Clear some home-screen space, Digital Colosseum crew: the Digimon Card Game is coming to your phone. Bandai opened pre-registration for Digimon Alysion this week, and the free-to-play mobile take on the physical TCG is now up for sign-ups on iOS and Android in 49 countries and regions.
What Alysion actually is
Alysion is a port of the real rulebook, not a loose card battler. Matches keep the Memory gauge of the paper game — the shared meter that decides how many actions you can play before your opponent takes over — and cards share the physical game's art and numbering. Even the pre-registration rewards dig back to BT-01, the very first booster set, for their MetalGarurumon (BT1-044) and WarGreymon (BT1-025).
On top of that sits what only digital can do: exclusive new cards, Shiny and Alt-Art treatments, animated Premium Alt-Art, a free pack every day, raising that evolves partners up to Mega, and a Digidex with more than 100 entries. Ranked play and tournaments are in, too. Bandai is calling it a "full-fledged TCG experience," and the feature list backs that up.
The Liberator connection
Alysion unfolds in the world of Digimon Liberator, the free webcomic and light novel that ran on the official card game site and wrapped its two-year run in March. Story Mode follows Kanata Hondo (Shu Uchida), a keen gamer who is brand new to cards, learning the rules with her online best friend Futre (Hikari Kubota). Futre's old guild master Valner Dragnogh (Fairouz Ai) wants her back in the guild Di:WO, and Valner's unreadable partner Renamon is voiced by none other than Miyuki Sawashiro. Ayumu Murase completes the cast as Aliol, the guide inside Liberator's world. It is also where you will meet Gemmon, the mysterious white Digimon who has been the face of the project since its announcement.
The crossover runs both ways. The physical game now has Alysion-branded starter decks built around new partners Rubeusdramon and Yukinamon, out in English this December.
A long road to the App Store
The app has been in the works for a while. It first surfaced at Digimon Con 2025 under the working title Digimon Elysion, and a 10,000-player closed beta followed in August of that year. The published feedback was blunt — small card text, fiddly battle controls, unclear effects — and this year's Digimon Con promised a reworked battle screen and UI. The game arrives as Alysion, with launch support for Japanese, English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Korean.
Release date honesty
Bandai's official line is "2026," with no exact date confirmed. The US App Store shows "Expected Dec 23, 2026," but the listing itself warns that planned dates on pre-registration pages are generated from your device's system and do not represent the official release. Treat December 23 as a hint, not a promise.
The rewards ladder
Milestone rewards unlock for everyone as sign-ups climb, delivered by in-game mail at launch:
- 50,000 players: 10 pack tickets for BD-01
- 100,000 players: BD1-02 Gemmon
- 150,000 players: BT1-044 MetalGarurumon
- 200,000 players: BT1-025 WarGreymon
The campaign runs until release, so there is no deadline panic. But the smart play is to hit pre-register on the App Store or Google Play now and let the counter climb toward that WarGreymon.
Cards in your pocket, the same Memory gauge, and a real battle screen at last. Digimon has had mobile card games before — this one finally feels like the real thing.