Andrew Hedrick Decked Out the Worlds Final. Dragapult ex Is Your 2026 Pokemon TCG Champion.
Andrew Hedrick went 13-2 with Dragapult ex and won the 2026 Pokemon TCG World Championship at the Chase Center by running Diego Cassiraga out of cards. Here is the winning list, the full podium, and what a Worlds result actually does to singles prices.
The 2026 Pokemon World Championships finished Sunday at the Chase Center in San Francisco, and the Masters Division Trading Card Game final ended in the least explosive way a Pokemon game can end: Andrew Hedrick did not knock out six Pokemon. He ran Diego Cassiraga of Argentina out of cards.
Hedrick went 13-2-0 across the weekend with Dragapult ex and closed the final by decking his opponent out. That is the headline every competitive player will remember, and it is also the detail that tells you what the format actually rewarded this year.
The winning deck
Hedrick's list was a Dragapult ex build with a heavy disruption package rather than a pure damage-race package. The core was what you would expect - four Dreepy, four Drakloak, three Dragapult ex - with Munkidori as the damage-moving engine and a support cast of Budew, Dunsparce, Dudunsparce, Meowth ex, and Fezandipiti ex.
The Trainer line is where the deck earned its title. Four copies of Lillie's Determination, three Boss's Orders, and a pair of Crispin gave Hedrick a consistency floor most decks in the room could not match, and the Crushing Hammer count meant opponents were losing Energy at the exact moments they needed it most.
Dragapult ex was not a surprise pick. It has been a pillar of the format all season. What was different was building it to win long games instead of short ones.
Why the deck-out mattered
Decking out an opponent in a Worlds final is rare because most modern Pokemon games end on prize cards well before either player runs out of deck. When it happens on the biggest stage in the game, it is usually a sign that the format has enough disruption tools to make the alternate win condition real. Crushing Hammer, forced draw, and Dragapult's spread damage all push in the same direction: slow the opponent down enough that the deck itself becomes the clock.
The rest of the podium
- Masters Division: Andrew Hedrick, defeating Diego Cassiraga in the final
- Senior Division: Jake Ng
- Junior Division: Yuta Araki
On the video game side, Takuma Yamazaki took the Masters VGC title, Vikram Thiagarajan won Seniors, and Kazuki Kage won Juniors. Hiroki Yamauchi, competing as GGs489hiromaru, won Pokemon GO, and Zeta Division claimed the Pokemon UNITE championship.
What this does to card prices
Worlds results move singles, but they move them unevenly, and the pattern is predictable enough that you can plan around it.
The pieces that go up
Cards that were already staples and got confirmed by the win tend to hold their gains. Dragapult ex was expensive before the weekend and will stay expensive. The more interesting movement is in the supporting cast - the Munkidori, Fezandipiti ex, and Lillie's Determination tier of card that a lot of casual players skipped because the deck was fine without four copies. Those are the ones that spike hardest in the first week and settle back over the following month.
The pieces that go down
Anything that was hyped going into Worlds and then failed to make Day 2 in real numbers usually gives back its preseason premium within two weeks. If you were holding a speculative playset waiting for a Worlds bump that did not arrive, the window to sell into remaining hype is short.
The World Championship deck reprints
Pokemon typically prints the winning Masters decklist as a sealed World Championship Deck product. Those tend to arrive months later, they are cheap, and they are functionally the easiest way to own a playable copy of the list. If you want the deck to play rather than to collect, waiting for that product is almost always the cheaper path.
How to actually buy in
If you are building Dragapult ex for league play at your local shop, do it in two passes. Buy the cheap consistency pieces now, because they are the ones that get bought out by other players making the same decision this week. Wait on the headline cards until the second or third week of September, when the post-Worlds spike has cooled and the sellers who bought at the top start listing.
And if you are looking for the singles in person rather than online, this is a good week to check the case at your local card shop before the owner has repriced anything.