We've got something big to talk about Gundam fans. With the Gundam Card Game launch underway, Bandai has made one of its biggest and most important announcements for competitive players. The road to the Gundam Card Game World Championships has been revealed! In this article I'm going to break down the Gundam Card Game competitive season as we know it and the path to the world championship. Let's get into it, Gundam gamers!

What is the Gundam World Championships?

We now have the first information regarding the first ever competitive season of the Gundam card game. The official season is dated as "World championships 2025-2026" on the official Gundam card game website. The website goes on to say, "WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 25-26 will be held as a series of highest-level tournaments to determine the world's strongest Gundam Card Game player! Win your way up through the regional qualifiers, battle players from other countries and aim to become the top player in the world!" This is pretty standard to other card games and aligns with what Bandai has done with its other card games. In their games like One Piece, we see the players who won or placed 2nd or 3rd at National Championships make up the Worlds competition. But the question becomes how do I qualify for nationals to try and make it to the World Championships?

World Championships '25-'26 Outline

This Fall we will be getting Offline regionals! Offline Regionals will kick off the road to worlds and give players a shot at winning their nationals invite. This is considered Level 1. In this game "Nationals" is described as "Regional Championships." It's important to remember that the Gundam Card Game is a global game, and them using this terminology can infer that North America will be considered a "region" and have its own championship with only so many invites going to it's top placing players. Bandai has given us soft dates for these regional championships as "2025-2025 Winter." This is Level 2. In Bandai's other card games, Nationals are sometimes held at Bandai Card Fest, which is a celebration of all their card games. That could end up being the case here. What is definitely at the last Bandai Fest is the World Championships! This is Level 3 and will bring an end to the first year of the Gundam Card Game. Thankfully, Bandai has already released details for offline regionals which will be our first steps to getting our invite for Regional Championships, or Nationals if you will.

Offline Regionals and Invites

The offline regionals will officially kick off the Gundam card game competitive season! Which is great news for competitive players like me. These are dated to take place from September - December 2025 according to the official website. The first of these offline regionals in the States will be taking place in Dallas on September 20-21st at Bandai Card Fest. This will be exciting as this is the first Bandai Card Fest of the year and will be the first to feature the Gundam Card Game! There will be prizes given for participation, top 256 (if event is 512 or more players), Top 128, Top 64, top 32, and for top 16 and so forth. I'm stopping at Top 16 because that is where we already have a confirmed announcement of what you win for getting top 16 - an invite to compete in the Regional Championships (Nationals for those more familiar with that term)! This is huge to be able to secure your invite so early into the competitive season. They also have gone on to describe the prizes for the top 8 and even higher placings.

For Top 8, finalists will receive a finalist card. In One Piece this is the coveted "serial" card, that is highly sought after. We do not know what these finalist cards will look like in Gundam yet, or what specific card it will be. This will be announced at a later date. We do however know that Top 4 will receive a finalist playmat! For example, in One Piece, this is just given out to the Top 2 players at regionals. So, it's cool that we get to see these being extended to Top 4. For the top 2 we get another finalist card and for the Champion of the event they get a Championship Winner Card! In Bandai's other games like One Piece this is usually reserved for Nationals or Worlds, so it's cool that we get a championship winner card at the regional level. The competition will definitely be fierce for this great prizing!

And there we have it folks. The layout for the first competitive season of the Gundam Card Game! I will be at Bandai Card Fest in September to compete at the first offline regionals and I hope to see some of you there! Hopefully, you all are able to give the Gundam card game a shot and join me in trying to make it to the World Championship. Good luck everyone!

This article was brought to you by CoolStuffInc, the best place for the Gundam Trading Card Game sealed product and content. Check us out weekly for great Gundam content, whether it's new deck brews or in-depth reviews! And don't forget to check out our other articles about other trading card games!

Garrett Farrington

X: @GarrettFTCG

YT: Talking Cards With Garrett