response to Slowking’s results at the Turin Special Event and North America International Championships.

The deck is typically also vulnerable to hand disruption and Energy disruption. This means that competitors need to consider the impact of an opposing Unfair Stamp and Special Red Card before taking a Knock Out, and that Slowking will be slow off the mark if the Crushing Hammer variants of Dragapult ex continue to be played in such high numbers. Success at this event may be dependent on whether competitors opt to maximize consistency or include a diverse pool of Pokémon and Supporter cards in an attempt to mitigate these potential issues. — Ellis Longhurst

Christopher Schemanske: Heading into the World Championships, I will repeat something I said before NAIC: I’ll be surprised if Dragapult ex does not win. Once again, Dragapult is simply incredible for its damage output, simplicity, and efficiency. Nothing comes super close, in my mind. It’s Worlds, though, which tends to bring out the most creativity of any event of the year. While it’s a bit less dramatically pronounced than it used to be with the larger single tournament, people still do their best to bring a special edge to this event. Sometimes, the best thing is consistency, and Worlds 2025 proved that quite well: Gardevoir ex , after all, did win the day.

If Dragapult ex is to fall, I think it’ll be because the Tords of the world decided to get creative. Generally speaking, though, I think the current World Championships format lends itself to playing the best deck—my heart, if I were playing this August, would be veeeery interested in playing Festival Lead.

Stéphane Ivanoff: Strangely enough, for these World Championships, we seem to be looking at a resurgence of one-Prize decks. For years, one-Prize attacking Pokémon were mostly relegated to being situational attackers in decks defined by Pokémon ex. Yet two decks centered around one-Prize Pokémon, Festival Lead and Slowking, made our top 5, and there are several other such decks that could definitely have an impact.

Hide ’n’ Sneak is the newest kid on the block, and it seems tailor-made to counter Dragapult ex: the Hide ’n’ Sneak Ability protects Shuppet and Banette from Phantom Dive’s damage counters, while Dhelmise can KO a Dragapult ex in one hit if Lillie’s Clefairy ex is in play. It is still unclear how good the deck is, but it did get second place at Japan’s National Championships this year, which bodes well for its potential.

Alakazam, on the other hand, has already proven its worth on multiple occasions since its release, notably winning the last Regional Championships of the season. It might not be favored against other one-Prize decks, but it can definitely challenge other decks such as Dragapult ex and N’s Zoroark ex. If players don’t account for Alakazam, I could see this deck go far in the tournament.

That’s not all, of course: Crustle deserves a mention, and there are always less common archetypes such as Team Rocket’s Honchkrow that could make an appearance.

The last time a deck with only one-Prize Pokémon won Worlds in the Masters Division was 2010, but the streak might finally break this year!

Natalie Millar: The metagame for this World Championships is very interesting, where it is relatively centralized around Dragapult ex, but there are a bunch of different variants of Dragapult ex, each with very different matchup spreads. While decks can be favored against the individual variant, it seems that no deck is favored against straight Dragapult ex, Dragapult/Dusknoir, and Dragapult/Blaziken ex at the same time.

The metagame is a lot more than just Dragapult ex, however, and you can play the aggressive Lillie’s Clefairy ex deck that won the North America International Championships, but you will struggle against the matchups outside of Dragapult ex, such as Festival Lead and N’s Zoroark ex.

The main deck that I am interested in heading to the World Championships is Mega Excadrill ex and how it will be built. I don’t think it will be as format-warping as Gholdengo ex last year, but I would expect to see more Blaziken ex or Paldean Tauros in Dragapult ex decks, as well as Annihilape from Scarlet & Violet—Surging Sparks in Slowking decks to answer the 340-HP Pokémon.

Additionally, at the World Championships specifically, many players feel the need to “break” the format and come up with a crazy new deck to overcome the metagame. Last year we saw this with a ton of Gholdengo ex decks with creative solutions to win the mirror match—however, none of them ended up having a deep run, and it was a matchup between Gardevoir ex and Dragapult ex in the finals. I’m excited to see what players bring to San Francisco in August!

Ellis Longhurst: In a perfect world, the deck that will win the World Championships and go down in history as the best deck of the 2026 Championship Series is Dragapult ex. This deck has influenced the metagame all season, and iterations of it have dominated events since the rotation of the card pool in April. However, the results of previous World Championships show that the most deserving contender is not always the one that wins. Sometimes, the winner is not even a deck that would register in the top five for many players and fans. Think back to the 2024 World Championships—did you predict that Iron Thorns ex would earn the title?

This year, the conditions are right for another unexpected victor. Dragapult ex will continue to be a popular choice, likely to be played en masse, which could again present a Big Basic / Lillie’s Clefairy ex deck with a series of favorable matchups on the way to Championship Sunday. There is also a new expansion for competitors to navigate that includes Pokémon with great competitive potential that has not yet been fully realized in competitive play: notably, Toucannon, Wailord ex, and the Hide ’n’ Sneak group. Decks using these Pokémon could catch competitors at the World Championships unaware if they continue to be refined in secret during the international break from in-person tournaments.

Tord Reklev: The World Championships is always such a special tournament, bringing all the world’s top players together in their best effort. There is no secret that Dragapult ex is the deck to beat heading in, but many players wonder if playing this deck is the best way to go if winning the event is the goal. N’s Zoroark ex seems to have a favored matchup against all three variants, but it’s kept in check by Festival Lead and Mega Excadrill ex. Festival Lead has a fantastic matchup spread, except against the most important deck in Dragapult ex, struggling with its low-HP Pokémon. Mega Excadrill ex is the big new deck on the block and has looked impressive so far. The deck doesn’t offer a ton of agency over its games, but in terms of consistency and raw power, it seems like a great pick. It might end up being popular, as simplicity has proven to be a massive advantage at Worlds in the past.

Slowking feels like the dark horse of the format currently, but absolutely has the potential to win the entire event, assuming Shaymin does not become a popular tech inclusion.

The format is really diverse right now, despite Dragapult ex being so strong. I am so excited to see which deck will take it all down this year!

Remember to catch featured matches from San Francisco all tournament long at Pokemon.com/Worlds-Broadcast from August 28–30!

2026 Pokémon World Championships Tournament Previews