The Pokemon Company has said since January 2025 that it is printing at maximum capacity. Ten billion cards a year is what that capacity turns out to be, and the factory that raises it is not fully running until late 2028.
Why are Pokemon cards sold out everywhere? Because more people want them than the printers can make, and the company has said so in as many words. Since January 2025 The Pokemon Company International has repeated one statement: it is printing the affected products "as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity". Its published figures show what maximum capacity means. Around 10 billion cards a year, in three of the last four years, with the factory that raises that number not fully operating until late 2028. In the UK it shows up as app-only listings at Argos, invitations at Amazon and ship dates that slip at Pokemon Center.
The first statement went out on 15 January 2025, when Prismatic Evolutions allocations were cut to local shops and some stores cancelled customer preorders. By 27 March 2025 PokeBeach was reporting it for the third time, and Nintendo Life pointed out that the January and March versions shared their wording. The text now lives on the company's own support site as its standing update on product availability. When we read that page on 10 October 2026 it was marked "4 months ago Updated" and the wording had not changed.
We're aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing certain Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) products due to very high demand impacting availability. We understand this inconvenience can be disappointing for fans, and we are actively working to print more of the impacted Pokémon TCG products as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity to acknowledge this. Reprinted products are expected to be available at participating retailers as soon as possible.
Two further lines in the same statement matter for anyone buying in the UK. New expansions are printed at maximum production from launch, "to increase product availability upon release", and impacted products "will continue to be reprinted to replenish stock at participating retailers, including Pokémon Center". The statement names no date, no quantity and no region. It promises a direction, and the numbers below are how you check it.
The Pokemon Company publishes a cumulative total each spring, and PokeBeach has kept the series since 2003. Fortune reported the same 43.2 billion figure from the company's website in 2022, so the totals check out against a second source. The year-on-year change is the column to read.
| Total as of March | Running total | Printed in the year before |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 25.7 billion | 2.1 billion |
| 2019 | 27.2 billion | 1.5 billion |
| 2020 | 30.4 billion | 3.2 billion (over 12 months, reported in two halves) |
| 2021 | 34.1 billion | 3.7 billion |
| 2022 | 43.2 billion | 9.1 billion |
| 2023 | 52.9 billion | 9.7 billion |
| 2024 | 64.8 billion | 11.9 billion |
| 2025 | 75 billion | 10.2 billion |
| 2026 | 85 billion | 10 billion |
Output more than doubled between the year to March 2021 and the year to March 2022, then settled. Since then it has sat at around 10 billion, with 2024 the only year clearly above it. The company said in early 2025 that it was printing at maximum capacity, and the year that followed produced 10 billion cards, slightly fewer than the year before. PokeBeach's reading is that 10 billion a year is what the current plants can do, and that more would have been printed in 2025 had it been possible. The company has not said that itself. The figures point that way.
For scale: the 43 billion cards printed between October 1996 and March 2022 took 25 years. The 42 billion since took four.
PokeBeach dates the current boom to Pokemon TCG Pocket, the mobile app, which launched in October 2024. Surging Sparks in November 2024 sold out. Prismatic Evolutions in January 2025 sold out faster, and the shortages have not cleared since. By March 2025, five months after the app launched, the printers were already at their limit. The company has not said Pocket caused any of this. PokeBeach's timeline is why most people date the boom to it.
The shortfall shows up first at the shops with the smallest allocations. In May 2025 PokeBeach reported, from one of the company's largest US distributors, that Black Bolt and White Flare allocations would be smaller than Prismatic Evolutions and that "most stores will receive no product". The UK has no published allocation figures at all, so nobody outside the distributors knows how the cake is cut here. What we can say is that the statement applies to every region and the printing capacity is shared.
Yes, and there is a pattern to when. The same May 2025 report confirmed reprinted Surging Sparks booster boxes and Prismatic Evolutions Elite Trainer Boxes arriving at US stores, smaller than the original runs but "still a sizeable amount", with secondary market prices already dropping. Surging Sparks had released the previous November, so the gap from sell-out to reprint was about six months. PokeBeach's view, stated in the March and May articles, is that six months is the usual response time, and that before this boom it had been six to nine. That is an observation from someone who has watched every set since 2003, and it is worth more than most forecasts, but it is not a company commitment.
Reprints trickle rather than flood. They move through distributors over months, and a reprint that reaches US shelves in May can reach a UK shelf considerably later. If you are waiting for a specific set to come back, the release date of the reprint is not the date it appears at your shop.
