Every Naruto Card Game Ever Made: The Full Timeline

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If you’ve searched “Naruto card game” recently, you’ve probably landed on at least three different products that all use that phrase — and none of the current ones are related to each other. In order of appearance: BANDAI’s original Naruto CCG ran in North America from 2006 to 2013; Naruto Kayou, a Chinese collector-focused card line with no direct BANDAI connection, hit US retail in October 2025; Naruto Mythos TCG, from Italy’s CICABOOM Srl, launched in Europe in March 2026 and is rolling into North America now; and BANDAI’s new NARUTO CARD GAME was announced June 18, 2026 for a full worldwide release in 2027. Four different products, three different companies, spanning twenty years. Here’s the complete family tree, with sources, so you know exactly which one you’re looking at.

The short version: four products, four companies

Two of these four are genuinely competitive, deck-building TCGs with rulebooks and organized play (Naruto CCG historically, and now Mythos TCG and the upcoming BANDAI game). Kayou is the odd one out: it’s a real, licensed, actively collected card line, but it’s built for pulling and displaying, not playing — there’s no chakra system, no combat rules, no tournament circuit. We cover it separately in Naruto Kayou Cards Explained: Rarity, Legitimacy, and Risk, but it earns a spot on this timeline because it’s the product a huge number of “Naruto TCG” searches actually land on right now.

2006-2013: BANDAI’s original Naruto CCG

BANDAI’s first attempt at an English-language Naruto card game launched in North America in April 2006, right as the original Naruto anime was airing on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, and initial print runs reportedly sold out quickly at the height of that popularity (Narutopedia). It was a standard 2000s CCG structure — 50-card decks built around Ninja cards, layered with Jutsu, Mission, and Client cards for combat and resources.

Over its seven-year run, BANDAI shipped 28 numbered sets, from The Path to Hokage through to its final release, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, before BANDAI USA quietly discontinued the game in May 2013. ICv2 has explicitly framed the 2027 NARUTO CARD GAME as BANDAI’s “second attempt at an English Naruto card game” — the June 2026 announcement isn’t a new idea for the company, it’s a two-decade-later do-over (ICv2). The full breakdown of what the original game was, why it ended, and how it stacks up against what’s coming in 2027 is in Naruto CCG Retrospective: BANDAI’s Original Card Game (2006-2013).

2013-2025: The long gap, filled by Kayou

For over a decade after Naruto CCG’s cancellation, there was no active, officially produced Naruto card game anywhere in North America — just a shrinking secondary market for out-of-print CCG cards. That gap is part of why Naruto Kayou built such a following overseas: it’s not a competitive TCG at all, but it filled the “new Naruto cards to chase” void years before either Mythos TCG or BANDAI’s revival existed.

Kayou Co., Ltd. is a Chinese trading-card manufacturer that became the dominant player in China’s card boom of the early 2020s — reportedly holding roughly 71% of the domestic TCG-segment market and licensing close to 100 IPs, with 2024 revenue reported around 10 billion yuan (roughly $1.4 billion) (Nerdbeak). Its Naruto cards were popular in China well before reaching Western buyers, and the company only formally announced its US retail entry at New York Comic Con on September 17, 2025, with Naruto-branded packs (marketed as “Heaven Scroll” for the English release) hitting Amazon, Walmart, Target, GameStop, and Barnes & Noble that October (PR Newswire).

Two things are worth being precise about here, because Kayou gets conflated with BANDAI’s products constantly:

• It’s not a BANDAI product. Third-party sources describe the Naruto line as produced under license from Pierrot (the anime’s animation studio), with a Kishimoto/Shueisha copyright line on card backs — but that’s a separate licensing arrangement from the specific TCG license BANDAI holds for its own NARUTO CARD GAME.
• It’s not a playable competitive game. No chakra costs, no combat system, no deck format — Kayou is built entirely around chase-rarity collecting (holographic foils, “puzzle art” spreads, ultra-limited SE prints numbered as low as 72-199 copies).

Full detail on rarity tiers, the licensing question, and what to check before buying is in Naruto Kayou Cards Explained: Rarity, Legitimacy, and Risk.

