If you missed the artist Q&A chats at this past weekend’s Gross Card Con, you missed some breaking garbage pail kids news. While hosting the chats, GPKNews revealed to the crowd that Topps has moved the release of GPK Universe to 2027. Back in April, at the Topps Industry Conference, the company included GPK Universe in a slide of non-sports sets that would be coming later this year. However, GPKNews had learned from nearly a dozen sources that the set was moved recently to 2027. Sources shared various possible timeframes with GPKNews from late 2026, to Q1 2027, to even spring 2027. Right now it’s clear the set will not be coming this year. 2026 will mark the first calendar year without a mainstream retail GPK release since 2009. There are still a number of online and sports releases planned for the rest of the year.
Tag Archives: 2026 Universe
Garbage Pail Kids News From Topps Industry Conference
Topps held their annual Topps Industry Conference the last two days in Arizona. Hobby shop owners, breakers, and hobby influencers gather from around the country to find out what Topps has planned for the upcoming year. While, there wasn’t a lot of Garbage Pail Kids news, there were a couple of mentions by the company. Non-sports products were mainly dominated by upcoming releases from Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel. However, there was one slide in their presentation that showed some of the other non-sport releases planned for the year. GPK Universe was highlighted with a set logo for the release. This is the second confirmation from Topps of the upcoming GPK Universe retail set. Also, featured in a card collage was a GPK card of “Snot Rope Hope”. The card is B&W with an “old timey” GPK banner. Artwork for the card was done by Mike Stephens. No other details around the set were revealed.
During the show Topps also mentioned that popular SSP inserts like GPK and others will be found in Topps Basketball, Topps Football, and other IPs, letting collectors know they’ve pulled something special when they get one of those. This is the first mention of GPKs being included in a NFL product in the future. This confirms plans Topps has set in motion over the last couple of years. Sports GPKs will continue to be very rare inserts across multiple brands going forward. Topps also had slides that showed off new images of the NBA x GPK cards found in Bowman Basketball, and the same images previously shown in WWE Chrome.
Topps Announces 2026 Garbage Pail Kids Universe (Kind of)
With today’s release of 2025 Worst of Garbage Pail Kids 40th Anniversary set, also came the launch of the GPK Yourself contest. The website for the contest went live today, and with that brought some news. Topps mentioned on the website that the winner’s card would appear in the 2026 Garbage Pail Kids Universe set. This is the first public announcement of the set from Topps. Originality the set was planned for a 2025 release, but delays have pushed the set into 2026. No details around the set have been released, but GPK collectors, especially the GPK Yourself winner, have something to look forward to next year.