The shops' own pages say so. The 30th Celebration set came out on 16 September 2026, and Nintendo Life reported that day that in the UK "thousands of people queued overnight" for it. Just over three weeks later, this is what three shops' pages showed. Our 30th Celebration guide has the rest of the shops.
| Shop | What its own page said | More on that shop |
|---|---|---|
| Argos | A search for "pokemon 30th celebration" returned twenty products. Every one carried "Buy on the app" where the basket button would be. | Argos Pokemon cards |
| Pokemon Center UK | Its Estimated Preorder Release Dates table ("Last updated: October 2026") gave "Mid to late November 2026" for five 30th Celebration products in the UK, the Pokemon Center Elite Trainer Box among them. | The Pokemon Center delay |
| Amazon UK | Read on 7 October, not today: 38 Pokemon products were sold by invitation, with a Request invite button in place of Add to Basket. | Amazon Request invitation |
An app, an invitation and a later ship date are three ways of sharing out less stock than there are buyers. Most UK shops also cap how many one customer can buy, and the limit depends on the shop.
The next set, Delta Reign, is out on 6 November 2026, and Pokemon Center's table lists three Delta Reign preorders for early November. The company's statement says it is "maximizing production" for new expansions, and Delta Reign is the next one to test that. Our Delta Reign guide follows which UK shops have pre-orders open, and when UK shops open Pokemon pre-orders covers how early to start looking.
Not this year. The structural fix is a new printing plant. In December 2025 a 1.27 million square foot campus in Morrisville, North Carolina was leased for one. The landlord's statement named only a "Morrisville-based global company". PokeBeach and the local station WRAL both reported the tenant as Millennium Print Group, the printer The Pokemon Company International bought in 2022, and Wargamer wrote that neither company had confirmed it at the time. PokeBeach's May 2026 article treats it as Millennium's own announcement. The site already has 400,000 square feet of buildings and the plan adds an 866,000 square foot plant, with construction due to start in 2026, completion in 2027 and full-scale operation in late 2028.
Two smaller moves sit alongside it. In February 2026 the company announced it was acquiring the distributor Excell Brands, which PokeBeach reads as a bid for tighter control over US allocation and leaks. In May 2026 Pokemon Japan said it would require government ID to buy certain products from the Pokemon Center there, aimed at scalpers and at keeping booster boxes with Japanese residents.
PokeBeach's estimate is that supply settles "at least another year or two" out. Its other observation is that recent English sets have been the smallest in a decade, which it reads as the designers printing fewer distinct cards so that more of each can be made. Neither is an official statement, and the second is something you can check yourself against the release schedule.
A sold-out set is not gone. The company has said it will reprint impacted products, and the 2025 reprints show it does, roughly six months on. Paying a scalper's price in month one is paying for impatience. What an Elite Trainer Box should cost lists the RRP per set so you know what you are being asked to pay over.
The first drop is the hard one. Pokemon Center's own exclusives usually sell out on the day the preorder opens, and the company's statement says it puts a virtual queue in front of the product during busy periods. Our queue status page shows whether that queue is up right now. A preorder that does go through can still be cancelled at the card check a week before it ships.
Restocks are quiet. A reprint reaching a UK shop is not announced, and by the time a search result shows it in stock it has often gone. How restock alerts work in the UK explains what an alert can and cannot do about that, and how each UK shop restocks Pokemon cards covers what a restock looks like shop by shop.
Because demand has outrun printing capacity. The Pokemon Company has said since January 2025 that it is printing affected products at maximum capacity, and its published totals show that capacity is about 10 billion cards a year. A new factory to raise it is due to be fully operating in late 2028.
The shops' own pages say so. On 10 October 2026 all twenty 30th Celebration products on Argos's website said "Buy on the app", and Pokemon Center's preorder table had five UK 30th Celebration products shipping in mid to late November 2026. The Pokemon Company's statement that it is printing at maximum capacity was still on its support site.
Yes. Its statement promises to reprint impacted products for participating retailers including Pokemon Center, and reprinted Surging Sparks booster boxes and Prismatic Evolutions Elite Trainer Boxes reached US shops in May 2025, about six months after they sold out.
About 10 billion. The company's running total went from 75 billion in March 2025 to over 85 billion in March 2026. In 2017 to 2019 the yearly increase was 1.5 to 2.1 billion.
No official date exists. The 1.27 million square foot printing campus reported in December 2025 is due for completion in 2027 and full-scale operation in late 2028, and PokeBeach's estimate is at least another year or two before supply settles.
No allocation figures are published for the UK. The company's statement applies to every region and the printing capacity is shared, so UK shortages track the global picture rather than a separate one.
Watch a set for its reprint Free for five monitors, checked every 60 seconds, alerts to Discord or email when it comes back.