Expanded format (TCG)

The Expanded format of the Pokémon Trading Card Game is one of two formats used for officially-sanctioned Play! Pokémon events. It was added to the TCG Standard format in the TCG 2014-15 Expanded format (2014-2015 season). It allows a greater number of expansions than Standard format but is not as unpredictable in card combinations as TCG Unlimited format. It is also used in the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online.

It remains to be seen if Play! Pokémon will begin rotating out expansions once per year, after the World Championships, as they currently do with TCG Standard format. Additional expansions are added to the current TCG Rotation three weeks after they are released in the United States. Starting from 2016, they were added to the current Rotation on the third Friday in the month of release.

If a card in an Expanded-legal expansion is a reprint of an older card, all prints of the card can be played in an Expanded-legal expansion-legal deck (i.e. TCG Base Set ). However, some cards significantly differ in wording between older prints and newer prints (i.e. from the TCG Base Set compared to its TCG Stormfront iteration); those cards require a reference outside the deck in order to use the older prints in a Expanded-legal deck. A reference must be either a new version of the card or a printout of the card's entry from the official Card-Dex.

Play! Pokémon requires players to play with cards printed in their region's official language (for example : players in are restricted to English cards only, whereas players in  can use both English cards and French cards). 