Digimon Alysion, Bandai's free-to-play mobile adaptation of the Digimon Card Game, opened pre-registration on iOS and Android today. Alongside it, Bandai launched a milestone campaign that hands out free packs and two headline cards if enough players sign up before the game goes live. The official site also picked up new System and Videos sections explaining the app's controls and battle rules. There is still no firm launch date, but this is the first time the public has been able to get in line since a 10,000-player closed beta ran in the summer of 2025.
What Digimon Alysion is
Alysion is a digital version of the Digimon Card Game, the physical TCG Bandai has run since 2020, rebuilt around a phone screen. It is not a simplified spin-off. You build 50-card decks with a separate Digi-Egg deck, play Digimon, Tamers and Option cards, and work the shared memory gauge that decides when your turn ends, just as on the tabletop. Cards from existing physical sets carry over, and Bandai says new cards made just for the app will join them.
A free pack every day is the main way to grow a collection, and cards come in standard, Shiny, Alt-Art and animated Premium Alt-Art versions. The store listing also mentions a Digimon-raising feature. For the competitive side there is ranked online play against players worldwide, and for everyone else there are casual matches against friends and against characters from the story.
The pre-registration rewards
The campaign runs from today until release, and every reward is delivered by in-game mail once the app launches. Bandai has set four tiers based on the total number of pre-registrations:
- 50,000 players: 10 Pack Tickets for the BD-01 set
- 100,000 players: the BD1-02 Gemmon card
- 150,000 players: the BT1-044 MetalGarurumon card
- 200,000 players: the BT1-025 WarGreymon card
The two top-tier cards are a deliberate pull. WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon are the signature Mega-level partners from the original Digimon Adventure series, and BT1 was the card game's very first booster set. Like any milestone campaign, the tiers are counted across everyone who signs up, so whether you get the cards depends on the whole player base rather than on you. Bandai also notes that the campaign details and schedule may change.
How to sign up
On iOS, Alysion is listed as a pre-order on the App Store: tapping Get reserves it, and the app downloads automatically at launch. On Android, the Google Play page has a Pre-register button. Both are linked from the official site at digimon-alysion.com, which is available in English, Korean and Traditional Chinese. Bandai says more sign-up campaigns are coming through the game's official Discord and X accounts.
The App Store pre-order page currently lists December 23, 2026 as the expected availability date. Bandai has not announced that date anywhere else, and Apple pre-order dates are often placeholders that move, so treat it as a rough guide. The only official target is still the 2026 launch window the company set earlier this year.
An original story that doubles as a tutorial
Rather than retelling an anime, Alysion has its own story with a new cast of human characters and, Bandai hints, Digimon that fans have not seen before. The story also teaches the rules. Because the physical card game is famously hard to pick up, Bandai is pitching the campaign as a guided introduction to card layouts, Digivolution and battle basics for people who have never played a TCG.
That beginner focus is the clearest sign of what Bandai is aiming for. Pokémon TCG Pocket showed there is a big audience for a phone card game built around light daily play and collecting. Alysion keeps the collecting and the daily pack, but it holds on to the full ruleset, which puts it closer to a complete digital TCG than to Pocket's stripped-down format.
What we still don't know
Bandai hasn't announced a firm release date, how the in-app purchases will be priced, or whether a PC version will follow. The pre-registration count and how quickly it reaches the 200,000 tier should give an early sense of demand. For now, signing up costs nothing, and if the community reaches every milestone, a pre-registered account starts with ten packs and two of the franchise's most famous cards.
