When did the Pokémon Trading Card Game first release in Japan?

The Pokémon Trading Card Game first released in Japan on October 20, 1996.

Its first Japanese product was the 1st Starter & Expansion Pack, published by Media Factory. The trading-card game followed the original Game Boy games by only a few months, helping Pokémon expand rapidly from software into a physical collecting hobby.

The earliest Japanese set depicted the original Pokémon roster and established the game's basic card categories: Pokémon, Energy, and Trainer cards. Players use those cards in two-person battles, building decks and managing attacks through Energy attachments and other effects.

The Japanese launch date is different from the English Base Set release in the United States, which arrived on January 9, 1999. That gap explains why some English-language timelines place the card game's beginning in 1999, even though the Pokémon TCG had already existed in Japan since the franchise's first year.