October 2025 – 2026: Naruto Mythos TCG arrives first

While BANDAI was still quiet on a new English Naruto TCG, an entirely different company beat it to market with an actual playable game. Naruto Mythos TCG, published by CICABOOM Srl (Genoa, Italy) with Zvezdar handling North American distribution, made its first public showing at Spiel Essen 2025 in Germany, then officially launched its debut set, Konoha Shidō, across Europe, the UK, Turkey, and the MENA region on March 13, 2026 — CICABOOM’s own materials call it “the official beginning of the Mythos era.” A 2nd Edition print, adding a new Itachi & Sasuke starter and four Team Sets, followed in May 2026 (narutotcgmythos.com).

North America got its first hands-on look at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 in July, where Zvezdar ran a demo booth and sold booster boxes on the show floor, and ICv2 subsequently confirmed a wider US retail push: Konoha Shidō heads to hobby stores with pre-release events beginning August 29, 2026 (ICv2). CICABOOM’s public roadmap has two more 2026 sets confirmed — Shinobi Shiren (Set 2, EU pre-release August 28-30, official release September 4) and Akatsuki (Set 3, pre-release November 7, official release November 13) — with Set 3 explicitly flagged as the point where CICABOOM moves to a synchronized global release across the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, and South Africa. Organized Play is building toward Regional Championships and a targeted March 2027 European Championship.

Mechanically, Mythos runs on a 30-card deck, a fixed 4-round match length, a dual Mission-card win condition, and a Chakra resource that scales with your board state rather than a separate land/energy system — genuinely its own game, not a reskin of anything else. For the full new-player breakdown, see Naruto Mythos TCG: A Getting-Started Guide for New Players, and for what’s coming next, Naruto Mythos TCG Roadmap: Set 2, Set 3, and What’s Next.

June 2026 – 2027: BANDAI’s NARUTO CARD GAME revival

BANDAI made it official on June 18, 2026: a brand-new NARUTO CARD GAME, built and published by BANDAI itself, with a planned simultaneous worldwide release in 2027 supporting both English and Japanese out of the gate — a notably different rollout model from the region-by-region approach Mythos TCG has used. The game made its first public playable appearance at Gen Con 2026 (July 30 – August 2, Indianapolis) with Tutorial Sessions for attendees, preceded by a full mechanics reveal from BANDAI on July 29, 2026 — two trailers and press briefings to outlets including PR Newswire, Anime News Network, and Bleeding Cool (PR Newswire; Anime News Network).

What’s confirmed so far, per that reveal: decks are built around a single Leader card (color-gating the rest of the deck, similar in spirit to One Piece Card Game), a 51-card main deck (per PR Newswire and Bleeding Cool; one outlet reported 50, an unresolved minor discrepancy), 5 Chakra cards, and 1 Summon card, across five total card types — Leader, Character, EX Character, Chakra, and Summon. Eight named characters have had art or footage shown (Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Boruto, Jiraiya, Tsunade, Orochimaru, Itachi), though none has been matched to a specific card type yet. No official rulebook PDF, first set name, pricing, or retailer list has been published as of this writing — BANDAI has said more information is coming in December 2026.

We’ve covered this reveal, the confirmed character list, and how the system compares structurally to Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic in dedicated pieces: our own Naruto Card Game vs. Naruto Mythos TCG: Don’t Mix Them Up, plus NARUTO CARD GAME Mechanics Explained: The July 29 Reveal, Naruto Card Game: Every Character Confirmed So Far, and Naruto Card Game vs. Yu-Gi-Oh and MTG: How It Compares.

The family tree, visually

2006 ─────────────────── 2013        2025 ──── 2026 ──────────────── 2027+
│                                     │         │
Naruto CCG (BANDAI)                  │         │
"Path to Hokage" → 28 sets           │         │
discontinued May 2013                │         │
                                      │         │
                    Naruto Kayou (Kayou Co., Ltd., China) ─────────────►
                    China: early 2020s │ US: Oct. 2025 │ ongoing, collector-only
                                      │         │
                                Naruto Mythos TCG (CICABOOM, Italy)
                                Essen premiere Oct. 2025 │ EU launch Mar. 13, 2026
                                          │ NA pre-release Aug. 29, 2026 ──────►
                                                    │
                                          NARUTO CARD GAME (BANDAI)
                                          Announced June 18, 2026
                                          Gen Con reveal Jul. 29 - Aug. 2, 2026
                                                    │ Worldwide launch 2027 ────►

None of these four branches share code, rules, or company ownership — the only thing tying them together is the Naruto license itself, sublicensed separately to BANDAI (twice, 19 years apart), to CICABOOM, and to Kayou.

