Pokémon TCG Worlds 2026 Tier List

Hey team, Wallysson here.

Worlds starts this Friday in San Francisco and runs through Sunday, August 30.

In Los Angeles, 47.1% of Day 2 was Dragapult across all variants, and that field was far more spread out than San Francisco is going to be. For Worlds the conversation is sitting between 40% and 50% of Day 1. If it lands there, half of your matches will be against the same monster, piloted by people who trained with it the whole season.

At that point a tier list stops answering which deck is strongest. It answers what you agree to lose to on your way to Sunday.

Every deck on this list has a slice of the field it does not want to sit across from. included. The real choice is which slice, and how much of it will be in the room that day. That is how I built the order here.

My Pokémon TCG Worlds 2026 tier list, from Tier S to Tier D — My complete tier list for Worlds 2026

Tier S: Dragapult, and What Changes Between the Three Builds

All three are in S because they run the same engine. is still the best draw in the game. The thing has no weakness unless a shows up on the other side. And the core is lean enough to leave room for almost everything else in the list.

One thing is the same in all of them: . Going second, it buys the time the deck needs. Your opponent is stuck without items, and you use those turns to thin your deck and set up the line at your own pace. By the time they finally knock the Budew out, most of the time there is already a Dragapult across the table ready to attack and clear their board. That is why every list plays it, and why high-level players keep hammering that point.

What separates the three is exactly what each one agrees to lose.

Straight Dragapult: Gives Up Coverage to Win the Mirror

For me it is the best deck in the format. Its ceiling is not the highest of the three, but no other build repeats its own game plan as many times in a row, and over nine rounds that is what decides things.

It does not have to set up a second important evolution line. So the free slots go to consistency, or to attacking what it expects to face. And what it expects to face is another Dragapult.

is the card that settles that math, and Zé already wrote here about hammers showing up in decks that should not need them. Sitting down with hammers against a Dragapult without them is a big edge. Every charge that comes off is a turn eaten on the other side. And in the mirror it strips the energy off and shuts down the healing loop, leaving damage sitting on the board for you to close two turns later.

The price is having no good answer to the decks that are not Dragapult. In a tournament that is nearly half Dragapult, I pay that price without thinking twice.

Dragapult Dusknoir: Gives Up the Mirror to Beat Everything Else

stamps 130 damage with no energy and no attack, and its strength is in stacking with . Dragapult spreads the damage on the bench, picks where to drop the 130 on top, and what would be one knockout per turn becomes two or three at once. That is how this build clears a board and flips the prize trade mid-turn.

Against one-prize decks it matters even more. Phantom Dive on its own sometimes needs two turns to resolve a board, and the pair does it in one.

And then there is the context, which is what puts it below straight. Dusknoir shines when the field is varied, because it answers things straight Dragapult cannot. In a tournament where half the tables are the mirror, you spend the day facing the deck where the ghost does less for you than the hammer does.

In a tournament with more deck variety I think it is always a good pick. For Worlds, no.

Dragapult Blaziken: Gives Up the Mirror to Beat What Beats Dragapult

The least consistent of the three, and the one that can turn into the most things. solves energy and, more importantly, hands you a fire attacker. That changes three matchups at once: , the grass decks, and Clefairy. Those are exactly the spots where Dragapult feels it.

The problem is space. It plays , and neither hammers nor the ghost fit alongside. In other words, it trades the mirror for coverage against the rest.

In Los Angeles that already showed up in the numbers. Of the four variants, it was the only one below average: 40% win rate and 18.12% conversion to Day 2. The other three moved through in force.

The Blaziken bet is that the field will have more people trying to beat Dragapult than people playing Dragapult. I do not think that is going to be the case.

Tier A: The Decks That Agree to Face Dragapult Head-On

N's Zoroark, and What Happens When It Goes Into the Jungle

If one deck can look at Dragapult and say "bring it", it is . And I am not the only one who thinks so. Mateusz Łaszkiewicz said publicly that the deck is being underrated.

I trust it because of the building room it still has. Dragapult lists are settled, 45, 50 identical cards, and the argument lives in the last few slots. Zoroark has not gotten there. You can build it to trap with , or to hit 330 with and . You can build it to shut off the draw engine with , or to attack one-prize decks with . Each of those is a different deck in practice, and the player is the one who decides which.

Except Zoroark does not lose the tournament to Dragapult. It loses in the jungle.

The jungle is when it stops playing against the top and starts playing against what should not decide a Worlds, but will be there. is the worst of those, and how bad it gets depends on your list: without and in there to play, the matchup is horrible. is not comfortable either.

So Zoroark has an answer to all of it. And that is where the catch is: every answer costs a slot, and the deck that used to beat Dragapult was the one with those slots free. You can build a beautiful Zoroark against the monster and find out in round five that you turned into a worse deck against everything else.

