- I had made a prediction in my wrap up of Epoch's 2025 card sets that last year's edition of the Holographica set, one of their annual collaborations with the OB Club, was going to be delayed until March of 2026. I was correct - the set will be released on March 14th. This is another of Epoch's "ultra high end sets" with each six card box retailing for 16,500 yen (about $107). Each box is guaranteed to include two autographed cards. I don't think the full checklist has been settled on yet but there are at least 59 cards in the base set, each with a parallel version, and something like four different varieties of autographed cards. Players in the set include Sadaharu Oh, Ichiro, Koji Uehara, Koji Yamamoto and Tsutomu Wakamatsu.
- BBM is issuing a box set dedicated to Munetaka Murakami called "Kiseki". Each box will contain 37 cards which will include the 36 card base set plus one "special" insert card which could be a parallel card, one of ten different memorabilia cards or one of five different autographed cards. The set will be out in mid-March.
- Jumping ahead a few months, BBM is releasing the 2026 edition of their 1st Version set in early May. The details for the set look pretty much the same as it's been for every year since 2015. There's the usual 324 player/manager cards (27 for each team), the 12 team checklist cards and the 36 "Cross Something" cards that will be continued in the 2nd Version set later in the year - this year the Something is "Forest". That makes a total of 372 cards in the base set. Nine cards for each team have several different facsimile autograph parallels. There are also parallel versions for 71 of the rookie cards (or all the rookie cards). There are three varieties of short printed photo variants - each team has a card with a rare "secret" version, a card with a rarer "ultra secret" version and a card with an even rarer "super ultra secret" version (and they could all possibly be variants for the same player). There are two non-premium insert sets - "New Wonder" (12 cards - one rookie per team) and "Japonism" (12 cards - one per team) - and four serially numbered premium insert sets - "Amazing" (12 /50 cards - one per team), "Promising" (12 /50 cards - one per team) "Cross Foil Signing" (6 cards - all members of the Giants) and "3D Cross Forest" (12 cards - one per team as you probably guessed). Some of the insert sets will probably have parallel versions but I don't see anything about them yet. There are both autograph and memorabilia cards available, including cards with multiple autographs and cards with memorabilia from multiple players. There will also be "buyback" autographs available.
- Bandai is returning to the NPB Collectible Card Game market for the first time since their final Owners League set back in 2015. The new game is called "Professional Baseball Fan Stars" and appears to be a mobile game. Bandai will be releasing two sets of cards in late March - a Central League Vol.1 set and a Pacific League Vol.1 set - in boxes containing ten packs containing seven cards each. Both sets will have 120 cards - 48 "Normal", 36 "Rare", 24 "Star Rare" and 12 "Super Star Rare" (which will break down to 4 "Normal", 3 "Rare", 2 "Star Rare" and 1 "Super Star Rare" for each team). I'm assuming there will be additional "volumes" released as the year goes on. I don't know if this means that Bushiroad will not be continuing the "DreamOrder" cards but I kind of think it does - there are no new releases mentioned on their website.
- Bandai, of course, collaborated with Namco the past two years to produce the very fun "Pro Baseball Deforme Card Collection" sets which were distributed with bags of kaki no tane, a snack food. The two are teaming up again this year to release more of the Collectible Card Game "Fan Stars" cards. There will be 36 cards in the set - 12 "Normal", 12 "Rare" and 12 "Star Rare". There are parallel versions of the "Star Rare" cards available. The set will be released in April.
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