BODY: Japan's oldest football management sim has found an unlikely teammate: a pizza box.
Sega has launched a collaboration between Pro Soccer Club wo Tsukurou! 2026 โ known to fans simply as "Sakatsuku 2026" โ and Pizza-La, one of Japan's biggest domestic delivery pizza chains. The campaign runs from September 24 through November 1, 2026, with in-game rewards claimable until November 8.
The hook is the Pizza-La ร Sakatsuku Collab Set, a bundle pairing a pizza with the chain's popular side menu items. Every set ships with one randomly selected physical "Collab Special Training Card" from a five-card lineup. Flip the card over and there's an item code printed on the back.
Redeeming that code doesn't hand you the same card you're holding, though. The code unlocks one of three different in-game special training cards โ pizza-themed designs drawn specifically for the digital side, distinct from the physical artwork. In practice that means collectors chasing everything are looking at eight separate designs across two formats.
Players who don't want to order delivery aren't entirely shut out. Simply logging into the game during the collaboration period grants a special training card featuring Pizza-La's mascots, Pizza-La-kun and Pet Ham โ a low-friction giveaway that also serves to pull lapsed managers back into the app.
Sakatsuku 2026 is developed by Sega and available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, iOS, Android, and Steam, running on a free-to-play model with in-app purchases.
The insider take
Food-chain tie-ups are standard operating procedure for Japanese mobile games, but the physical-card-with-a-code format is a deliberately old-school move โ it's the same mechanic that powered arcade card games like WCCF, the Sega football title that trained a generation of Japanese fans to associate cardboard with squad building. That lineage is the point. Sakatsuku has been running since the Sega Saturn era in 1996, and its core audience is now firmly in their thirties and forties, ordering pizza for the family on a Friday night. Pizza-La, meanwhile, has spent decades as the delivery brand of choice for exactly that demographic's childhood. The deliberate mismatch between physical and digital card art is the sharp bit: it quietly doubles the collection target without doubling the print run.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net โ ๆๆฐ่จไบ (Japanese).