Naruto TCG: Manila Sign-Ups Close September 3

The second official play session for the NARUTO CARD GAME has a sign-up window, and it closes on September 3. It just doesn’t happen to be in Europe. It’s in Manila.

Bandai has published the content list for the Manila stop of BANDAI CARD GAMES Fest 26-27. The dates are October 24 and 25, 2026, at One Ayala Mall on 1 Ayala Ave in Makati City. Six card games are on the floor: Digimon, One Piece, Union Arena, Dragon Ball Super Card Game Fusion World, Gundam, and the NCG. Naruto gets a Teaching Session, meaning the same guided intro format that debuted at Gen Con back in July.

Application window: August 21 through September 3, 2026. Whoever gets a seat finds out starting September 17.

Apply, Wait, Get Drawn

That third date is where the interesting part hides. Two weeks sit between the application deadline and the confirmation, and somebody at Bandai spends them handing out seats. This isn’t a queue and it isn’t first-come-first-served. It’s a lottery. Signing up means you applied. Nothing more, for now.

On top of that comes the hurdle Bandai already set for Jakarta: without a verified face photo in the BANDAI TCG+ app, nothing moves. And buried in the fine print is the line that’s easy to skim past and decides everything in practice: verification can take a week or longer. So if you get the idea to apply for Manila on September 2, you’re too late, even if the form is technically still open. Minors can take part through their account without registering a face photo of their own.

The prize is the CP-001 Chakra Card again. That’s the card carrying the entire collector interest in a game nobody can buy yet. The same card number shows up on September 8 at Yankee Stadium, there as its own CP-001 Chakra Card -New York Yankees Ver.- in a run of 40,000, and in October it’s handed out at New York Comic Con as well. Fitting, in a way: the Chunin Exams were never an open tournament either, just a selection process with spectator seats.

Manila and Essen, Same Weekend

From over here in Germany, the calendar looks odd. Manila runs October 24 and 25. Spiel Essen runs October 22 through 25. Two NCG stops, the same two days, one continent apart. Where they split is the level of detail: Manila has a defined process with an application window, a draw date, and a prize, while Essen is just a name on Bandai’s roadmap.

No sign-up procedure, no session times, no word on whether you can actually play in Essen or just admire a display case. Same story for Paris Games Week (also October 22 to 25) and Lucca at the end of October. And in the BANDAI CARD GAMES Fest calendar, all of Europe gets exactly one stop: London, January 2027, no firm date attached.

My read on it: this isn’t disinterest, it’s sequencing. Bandai is spinning up its registration system where the TCG+ app has been established for years, and Southeast Asia has long been the most active market for Bandai card games outside Japan. Europe is coming. It’s just coming later, which in practice means less lead time for anyone who has to file vacation days or book train tickets.

If you’re heading to Essen, install the TCG+ app now anyway and push the face verification through once. If Bandai does drop a last-minute sign-up process, nobody wants to spend a week waiting on approval while the seats fill. Ten minutes of your time, and worst case you’ve got one extra app on your phone.

Which leaves the question of how far Bandai even exports the lottery model to Europe. Manila has a crowd that knows Bandai events inside out. Essen is a mass-market fair where most attendees have never heard a word about the NCG. A lottery for walk-up traffic makes little sense; open demo tables make a lot. So what do you think: does Bandai fill in the Essen details, or is that booth just something to look at?

Sources

BANDAI CARD GAMES Fest 26-27 in MANILA (official)
NARUTO CARD GAME in Manila: session details and registration
BANDAI CARD GAMES Fest 26-27: venue overview
NARUTO CARD GAME Official Website

Kenearos