Top Three Winners Crowned for 2024’s Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest, Runner-Ups Announced!

The top three winners of the 2024 Pokemon TCG Illustration Contest have been announced at Japan’s Champions League! Each of them was crowned on stage.

The $5,000 “Grand Prize Winner” is Kazumi Minami from Japan. The $3,000 “Best Standard Card Illustration” winner is “Acorviart” from the United States. And the $3,000 “Best ex Card Illustration” winner is “Anderson” from Japan.

Their artwork will be turned into real promo cards. In the coming months they should be distributed at Pokemon Centers both in Japan and internationally. More details will follow soon.

Each of the winners was also presented with special trophies featuring Charizard.

The six first place runner-ups were announced and will each receive $1,000:

Fifteen “Judge Awards” were also announced and will each be awarded $500:

The theme of this year’s contest was to draw artwork capturing “Magical Pokemon Moments.” The contest was open to Japan, the United States, the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

You can see the top 100 illustrations here and the top 300 here. Six entries were also disqualified for breaking the rules.

Picture number 18 of the Feraligatr is my favourite but, all of the feraligatr art looks amazing.
Pikachu picture number 1 is the cuttest one.
 
Congratulations to this year's winners! Like every year, there were so many amazing entries. It's cool to see that the top 3 got trophies and were announced publicly at an in-person event! What a nice way to make such a special occasion even more so.

I'm grateful and honored to have made the top 100 among so many amazing artists. Thank you to everyone here who shared their support throughout the earlier stages - it means the world to me! I'll keep trying to achieve my dream of illustrating for the TCG someday.
 
Seriously fudge Pikachu. Stop allowing it in art contests for adults. I don't want Pikachu cards I want good looking cards.

Anyway at least Acorvart won, but they need to expand this and have a children's division. Love that old Poliwrath
 
Seriously fudge Pikachu. Stop allowing it in art contests for adults. I don't want Pikachu cards I want good looking cards.

Anyway at least Acorvart won, but they need to expand this and have a children's division. Love that old Poliwrath
Don’t be mad at the artists, be mad at the contest. Also, Pikachu is the figure head of Pokemon lmao
 
Look, I'd love to see more variety in medium, too, but these artists put huge amounts of time and talent into their entries. Using a stylus instead of a brush or pen doesn't make it slop.
That does matter! I want to see ANY traditional art. You all know Im a digital artist. Why not have winners for like five or so categories? Have one for traditional, digital, digital-ai? I say slop not as an insult to the artist because there was just as many good digital pieces that didnt get pick so why not have more mediums represented? If you can do stone work or glass work, why not have that be on a card? Do you have any idea how hard it is to compete against digital art? Only allowing digital art makes it so elitist for no reason.
 
That does matter! I want to see ANY traditional art. You all know Im a digital artist. Why not have winners for like five or so categories? Have one for traditional, digital, digital-ai? I say slop not as an insult to the artist because there was just as many good digital pieces that didnt get pick so why not have more mediums represented? If you can do stone work or glass work, why not have that be on a card? Do you have any idea how hard it is to compete against digital art? Only allowing digital art makes it so elitist for no reason.
I agree it would be nice to see more art styles like glass work or stone work or old school drawings. We have the yarn and the clay Pokemon art cards, lets bring in more styles!