The One Piece TCG banlist explained
Banned, restricted, banned in pairs — three different things, and the third one catches out more players than the other two combined.
The short version
- Bandai publishes banned and restricted lists on the official One Piece Card Game site, with separate effective dates for Japan and the rest of the world.
- Charlotte Pudding (OP06-047) was banned effective April 2026.
- Banned pairs are a distinct category: both cards are legal individually but cannot appear in the same deck.
- Borsalino (EB04-058) and I Re-Quasar Helllp!! (OP07-115) are a banned pair, effective April 2026 in Japan and May 2026 elsewhere.
- Six previously restricted cards — Jinbe, Kingdom Come, Ice Age, Great Eruption, Moby Dick and Enies Lobby — were unbanned in the same update.
Bandai manages the One Piece Card Game format with a published list of banned and restricted cards, updated periodically and announced on the official site. If you only play at kitchen tables it barely matters. If you attend any sanctioned event, an illegal deck is a match loss before you've drawn a card — and the rules here have a wrinkle most games don't.
Three categories, not one
| Category | What it means |
|---|---|
| Banned | The card cannot be played at all in sanctioned events. |
| Restricted | The card is limited to fewer copies than the usual four. As of the 2026 update, there are no restricted cards. |
| Banned pair | Two cards that are each legal on their own but cannot both appear in the same deck. This is the one that catches people out. |
The current list
Banned
- Charlotte Pudding (OP06-047) — banned effective April 2026. Her ability to repeatedly bounce characters back to hand while generating card advantage made her an auto-include in any deck that could run her, which is exactly the profile that gets a card banned rather than restricted.
Banned pairs
- Borsalino (EB04-058) and I Re-Quasar Helllp!! (OP07-115) cannot be played in the same deck. Effective 10 April 2026 in Japan and 1 May 2026 in the rest of the world.
Recently unbanned
Six cards came off the list in the same 2026 update: Jinbe, Kingdom Come, Ice Age, Great Eruption, Moby Dick and Enies Lobby. Unbans are worth watching closely as a player *and* as a collector — a card returning to legality after a long absence is one of the most reliable price spikes in the game, because the supply has been sitting unused in binders while demand was zero.
Why Japan and the rest of the world have different dates
Regulation changes take effect in Japan first, typically by around three weeks. This is a scheduling artefact of the event calendar rather than a policy difference: the change is the same, it just starts sooner in one region. Check which date applies to your region before an event — and note that this regional gap survived the move to simultaneous product releases described in our OP-17 guide.
Checking your deck is legal
A five-minute legality check before an event
Read the current list on the official site
Bandai's site is the only authoritative source. Community trackers are useful but lag announcements and occasionally carry errors.
Check the effective date for your region
A change effective in Japan may not yet apply where you're playing, or vice versa.
Scan for banned pairs specifically
Search your list for each card in every banned pair. This is the check people skip.
Verify your copy counts
Four of each card number, counting all variants and alternate arts together.
Confirm colour legality
Every card must be in a colour on your Leader. Easy to break when you swap a card in from a similar list.
What a banlist update does to prices
Both directions overshoot. A banned card falls further than its residual collector value justifies in the first week, then partially recovers. An unbanned card spikes hard and then settles as binder copies come to market. If you hold cards affected by an announcement, the worst time to act is the day of the news.
This is one of the situations where automatic tracking earns its keep: Bounty's Daily Market Brief surfaces the biggest movers among cards you actually own, so a ban that hits something in your binder shows up without you having to go looking. For building around the current list, see the deck building guide.
Frequently asked questions
- What cards are banned in One Piece TCG?
- As of the 2026 update, Charlotte Pudding (OP06-047) is banned. Borsalino (EB04-058) and I Re-Quasar Helllp!! (OP07-115) form a banned pair and cannot be played in the same deck. There are currently no restricted cards.
- What is a banned pair?
- Two cards that are each legal on their own but cannot both appear in the same deck. It's a softer tool than a full ban: it removes a specific problematic combination without taking either card out of the format.
- Why do Japan and other regions have different banlist dates?
- Regulation changes take effect in Japan first, typically around three weeks ahead of the rest of the world, because of how the event calendar is scheduled. The changes themselves are identical.
- Where is the official One Piece TCG banlist?
- On Bandai's official One Piece Card Game site. Community trackers are convenient but can lag announcements, so the official page is the one to check before a tournament.
Sources
Stop guessing what your cards are worth
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