If people like Tord Reklev, Mateusz himself and Vini Fernandez sit down having found that balance, it is the list I respect most in the tier.

Slowking, and the Bet That Nobody Will Spend a Slot on Shaymin

A one-prize deck that needs a specific combo on turn 2 usually carries the reputation of stalling at the wrong moment. comes down on that turn 2 far more often than that reputation suggests. And the deck has genuinely been performing in recent tournaments, which to me is a sign it is better than people treat it.

But I did not put it here because of the deck. I put it here because of a read on behavior.

Good players do not spend a slot to solve an archetype at 5% of the meta. If they already win 40% of the time with the lines they have, they would rather keep the lines and use that space on something that shows up every round. The result: , the card that makes your life comfortable against , ends up living in and in some Festival lists. Not in Dragapult, which needs that slot for the mirror.

If that read is right, Slowking walks into a tournament where almost nobody is prepared for it. If it is wrong, it spends the weekend running into Shaymin.

That is what it agrees to lose: it bets the tournament on a card it expects nobody brought.

Festival Lead, and the Math That Decides Whether It Is Playable

adds 80 damage to the Active. With in play you attack twice, 180 and 180 again, and against any one-prize deck that basically ends the argument. The grass typing still grabs Zoroark, , Mega Absol and Cynthia's Garchomp.

That problem has a name, and it is Dragapult. You set up the board, trade prizes the way you practiced, and Phantom Dive wipes two turns later everything the whole game went into building. The worst build to sit across from is Dusknoir, because Cursed Blast closes for free what Phantom Dive left wounded. You can drop a in the list to shut that off, since Damp cuts abilities that need a self-knockout, but then you pay with bench space you feel. And you still need in play by turn 2, which the Budew on the other side turns into a gamble.

Then comes the math that makes Festival the most interesting deck on this list. Against the rest of the field it is favored in almost everything, comfortably. The problem is one, and it is the size of the tournament: it loses most of its matches against nearly half the tables. The question is not whether Festival is good. It is whether you can make Day 2 losing to 46% of the field.

For me the deck fits inside that question. Can you build a list that gets close to 45-55 against Dragapult without breaking what makes Festival good against everything else? Whoever found that list is not in Tier A, they are fighting for the title. And look at the size of the bet people are making: it was 1.6% of NAIC, and there are folks calling it the third most played deck in San Francisco.

Tier B: They Have Game Against the Top, but They Need the Pairings

The three here have game against part of the top, some Dragapult variants included. What separates them from Tier A is pairings: they need to sit across from the right thing to make a big run. Excadrill is the only one here for a different reason, and I will get to it.

Mega Excadrill, Strong and Mechanical

discards the top two cards of your opponent's deck and still knocks out low-HP basics, which is the foundation of this entire format. Sometimes that discard takes their , or the energy they needed, and the game turns right there. reaches 330, which covers and Zoroark, and the setup comes together cleanly through with finding the evolutions.

The deck is strong. What bothers me is how much of the work is the deck's and how much is the player's. You set up, you attach, you hit for 330 and you ask your opponent how they plan to deal with it. That works very well against people who do not know how to answer. At a Worlds, everybody knows.

And it is weak to fire in a week where Blaziken is trending and a good chunk of hammer lists carry or .

There is one caveat that cuts against me. At Worlds of Doom Day Two, a big TCG Live tournament, AzulGG went 7-2-1 with a Mega Excadrill that does not play . His list runs Hero's Cape, with and Genesect ex in support and 17 Metal Energy. It is a strong deck and a real handful, and it looks nothing like what people have been treating as standard. If that is the build that shows up in San Francisco, the Excadrill I placed here is a deck almost nobody practiced against, and my read ages in a single weekend.

Alakazam Dudunsparce, and Why the Build Matters More Than the Deck

I like Alakazam. It draws a lot of cards, and the package with and makes Dragapult suffer to chain attacks. also holds off the residual damage that usually decides those games. There is a structural piece of good news too: Watchtower is down in popularity this format, and for a deck of 50 HP Pokémon that matters a lot.

And this is where the math makes you choose. An Alakazam with has been showing up, and it draws better and solves problems the control build does not. Except it makes the Dragapult matchup worse, and that is the only matchup you cannot make worse at this tournament. If I were taking Alakazam to San Francisco, I would go control.

What holds Alakazam back is the top of the list, Dragapult first. But if Watchtower stays down and people spend their slots thinking only about Dragapult, Zoroark and Slowking, Alakazam gets a very comfortable weekend.

