For Pokémon TCG fans, the biggest news from Thursday’s Pokémon Presents live stream (in more ways than one) is that Mega Evolution Pokémon cards are returning to the game later this year – and the announcement even unveiled two spoiler cards: Mega Gardevoir ex and Mega Lucario ex!
The Pokémon Company broke the news on stream with a positively seismic trailer you can watch below, which confirmed “Mega Evolution is coming – 2025”, alongside the two card reveals. We also get confirmation that, like VMAX cards, these Pokémon will grant you three prize cards when KOd – and evolving into a Mega immediately ends your turn.
Since these big hitters will likely be the highest HP Pokémon cards in the meta for a while, giving your opponent at least one swipe at them before you get to attack is a fair balancing mechanic that returns from the previous iteration of Mega Evolutions in 2016’s XY Pokemon sets.
A companion blog post on the official Pokémon website helps us nail down a few more key facts about the return of Mega Evolution cards. Firstly, unlike the previous iteration, these new cards evolve from the preceding stage Pokémon – so Mega Lucario ex evolves from Riolu, not from Lucario ex.
It also describes Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution as a “series” – and in the same paragraph notes that Mega Evolution cards last appeared in the “XY series and Sun and Moon series” – suggesting that these new iterations will be released over the course of multiple Pokemon sets, and will likely be the main overarching theme for those sets.
Detective work by fan site Pokebeach suggests two of these sets may be called ‘Mega Brave’ and ‘Mega Symphonia’, based on previously registered trademarks for those titles, and the fact that those are the main attacks shown on the cards for Mega Lucario ex and Mega Gardevoir ex cards.
And speaking of those cards – as you’d expect, they’re absolute powerhouses with massive HP pools and super high damage attacks.
Mega Lucario ex
Yikes. Mega Lucario ex is now a stage 2 Pokémon with 340HP – a tough nut already – and his attacks are, appropriately, a one-two punch. For one Fighting energy, Aura Jab does a whacking 130 damage and lets you recycle three energies from the discard to your benched Pokémon. Then, with your second energy attached, Mega Brave is a 270 damage nuke that has to recharge between turns, Hyper Beam style.
Mega Gardevoir ex
As you’d expect for the psychic Pokémon card type, the 360HP Mega Gardevoir ex builds up its own apocalyptic damage output slightly more subtly. The one-energy move Overflowing Wishes gives each of your benched Pokémon one free energy from your deck – then your ‘ult’, Mega Symphonia, does 50 damage for each energy attached to all your Pokémon.
With a full bench, that’s a minimum of 300 damage in one attack – and the longer you keep Mega Gardevoir ex alive and in play, it’s only gonna go up from there.
Thursday’s reveals also included a solitary trainer card from the upcoming Mega Evolution series – Premium Power Pro – which boosts your Fighting Pokémon’s attack damage by 30 for a turn. It may look to us like something on sale at InfoWars, but it’s a solid buff and, as the blog post says, you can play as many as you have in your hand to keep pumping up the damage.
It’s probably a little early to make predictions about whether these Mega Evolution cards will generate the same level of unhinged hype as the current newest Pokemon set, Prismatic Evolutions, but the 2025 release window certainly means it’s going to be a busy year! We’re already looking forward to new partner Pokémon in March’s Journey Together, followed by the long rumored Team Rocket themed set Destined Rivals, now confirmed for release in May.
With the sheer numbers of cards printed these days, we’d be forgiven for assuming even these Mega Evolutions have no chance of joining our list of the world’s most expensive rare Pokémon cards – but, after the absolutely buckwild prices we’ve seen the Evolving Skies Moonbreon selling for, who knows? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, you can always check out our guide to the best Pokemon cards in the game to pick some new deck additions – or brush up on your Pokédex knowledge with our full answer to the big question: how many Pokémon are there now, anyway?