Pokemon Printed 10 Billion Cards in a Year and the Shortage Will Not End Until 2028

The Pokemon Company quietly dropped a stat over the weekend that puts the last 18 months of pack shortages in perspective: from March 2025 to March 2026, the company printed roughly 10 billion Pokemon cards worldwide. That is the third year in a row the annual increase has been around 10 billion. The lifetime total now sits above 85 billion cards.

Demand Still Outruns the Press

Even at that printing rate, supply is still behind demand. The Pokemon Company has been operating at "maximum print capacity" since early 2025, when the Surging Sparks shortage rolled directly into the Prismatic Evolutions chase and then into the Destined Rivals scarcity loop. Pulsing Aura and Chaos Rising both launched into markets that were already structurally undersupplied.

To put 10 billion in context: 11.7% of every Pokemon card ever printed since 1996 was printed in the last 12 months. The hobby is now operating at a scale where almost a tenth of all the cardboard out there is less than a year old.

Why It Still Feels Empty on Shelves

• Pocket pulled in new collectors. The October 2024 launch of Pokemon TCG Pocket created a wave of crossover demand from mobile players who wanted physical cards.
• Resellers are still extracting most retail allocations. Big-box drops continue to clear within minutes.
• Set-specific chase economics. Modern sets with stacked SIR slots concentrate value at the top, which pulls case-opening volume up.

Relief Is Coming — But Not Until 2028

The Pokemon Company's printing partner, Millennium Print Group, announced a new 1.27-million-square-foot production facility in December 2025. Construction begins this year, with commissioning targeted for late 2028. When that facility is online, total printing capacity roughly doubles — from 10 billion cards per year to a projected 18 to 20 billion.

Until then, the supply of popular sets and products will remain structurally below demand. That is now an official position, not a market guess.

What Collectors Should Do With This Information

Three things to think about while shortages persist:

• Reprints are real. The company has confirmed it will keep reprinting Destined Rivals, Prismatic Evolutions, and other shortage sets. Sealed buy-and-hold on those is a riskier trade than it was six months ago.
• The chase cards still chase. Reprints rarely include SIRs, so the actual scarce part of any set stays scarce.
• Etb and bundle pricing should keep cooling. As reprint cadence picks up, expect the MSRP-anchored products (booster bundles, ETBs, control products) to drift back toward MSRP through summer.

The Pokemon Company is not promising shorter wait times at the register tomorrow. It is telling the market that the shortage is a capacity problem, not a hype problem, and that it has a fix on the calendar. For collectors making sealed bets that need to age, that is a fundamental signal worth pricing in.