Good Games has launched its 2026 Championship Series, a national tournament run across 20 stores spanning New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia. The series carries a combined $3,000 prize pool across five headline games: One Piece Card Game, Magic: The Gathering, Riftbound, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. Tickets went on sale at 5pm on 13 July 2026.
Alongside the main Championship events, Good Games has introduced "Battles," a new tier of smaller, regional tournaments capped at 20 players. The idea is straightforward: not every player wants to travel to a flagship store for a major event, and a 20-player cap keeps a Battle genuinely local and approachable, while still feeding into the wider Championship structure. A handful of stores, including Albury, Mildura and Hobart, are running Battles rather than full Championship events, giving smaller regional communities a real seat at the table without asking them to compete for a slot at a capital-city venue.
Five games, one series
The five headline games reflect what's actually being played competitively across Good Games' network right now. One Piece Card Game has become one of the fastest-growing tournament scenes in the country, helped along by weekly Friday constructed nights running at multiple stores. Magic: The Gathering remains the most established tournament game in the space, with decades of competitive infrastructure behind it. Yu-Gi-Oh! brings its own dedicated, highly technical community built around precise combo lines and archetype support. Pokemon TCG continues to draw both younger players and long-time collectors, helped this year by a milestone 30th anniversary push from The Pokemon Company. And Riftbound, Riot Games' League of Legends card game, is the newest addition to the lineup, riding a wave of momentum after a packed 2026 release schedule that has seen three major sets land in under twelve months.
It's a deliberately broad selection. Rather than backing a single game, Good Games has built a Championship structure that gives players across five quite different communities a reason to show up to the same series, at the same stores, in the same window.
It's also worth being clear about what isn't part of the headline five. Games like Gundam, Dragon Ball Super Fusion World and Disney Lorcana all have active organized play running through Good Games' regular weekly calendar, they're simply not part of this particular Championship structure. That doesn't make them any less established locally, and we'll be covering each of them individually over the coming days, alongside the five headline games.
Store spread and access
Twenty participating stores across seven jurisdictions is a wide net for a single tournament series to cast. New South Wales carries the heaviest concentration, with stores across metro Sydney and regional centres like Newcastle and Albury. Western Australia follows closely, anchored by several Perth-metro locations. Smaller states get proportionally fewer venues, but none are left out entirely, a deliberate choice that ties back to the Battles format, giving even single-store states like the ACT and Tasmania a genuine path into the series.
What this means if you're playing
If you're weighing up entering a Championship event or a regional Battle, the practical question most players eventually land on is what to actually bring. Do you lean on cards you already own, trade for staples you're missing, or pick up singles outright? That decision gets a lot easier when you're working from real, current pricing rather than a guess made a few weeks out from the event.
This is where C3 comes in. Across the five headline games, and the others Good Games supports, C3's live market page tracks current AU pricing and recent movers, so you can see what's actually trending before you commit to a purchase. If you're deciding between two sellers for the same card, Compare lets you check pricing side by side rather than settling for whichever listing you find first.
A quick note on scope
Good Games runs a broad calendar covering trading card games, miniatures wargames and casual board gaming. This coverage, and the game-by-game posts to follow, focuses specifically on trading card games. We're not covering Flesh and Blood, which sits outside C3's supported game list, and we're not covering miniatures wargames like Warhammer, which are a different category entirely from the card games this site tracks pricing for.
Where to go from here
Over the next several posts, we'll be looking at each of the eight trading card games Good Games actively supports through weekly organized play: One Piece, Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Disney Lorcana, Dragon Ball Super Fusion World, Gundam and Riftbound. Each post covers what's actually happening in that game's competitive and release calendar right now, and where to check current pricing if you're getting ready to play, trade or buy.
If you want the fastest way to see what's moving across all of these games at once, the market page is the best starting point, updated regularly and covering the full spread of games C3 tracks, not just the five in this Championship Series.
Good Games' full Championship schedule and store list is available directly through their own event pages if you want registration details for a specific location. This post is independent coverage, C3 has no partnership or affiliate relationship with Good Games, we're simply tracking a significant moment for the Australian TCG community and what it might mean for the cards you're holding onto or looking to pick up.