Pokémon McDonald's 2026: Will there be a collab for the 30th anniversary?

A new collaboration between McDonald's and Pokémon has been long expected for the Pocket Monster franchise's recent 30th anniversary, since being supposedly leaked a few months ago, but we've found a new update revealing when we might see it.

The fast food giant has had a long history with the Pokémon franchise, doing collabs as far back as 2002; and with that, another partnership for 2026 has been one of the most anticipated yet.

Here's the latest update on 2026's apparent McDonald's x Pokémon collaboration and when we might be seeing it.

Pokémon McDonald's 2026: Will there be a collab for the 30th anniversary?

Currently, a new collaboration has not been officially announced by either McDonald's or The Pokémon Company for 2026, but the latest update by the Pokémon TCG fansite PokéBeach, has led us to speculate that we could be seeing one as soon as Tuesday 31 March 2026.

It was PokeBeach who revealed the rumoured collaboration in the first place, back in late December 2025. However, the Pokémon TCG promotion has so far kept getting pushed back by the reveal of others.

The first was the 'Changeables' Happy Meal promotion, which ran from 27 January to 8 March. We assumed the Pokémon-themed Happy Meals containing TCG packs might drop after that, but a 2 March update from PokeBeach showed that an 'All American Basketball' set of toys would be running from 10 March to 30 March.

As PokéBeach has noted, 20 days is a relatively short promotion – meaning we could still be seeing a Pokémon 30th anniversary collab with McDonald's from the day after it ends on 31 March. Be that as it may, yet another non-Pokemon promotion could be announced to run after that instead, but we will update this page as soon as we know more.

It is noted that McDonald's TCG promotions typically offer one 4-card booster pack containing one holo and three non-holo cards.

These sets typically contain 15 cards, with a total of six holo cards. All of the cards in the set have always been reprints.

That being said, for the last promo, which celebrated Pokémon's 25th anniversary in 2021, there were 50 total cards, covering all of the then-24 starter Pokémon plus Pikachu, with each Pokémon having a holo and non-holo variant.

Unfortunately, it does appear that this will be a US-only promotion, meaning those of us in the UK, EU and elsewhere will either have to wait for our own promo or will simply not be getting one at all.

So, it looks like there will be a Pokémon McDonald's collab in 2026 after all, though until it's officially announced, it's worth taking this info with a grain of salt.

With a Pokémon Presents stream taking place on Pokémon Day this year, perhaps we'll learn more about it then.

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