YCS Orlando is the next Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series in North America, and the first one on the Forbidden & Limited List revealed at YCS Houston. Here’s what Konami has confirmed, what you need to do before you arrive, and the decks you’re likely to face in Advanced.
Dates and venue
- Dates: Friday, November 6 to Sunday, November 8, 2026
- Venue: Orange County Convention Center, South Concourse, Hall SB, 9899 International Drive, Orlando, FL 32819
- A note on the address: Konami’s main event page lists 9800 International Drive, but the detailed event instructions direct players to Hall SB at 9899 International Drive on the South Concourse. Follow the 9899 address — that’s the building the event runs in.
- Capacity: up to 3,500 Duelists, a thousand more than Houston. Once the hall is full, nobody else gets in until space opens up.
- Nearest airports: Orlando International (MCO) is about 12 miles away. Orlando Sanford (SFB) is about 28 miles.
Konami has not advertised a special hotel rate for YCS Orlando, but several hotels are close to the convention center. The closest Konami lists are the Hyatt Regency Orlando (0.2 miles), Rosen Plaza (0.4 miles), Four Points by Sheraton Orlando Convention Center (0.5 miles) and Hilton Orlando (0.9 miles).
Two main events: Genesys and Advanced
There are two main events, each with its own Day 1, and both finish on Sunday. All times are Eastern.
| Genesys | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|
| Online registration closes | Thu, Nov 5, 12:00 PM | Fri, Nov 6, 12:00 PM |
| Deck list due | Thu, Nov 5, 2:00 PM | Fri, Nov 6, 2:00 PM |
| Mandatory check-in | Thu, Nov 5, 12:00-6:00 PM | Fri, Nov 6, 12:00-6:00 PM |
| Day 1 | Fri, Nov 6, 10:00 AM | Sat, Nov 7, 10:00 AM |
| Day 2 | Sun, Nov 8, 9:00 AM | Sun, Nov 8, 9:00 AM |
Registration can close earlier if seats sell out, so don’t leave it to the last day. If space remains, Konami may offer on-site registration for Genesys on Thursday, November 5, and Advanced on Friday, November 6, from 3:00 to 7:00 PM ET. On-site registrants must submit their deck lists electronically through the registration website when registering. Konami also lists a general 2:00 PM ET deck-list deadline for each event, which falls before the on-site registration window. Players planning to register on site should confirm the applicable deck-list procedure with event staff in advance. On-site registration is not guaranteed. Entry to each main event is $25.00 USD, which gets you five booster packs, and you pay online at registration.yugioh-card.com. You pick up the packs when you check in.
If you’re playing both, you can check in for Advanced during the Thursday Genesys check-in. Your Advanced deck list has to be submitted before you can check in, but you can keep changing it until the Friday 2:00 PM ET deadline.
If you make Day 2 in both events, you have to pick one when the Advanced standings go up on Saturday evening. Report to the scorekeeper within 10 minutes of the announcement, or you’re dropped from whichever event you’re placed lower in.
Deck lists: online only, and Genesys lists go through the registration website
Konami will not accept physical deck lists at this YCS. Both lists go through registration.yugioh-card.com, the site you registered on.
That’s a change for Genesys players, and it’s specific to Orlando. At Houston, Genesys lists went through the NEURON app. Orlando’s published submission instructions point only to the registration website, so plan your Genesys list around that.
You can resubmit either list as many times as you like before its deadline. If you miss the deadline, you lose your seat. Your entry is refunded after the event.
Don’t no-show
Can’t make it? Contact the registration team at us-ygo-registration@kde-us.com before the event. Konami says anyone who registers, doesn’t attend and doesn’t get in touch will be blocked from registering online for future YCS and WCQ events.
If travel means you’ll miss the check-in window, email that same address by 11:00 AM ET on your check-in day to arrange alternate check-in. Alternate check-in runs 8:00-9:30 AM ET on the morning of your Day 1.
Format rules
Advanced uses the Forbidden & Limited List that took effect on October 19, 2026, the one Konami revealed in parts at YCS Houston. (Some Orlando event documents still link the older May 18, 2026 list — the October 19 list is the one in force; Konami’s deck construction page links only the October 19 list.) The biggest hits for this event: Elfnote Tinia and Azamina Ilia Silvia are now Forbidden, along with Albion the Branded Dragon and Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon. Branded Opening is Limited, and Sky Striker Mobilize - Engage! is Semi-Limited. Our list of every change has the rest.