Why did BANDAI let two other companies get there first?

This is the question we get most from readers piecing this timeline together, and it’s a fair one — BANDAI holding the rights to Naruto CCG since 2006 while a Chinese collectible-card company and an Italian TCG publisher both launched Naruto-branded card products before BANDAI’s own revival even reached full retail seems backwards at first glance.

The likely answer, based on what’s publicly known, is straightforward licensing structure rather than anything unusual: Naruto‘s merchandising rights (held by Shueisha/Kishimoto’s side, with Studio Pierrot on the anime side) aren’t exclusive to BANDAI worldwide, and different companies can hold card-game or collectible-card licenses in different categories or territories simultaneously. BANDAI’s new NARUTO CARD GAME is explicitly built and published in-house by BANDAI, giving it the tightest official tie to the franchise, while Kayou’s Naruto line is reported (via third-party sources, not officially confirmed by Pierrot or Shueisha directly) to run under a separate Pierrot-side license, and Mythos TCG operates under its own agreement with CICABOOM. None of this is confirmed to be a coordinated strategy on BANDAI’s part — it’s speculation to read intent into the sequencing, and worth treating as such — but the plain fact is that BANDAI’s is simply the slowest of the three to reach full retail, landing in 2027 versus Kayou’s 2025 and Mythos’s 2026.

Naruto Card Game FAQ

Is BANDAI’s NARUTO CARD GAME the same as Naruto Mythos TCG?
No. They’re separate products from separate companies — BANDAI publishes NARUTO CARD GAME in-house, while Naruto Mythos TCG is published by CICABOOM Srl, an Italian company, under its own license. They have different card systems, different release schedules, and aren’t compatible with each other. See our full Naruto Card Game vs. Naruto Mythos TCG breakdown.

Are Naruto Kayou cards made by BANDAI?
No. Kayou is a Chinese collectible-card manufacturer (Kayou Co., Ltd.) with no confirmed connection to BANDAI. Its Naruto cards are reportedly licensed through Studio Pierrot rather than BANDAI, and they’re built purely for collecting — there’s no competitive ruleset or tournament circuit tied to them.

Is the old 2006-2013 Naruto CCG still playable, and where can I get cards?
The original Naruto CCG has been out of print since May 2013. There’s no active organized play or official support, but cards are still traded on the secondary market (eBay, dedicated collector sites like CCGTrader). It has no mechanical connection to any of the current 2025-2027 products.

When does BANDAI’s NARUTO CARD GAME actually release?
BANDAI has confirmed a full worldwide simultaneous launch (English and Japanese) in 2027, following its June 18, 2026 announcement and a July 29, 2026 mechanics reveal at Gen Con. No specific release month, price, or first set name has been announced as of August 5, 2026 — treat any specific 2027 date you see elsewhere as unconfirmed until BANDAI publishes one directly.

Which of these should I actually start collecting or playing right now?
It depends on what you want. If you want a playable competitive TCG you can get into today, Naruto Mythos TCG is the only option with active retail and organized play in 2026. If you’re purely chasing display-worthy foil cards without needing a ruleset, Naruto Kayou is already on US shelves. If you want the “most official” BANDAI product with presumably the deepest long-term support, NARUTO CARD GAME is the one to wait for, but it won’t have full retail availability until 2027. None of this is financial advice — card values in all of these lines can and do fluctuate, especially for a brand-new, pre-release product.

The takeaway

“Naruto card game” isn’t one thing anymore, and honestly hasn’t been one thing since October 2025 — you’re choosing between four completely separate products spanning two decades and three companies. Naruto CCG (2006-2013) is a closed chapter with a shrinking collector market. Naruto Kayou (2025-present) is a Chinese-made, collector-focused line worth knowing apart from the actual TCGs. Naruto Mythos TCG (2026-present) is the real, playable option available right now, with North American pre-release events starting August 29, 2026. And BANDAI’s own NARUTO CARD GAME, announced June 18, 2026, is the one with the highest brand pedigree but the longest wait, landing worldwide in 2027. Bookmark this page — we’ll keep the timeline and the links below updated as each product moves forward.

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