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Record

When the Pokémon Trading Card Game first went on sale in Japan

20 October 1996 October 1996

FiledThe company's own published history.

What this is

When the Pokémon Trading Card Game first went on sale in Japan: October 1996.

How it’s built

  1. Read from the history timeline on The Pokémon Company's Japanese corporate site, which lists 'October: Pokémon Card Game released' under 1996.

What we assumed

  • Only the month is sourced; the day in the record is not from the timeline.The timeline lists year and month only, so the record should be read to the month.

Sanity check

This is the Japanese launch only. The English-language game came later, so it does not date the card game's arrival outside Japan.

Where it comes from

Japanese-language article, 2026 The Pokémon Company · April 2026 Open the original ↗

The line in the source

10月 ポケモンカードゲーム発売