What the Pokémon Holiday Calendar actually is
Everyone calls it the Pokémon advent calendar; the box says Pokémon TCG: Holiday Calendar. It is a countdown box with 25 numbered doors, one surprise behind each — a booster pack, a three-card fun pack, a foil card carrying a festive stamp, a coin, or a sticker sheet — at $49.99 MSRP. The Pokémon Company has produced one every year since 2023, and the format has barely moved between editions. It is the one Pokémon product built to be opened over a month instead of in a sitting, which is exactly why it works as a gift.
Is there a 2026 edition?
Almost certainly, though as of mid-August 2026 it has not been announced and does not appear on the published 2026 product calendar. The pattern across three years is tight: the 2023 calendar released September 1, the 2024 edition on August 23, and the 2025 edition on August 22 — each announced a few weeks before, and each on shelves more than three months before December. If 2026 follows, expect an announcement in August and product in late August or the first days of September. We will update this page with the confirmed date and contents. On preordering it: there is nothing to preorder, because there is no announced product to preorder. When the announcement lands, listings tend to appear at Pokémon Center and the big-box retailers within days rather than months, which is why the advice further down is a calendar reminder rather than a preorder link. If you find something already listed as a 2026 Pokémon advent calendar preorder, check what it actually is before paying — the two things most likely to be wearing that label right now are the Funko calendar and a Pokémon figure calendar, neither of which contains a single card.
Does Costco sell the Pokémon advent calendar?
Some years, at a discount, and there is a trap in it this year. In 2025 Costco carried the TCG Holiday Calendar as a warehouse-exclusive bundle — the calendar itself plus a collectible Poké Ball tin, at $48.99 in US warehouses, with Great Ball, Moon Ball and Quick Ball versions depending on where you shopped. Against a $49.99 calendar bought on its own that makes the tin effectively free, and the packaging differs enough that TCGplayer and PriceCharting both catalogue the Costco bundle as its own separate product. It sold through: the last warehouse sighting a price tracker logged was December 19, 2025. Now the trap, and it is a live one. There is a box called Pokémon Holiday Calendar sitting in Costco warehouses right now at $44.99 — item 1929673, first spotted July 8, 2026, in stock at 267 of the 312 warehouses one tracker follows as of August 16. Deal accounts have been posting it as the 2026 Pokémon Holiday Calendar. It is not the card one. It is the Jazwares figure calendar: 24 doors holding nineteen two-inch battle figures with a finish exclusive to the box, plus five accessories. The two products share a name, a shape and a shelf, and the door count is the quickest tell — the card calendar has 25 doors and this one has 24. The other tell is the front of the box, where the words Pokémon TCG appear on the one you want and are absent from the one you don't. And Costco stock is per-warehouse and never announced in advance, so whether your local club gets either version this year is a question no website can answer, this one included.
The Funko Pokémon advent calendar, and what is actually behind the doors
Funko's is the main alternative and the other product people mean when they search for a Pokémon advent calendar. For 2026 it is the Bitty Pop! Pokémon Advent Countdown Calendar, $34.99 on Funko's own store, twenty-four doors. Read the contents before you decide, because they are not twenty-four figures: ten Bitty Pop! collectibles, seven stackable display pieces, three holiday accessories, two magnetic cases and two keychain cases. Ten of the twenty-four doors hold a Pokémon; the other fourteen hold stands and packaging for it. The figures are also tiny, under an inch, adhered to an acrylic base inside a hard case. That is a real change from Funko's earlier Pocket Pop! Pokémon calendar, which put a figure behind all twenty-four doors, so a review of that box does not describe this one. Set against the TCG calendar it is fifteen dollars cheaper and it leaves something on a shelf in January rather than a stack of cards in a binder. That is the whole choice, and it is decided by the person opening it rather than by value: if they collect cards, the Holiday Calendar wins easily, because its eight stamped foils are printings that exist nowhere else. If they just like Pokémon and are eight years old, ten vinyl figures beat a pile of cards they cannot yet read.
What was in the 2025 calendar
The most recent edition is the clearest picture of what to expect. Behind its 25 doors: 8 foil cards with a festive stamp, 6 booster packs, 7 three-card fun packs, 2 Pokémon coins, 2 sticker sheets, and a code card for Pokémon TCG Live. The stamped cards leaned winter, as they always do — a stamped Glaceon ex and Pikachu alongside full-art Crabominable and Vanillish — and the packs and fun packs were drawn from Destined Rivals, Temporal Forces, and Journey Together. The cards below are the ordinary printings of the Pokémon that turned up; the calendar versions are these same Pokémon with the stamp added.
And 2023 and 2024, for the pattern
The 2023 calendar released September 1 at the same $49.99 and used a snowflake stamp, headlined by a Glaceon VMAX. It also shipped extras the later editions dropped: a Glaceon-and-Pikachu keychain and galaxy-foil coins featuring Snom and Alolan Vulpix, with packs pulled from Scarlet & Violet base, Paldea Evolved, and Fusion Strike. The 2024 edition arrived August 23 with 8 stamped foils, 5 booster packs, 7 fun packs, 2 coins, and 2 sticker sheets. Read across the three years and the shape holds: always 25 doors, always 8 stamped foils, always 7 fun packs. The variables are the booster count (5 in 2024, 6 in 2025) and which Pokémon get stamped.
The stamp is the whole collectible
These are not new cards. They are existing cards reprinted with a holiday stamp added to the artwork, keeping their original names and numbers — the same trick the Halloween Trick or Trade bundle plays with its jack-o’-lantern stamp. What that means practically is that collectors and price guides track the stamped printing separately from the regular one, so a stamped Glaceon and a normal Glaceon are two different entries with two different prices. If you are collecting the calendars, the eight stamped foils are the part worth sleeving; the boosters are just boosters.
Is $50 worth it?
Do the arithmetic honestly. Six boosters at $4–5 MSRP account for roughly $25–30 of the price. Add seven three-card fun packs, eight foil cards you cannot get any other way, two coins, and two sticker sheets, and the box is fair value at MSRP — not a bargain, not a rip-off. Where it goes wrong is buying it late: sealed 2025 calendars traded between roughly $55 and $80 on the secondary market through mid-2026, above the $49.99 it cost at launch. As a gift it is one of the best $50 in the hobby. As an investment it is a box of $4 packs with a countdown printed on it.
Buy it in August, hide it until December
This is the practical takeaway, and it is the reason this page exists in August rather than November. The calendar hits shelves at the end of August at MSRP with retail stock at its deepest, then thins out and drifts upward for four months as people who forgot go looking. Buying it the week it releases costs less and guarantees you get one; buying it December 10 means paying a resale premium for a product whose whole appeal is that it starts on December 1. Set a reminder for late August, buy it at a big-box retailer, and put it somewhere you will remember. The 2025 edition is the proof: it launched at $49.99, sold through, and now sits around $69.56 on the secondary market with the cheapest of 26 listings at $65. Roughly forty percent more, for the identical box, bought three months late.
The binder angle: eight stamped foils is most of a page
Eight festive-stamped cards is one short of a 9-pocket page, which is a gift the box did not intend to give you. Add a Delibird, a past year’s stamp, or any winter card and the calendar produces a finished holiday page on its own — sleeve them as they come out of the doors rather than letting them ride loose in the box until January. Our Christmas binder page walks through the rest of the roster and a layout that makes nine winter cards read as one spread.
