NARUTO CARD GAME at PAX Aus 2026: TCG+ sign-up and playmat raffle

PAX Aus is the NARUTO CARD GAME's first appearance in the southern hemisphere, and it overlaps with New York Comic Con by three days. From October 9 to 11 the game will be playable on two continents at the same time, which is a small milestone for a title with no product on shelves anywhere.

Bandai's page for the stop still carries its original date, August 7, 2026, but its contents have changed. When we checked it on September 2 it said registration for the Tutorial Sessions was planned to take place on-site on the day of the event. When we checked it again on October 5 that line was gone. Registration is now on BANDAI TCG+, it opened on September 20, and the playmat is sold by raffle. If you read an earlier version of this page and planned to sign up at the booth, that plan no longer matches what Bandai has published. The change is written up in our news report.

At a glance

PAX's own site, opened on October 5, lists the show as 9 to 11 October, 2026 at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf 3006, with the show open 10:00AM to 11:30PM on Friday and Saturday and 10:00AM to 6:00PM on Sunday. It lists Expo Hall Hours as 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM each day, and carries a Buy Badges link to its ticketing provider. Bandai repeats the obvious but necessary caveat that participation in any of the activities requires entry to PAX Aus.

One mismatch is worth knowing about. Bandai's page puts the close of its booth at approximately 9pm on Friday and Saturday, which is later than the 6:00 PM Expo Hall close PAX lists. Neither site explains the difference, and Bandai has not said where in the building its booth is.

How registration works now

The offer itself has not changed: join a Tutorial Session and learn how to play in a fun, immersive way, at no charge beyond your badge. How you get a seat has.

Bandai's page now reads: "Registration will take place on TCG+, and the registration page can be accessed via the button below. Tutorial Sessions will open for registration on a first-come, first-served basis at 11:00 AM AEST on Sunday, September 20."

It follows that with a limit and a penalty: "Players may register for a maximum of one event. Any attempts to circumvent this limit will result in exclusion from all demo events."

The Registration Page button on Bandai's page opens a page on the TAK Games site, under a section named Bandai Organised Play. That page says to sign up "via Bandai's TCG+ application" and lists one TCG+ event link per session time. Because each session time is its own TCG+ event, the limit of one event is a limit of one session, which matches the separate line on Bandai's page that you may only participate in 1 tutorial session throughout PAX Aus.

The conditions printed on Bandai's page:

• Demo decks are not available to take home.
• One tutorial session per person across the whole of PAX Aus.
• Participation prizes are limited to one per person regardless of how many sessions are reserved or attended.

Registration opened fifteen days before this update. Neither page shows how many places a session has or how many are left, and the TCG+ event link we tried returned only an empty BANDAI TCG+ page with no event details to a plain web request. We do not know whether places remain. The way to find out is to open the link for the session you want. Bandai's TCG+ page says you log in to register for an event, and that you need a BANDAI NAMCO ID to do it.

Bandai's page does not say whether anyone without a TCG+ registration can join a session on the day.

Session times

Bandai's own page gives none. They come from TAK Games, whose site hosts the registration page. It says "Tutorial sessions will be run every hour, with a total of 45 minutes play time during each session", and lists these start times:

That is 22 sessions across the three days. The number of seats in each is not published.

What participants receive

Two items:

• CP-001 Chakra Card
• Logo Sticker

The gift list now carries a third line: all participants are entered into a raffle for a chance to purchase a playmat. More on that below.

One condition applies to the card and the sticker, and it is the actual barrier: only participants registered to the NARUTO TCG UPDATES CHANNEL on BANDAI TCG+ who complete a survey after the Tutorial Session are eligible to receive them.

That makes two separate things to do in the same app. Applying to a session is your seat. Applying to the NARUTO TCG UPDATES CHANNEL is the gift condition, and Bandai's page for the channel says it "is not for event participation at a venue". Doing one does not do the other. The channel steps are in our BANDAI TCG+ walkthrough. Sort both out before you are standing in a hall in South Wharf.

The card is listed without a version suffix, exactly as at New York Comic Con, which distinguishes it in name from the Gen Con 2026 Ver. and the New York Yankees Ver.. What, if anything, differs between the printings has not been published. See the CP-001 promo versions guide and the Chakra card type page for what a Chakra card does in a deck.

The sticker is the one thing you can get without playing

This part of the page is unchanged. Follow any of Bandai's social channels, Instagram, Facebook or X, or register the NARUTO TCG UPDATES CHANNEL on BANDAI TCG+, and you can collect a free sticker. No session is involved. That alternative is not offered for CP-001, which requires the session, or for the playmat, whose raffle is drawn from session participants.

The playmat is a raffle

The NARUTO CARD GAME Official Playmat, Arriving in 2027, is still listed at $35 (+tax), limited to one item per person, available in limited quantities each day. On September 2 the page said nothing about how it would be sold. It now does:

• Participants who attend a Tutorial Session are entered into a raffle for the opportunity to purchase a playmat. Winning is a right to buy, not a free mat.
• The raffle is held after the final Tutorial Session each day.
• Each winning opportunity is valid only for that day.
• Winners have until the close of the booth at approximately 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and until show close at 6pm on Sunday, to buy.

TAK Games' page describes the same thing as a TCG+ lottery that participants are "scanned into" each day, and adds that "Playmat distribution will also be managed through TCG+". On its schedule the final session starts at 5:30pm on Friday and Saturday and 3:30pm on Sunday.

Bandai's page describes no other way to buy the playmat at PAX Aus. It does not say how many there are, how winners are told, or whether you have to be at the booth when the raffle is held. It prints the price in US dollars and gives no Australian figure, and it does not say whether the mat is handed over in Melbourne or supplied in 2027.

Each stop has handled this differently. At Gen Con the playmat was sold to holders of a Purchase Ticket earned by completing a tutorial. At New York Comic Con this week, Bandai's page says a retail ticket is required and that tickets are handed out first-come, first-served each morning at BANDAI CARD GAMES Booth #2705. Melbourne is a draw.

That $35 was the only price Bandai had published for anything in this game until October 13, 2026, when it priced a $20 Chakra Set vol.00 and a $40 Naruto vs. Sasuke playmat for Premier Demo Events. The June 2027 Starter Decks and Booster Pack 01 still have no set code or MSRP. Our pre-orders guide explains why every Australian retail listing you can find today is a placeholder.

How it fits the roadmap

PAX Aus sits in the busiest month of a published sequence: New York Comic Con and Melbourne together, then Spiel Essen, Paris Games Week and Lucca, then BANDAI CARD GAMES Fest 26-27 with NARUTO confirmed at Orlando and London in January 2027, in-store tutorial sessions from the same month, and the June 2027 worldwide release.

There is one Oceania note worth adding. Bandai's retailer page names a single Oceania distributor, Let's Play Games Distribution, which is the entire published trade footprint for the region so far. The PAX Aus registration page sits on a different company's site, TAK Games, and Bandai's page does not name that company or describe its role. Nothing has been said about Australian pricing, allocation or a local organised play structure for this game.

Full calendar on the events page; the mechanics Bandai has confirmed are in the rules guide.