Raging Bolt and Basic Box, and Which Build Passes the Math

The honest read is that is basic box paying a tax. The moment you accept two energy types that do not talk to the rest of the deck, it gets worse. Except the Bolt is the neutral card that deletes whatever is in front of you, and this format has very few clean answers to a 340 HP Mega Excadrill. That is why the lists that interest me are the light ones, something like two Clefairy and one Bolt, instead of turning into a Bolt deck.

And the two basic box builds are not equivalent here. The Clefairy one hits Dragapult for weakness and tends to be faster. The Ogerpon one with energy acceleration covers more ground and is more fun to pilot, but the Dragapult matchup is worse. When the most played deck in the tournament is Dragapult, that stops being a matter of taste.

The ceiling is documented: James Kowalski won NAIC with a Clefairy Box nobody was calling the best deck in the format before the event. When I asked him what the TCG Live ladder had done for his game, the answer was volume: without it he would show up to every tournament with far fewer quality games behind him and less confidence in his own deck, in the interview he gave us. That kind of repetition is what makes a basic box work, because the prize trade has to come out on autopilot. And that is why it sits in B: more than anything else here, it depends on which slice of the field lands in front of you.

Tier C: Grimmsnarl Froslass Does the Same Thing With Smaller Numbers

This is the favorite deck of almost no professional I know, and I am only exaggerating a little.

gave it a decent draw engine, which solved a real problem, because before that you were playing four for lack of anything better. And Grimmsnarl is good at something specific: it does not need to knock out, knock out, knock out. It takes several prizes at once. In a good share of games you barely use Grimmsnarl at all, you set up and let the other side's board become impossible to hold.

To be fair about something that cuts against what I am about to say: its Dragapult matchup is genuinely contested, with players on both sides swearing they are favored. By everything I have written so far, that is a Tier A credential.

It just does not pass on the rest. Zoroark hits too hard for it now. Mega Excadrill is essentially unwinnable. And Slowking only improves if it pays for that Shaymin nobody wants to pay for.

And every time I watch the deck work I think the same thing: it is the Dragapult idea with the numbers turned down. Spread damage, create multiple targets, force your opponent to lose Pokémon off the Active. With less consistency and less closing power.

I do not think it is unplayable. I just cannot justify picking it when the complete versions of the same idea are in Tier S.

Tier D: I Need to See It to Believe It

got a new partner in , but the deck still lives off how little the field respects it, and this format took that away. erases the energy it spends the whole game stacking, Excadrill's goes straight through it, Festival beats it. And a good part of what it used to win came from opponents who had never sat across from it. In San Francisco everybody has seen the crab.

is the one that hurts most. Locking evolution in a meta whose top is built out of evolution decks is a genuinely good idea, and Iuri broke it down here. If it had not won Full Grip Games, it would have been the surprise deck of the tournament. It won, it became the talk, and the answer is a Psyduck in a list that already had room for a tech. Even so: if it was your deck, play it. Nobody is going to spend a card on 1% of the field.

is the one I would most like to be wrong about. It is favored against part of the Dragapult builds, which is more than a lot of decks here can say. But 170 a turn does not close a game on its own. And it plays , which the opponent uses better than it does: Dragapult and Zoroark take that stadium to fill the discard with energy and feed their own plan.

And has the best argument of the group. It is 340 HP, so Phantom Dive plus Cursed Blast does not kill it in one. Except surviving one extra turn does not resolve the game. Not even against Dragapult is it as comfortable as that number suggests, and against one-prize decks it has no answer. That is what this Worlds is going to be full of, so I do not expect it to do well.

What I Will Be Watching on Friday

If half the field is Dragapult, then half the top cut is Dragapult, and that is when something few people mention happens: most of those Dragapult are going to be eliminated by another Dragapult. The deck fills the top tables and then eats itself from the inside until one is left.

That is why I hold both things at once. Dragapult is the best pick if you want to maximize your chance of doing well. And the champion may well not be a Dragapult.

When the lists come out, I will be looking for three things. How many Dragapult run hammers, because that decides the mirror. Whether there is Shaymin in the Dragapult lists, because that decides whether Slowking was a good read or a bad bet. And how many Festival showed up, because that decides whether Zoroark spent the weekend in the jungle.

And here is my support for every Brazilian who made it to San Francisco. Getting to a Worlds already means surviving a whole season of travel, money spent, training, losses, CP and weekends that could have gone to just about anything else. Since they made it, I do not want to wish them a nice run. I want a Brazilian on a top table on Saturday afternoon, I want a Brazilian flag showing up on Sunday, and if somebody wants to bring the trophy home, even better.

Good luck to all of them. Do you agree with this order? Is there a deck I put too low? Let me know, arguing about it is how we raise our level of play.

From Minas Gerais or nearby?

My Worlds 2026 Tier List: What Each Deck Agrees to Lose To