Magnificent Maestros isn’t legal for this event: it has an Official Tournament Store release on November 11 and a general release on November 13, both after Orlando’s November 6-8 dates, so none of its new cards are playable there.
Genesys uses a points system instead of the Forbidden & Limited List:
- No Link Monsters or Pendulum Monsters. You play on the original field layout, with no Extra Monster Zones and no Pendulum Zones.
- The deck cap is 100 points across your Main, Extra and Side Deck combined. Most cards cost zero.
- You can still run only 3 copies of a card.
Check your list against the current points on Konami’s Genesys page before you submit it.
How many rounds
The number of Swiss rounds depends on how many players each main event gets:
| Players | Swiss rounds | Day 1 / Day 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 129-256 | 11 | 7 / 4 |
| 257-512 | 12 | 8 / 4 |
| 513-1,024 | 13 | 8 / 5 |
| 1,025-2,048 | 14 | 9 / 5 |
| 2,049+ | 15 | 9 / 6 |
Every bracket finishes with a Top 8 cut. Konami won’t schedule meal breaks because food is sold in the hall, so plan around that.
Side events and coverage
Public events run all weekend. Regional Qualifiers ($20) are on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning in both formats. Win-A-Mat ($15) runs all three days, and Attack of the Giant Card!! ($25) has Advanced and Genesys flights every day. Dragon Duel is free for players born in 2013 or later. On Sunday there’s also a Speed Duel Main Event Series, an OTS Tournament Series event (a 3-vs-3 Advanced team event) and a charity tournament, with proceeds going to the Red Cross.
Feature matches and the Top Cut will stream on the official Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Twitch and YouTube channels, and Konami runs a coverage blog with pairings and standings.
What to expect in Advanced
The October 19 list has had two weekends of big results: 13 TCG events with known Top 8s, including the German Open in Kaiserslautern (311 players) and the Dutch Open in Ede (188). Read this as a guide to what you’ll sit across from, not a tier list.
Angelechy had the highest reported Top 8 representation. It made the most Top 8 appearances of any deck in the sample, 20 across those 13 events, and often put two or more into the same cut. It’s a Spell- and Trap-heavy Synchro deck built around Angelechy Problem, and it was already one of the main Genesys and Advanced decks at Houston — though it hasn’t converted any of those appearances into a win yet.
Elfnote is still here. Losing Tinia hurt, but Elfnote made the second-most Top 8s (14) and won the Lansing regional. Expect the Ars Magna builds that showed up after Beyond the Brave.
Radiant Typhoon recorded the most tournament victories in the sample, winning three events from nine reported Top 8 appearances. Artmage followed with two wins from six appearances. These results are encouraging, but they do not establish either deck as the format’s best.
Light and Darkness Ritual was part of Trevor Parker’s YCS Houston-winning Dark Magician deck, and it’s lost Azamina Ilia Silvia since then. It still made six Top 8s on the new list, so the deck isn’t gone, but it hasn’t won one yet.
Below those, winners on the new list include Phantom Knights (Dutch Open), Mermail, DoomZ, Power Patron, Invoked, Fairy Tail and Sacred Beasts. Branded kept five Top 8 appearances despite losing Albion the Branded Dragon and Branded Opening going to one copy, and Blitzclique showed up in several Top 8s. With this many decks in contention, expect a wide field.
A note on how we read these results: they cover 13 reported tournaments, so they’re a sample, not a census. Top 8 representation doesn’t equal how often a deck was actually played — popular decks that keep missing the cut don’t show up in the numbers. Archetype tags bundle hybrid strategies, so one deck can be counted under more than one name, and some Top 8 slots have incomplete deck identification. Treat the Orlando expectations here as predictions, not confirmed outcomes.
Sources and methodology
The logistics in this guide come from Konami’s official event information: the main event instructions, the public event information, the October 19, 2026 Forbidden & Limited List and the Genesys rules. The Top 8 counts above come from the tournament reports for the 13 events in the sample: Fort Worth WCQ Regional, Richmond WCQ Regional, Seattle WCQ Regional, Matamoros WCQ Regional, German Open Kaiserslautern 2027, South Park WCQ Regional, The Side Deck Remote Duel WCQ Regional, Klein Rönnau WCQ Regional, Medellin WCQ Regional, Dutch Open Ede 2027, Lansing WCQ Regional, Differdange WCQ Regional and Bremen WCQ Regional.
We’ll cover the weekend as it happens and update this page with results.