Fantastical Parade is a 234-card expansion that released worldwide in Pokémon TCG Pocket on January 28, 2026. It is the app's sixth major set, packaged internally as B2, and its headline card is Mega Gardevoir ex. The set also introduced Stadium cards to Pocket for the first time, a Trainer card type the physical game has used for decades but the app never had until this release.
A Stadium works differently from every other Trainer card in Pocket. Only one can be in play at a time, it affects both players for as long as it stays active, and playing a new Stadium immediately discards whichever one was already there. That single rule turns a Stadium into a card players can steal from each other mid-game, not just a one-sided buff.
Mega Gardevoir ex 66/155: a Mega that reloads its own team
Mega Gardevoir ex is a Stage 2 Psychic Pokémon with 210 HP, evolving from Kirlia. Its attack, Fantasia Force, costs two Psychic Energy and deals 110 damage, and it also takes three Psychic Energy from the Energy Zone and attaches them to any of the player's own Psychic Pokémon. One attack both hits and refuels the bench.
Pocket carries its own version of the paper game's Mega Evolution risk: knocking out a Mega Pokémon ex normally hands the opponent 2 points toward the 3 needed to win, but the Mega Evolution ex rule bumps that to 3 points for these specific cards. A single well-timed knockout on Mega Gardevoir ex can end the match outright, which is exactly the tradeoff that makes a 210 HP attacker with a bench-refill effect worth building an entire deck around instead of just splashing.
Peculiar Plaza: the first Stadium, and it cuts both ways
Peculiar Plaza lowers the Retreat Cost of every Psychic-type Pokémon in play, for both players, by 2. In a Mega Gardevoir ex deck built around Psychic attackers, that turns most retreats free and lets a player pivot in and out of the Active Spot without spending Energy earned from Fantasia Force on anything but attacking.
The "for both players" clause is what makes a Stadium a genuinely new kind of decision in Pocket. A player facing a Psychic deck can play their own copy of Peculiar Plaza to replace the opponent's and try to time the swap for their own retreat, or hold a different Stadium in reserve specifically to shut the effect off. Nothing else in the app works that way, since every other Trainer card only ever helps the player who plays it.
Mega Mawile ex 113/155: damage that stacks the longer it stays
Mega Mawile ex is a Basic Metal Pokémon with 170 HP. Its attack, Heat-Up Crunch, costs one Metal Energy and one Colorless Energy for 60 damage, and adds a permanent +30 damage to the same attack for every turn Mega Mawile ex stays in the Active Spot without retreating or being knocked out. The effect stacks with no cap that Pokémon has published, so a Mega Mawile ex left alone for three or four turns is throwing far more than its base 60.
That design rewards the opposite approach from Mega Gardevoir ex's refuel-and-swing pattern: a Mega Mawile ex deck wants to commit to one attacker and protect it, not rotate through a bench. Its Fire weakness is the obvious counter, and a Fire deck that can knock it out early denies the escalation entirely instead of racing a card that only gets harder to answer over time.
What this does and does not mean for physical singles
None of this touches the physical singles market Celeste actually deals in. Pocket is a separate digital economy with its own currency, its own card pool, and no crossover to graded paper cards. Mega Gardevoir ex and Mega Mawile ex have not appeared in an English physical set as of this writing, unlike Mega Rayquaza ex, which headlined Storm Emeralda's chase cards in Japan before reaching Pocket.
It is still worth tracking because Pocket has become Pokémon's fastest release schedule, and the characters it spotlights tend to resurface in the physical game months later, the way Mega Greninja ex did between its Japanese origin sets and Chaos Rising's English release. A Mega Pokémon ex that gets its own Pocket set now is a reasonable early signal for which Mega Evolution the physical game picks up next.
Frequently asked questions
- When did Fantastical Parade release?
January 28, 2026, as Pokémon TCG Pocket's sixth expansion, packaged as set B2.
- What does Peculiar Plaza do?
It lowers the Retreat Cost of every Psychic-type Pokémon in play, for both players, by 2. Only one Stadium card can be in play at a time.
- Is Fantastical Parade connected to the physical Pokémon TCG?
No. Pocket is a separate digital app with its own cards and no crossover to graded paper singles, though the same characters and art sometimes reappear in physical sets later.
