Balatro Jokers

About this guide

This guide adapts text from balatro.fandom.com — Jokers (CC BY-SA 3.0). Changes: condensed into sections for readability. The adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence.

Everything below is adapted from the community wiki page named above; we keep the original wording where it matters and drop navigation, tables and image captions that do not survive a text export.

Source: balatro.fandom.com · verified 2026-10-27

Modifiers

Various editions displayed in the Collection .

Jokers can be enhanced with one of four different Editions , resulting in higher shop costs but adding an additional effect:

In higher stakes , Jokers can also appear with Eternal, Perishable, and/or Rental Stickers .

Source: balatro.fandom.com · verified 2026-10-27

Rarities

Jokers have four different rarities, denoting how likely they are to appear in a given run: Common (61 Jokers), Uncommon (64 Jokers), Rare (20 Jokers), and Legendary (5 Jokers). In general, higher rarity Jokers can be more powerful, but when a Joker has no direct analogue of a lower rarity, it can be difficult to determine if it is "better".

When generating Jokers at random, there is a 70% chance of generating a Common Joker, a 25% chance of generating an Uncommon Joker, and a 5% chance of generating a Rare Joker. A Legendary Joker can only appear from The Soul Spectral Card .

Source: balatro.fandom.com · verified 2026-10-27

Important Joker Terms

Jokers have a number of key terms that are vital in understanding how they work.

When Scored : The effect triggers when a card is scored. If the card is played but not scored, either from not being part of the scored poker hand or from being debuffed by a Boss Blind, the effect will not trigger.

Contains : The hand has the referenced hand as a part of it. For example, a Three of a Kind "contains" a Pair, despite scoring as a Three of a Kind. A Four of a Kind played with five cards of the same suit "contains" a Flush, and will trigger Flush Joker effects. Refer to the hand information in-game for a more detailed breakdown on which hands contain others. Notably, a Four of a Kind is not considered to "contain" Two Pair.

Is : In contrast, "poker hand is a pair" means the whole hand is classified as a pair, and the cards played don't constitute a higher-ranked hand.

When Blind is Selected: The effect triggers when you select a Blind. It will not trigger if the Blind is skipped.

In Deck : The effect depends on the remaining cards in your deck, not including cards in hand, played or discarded.

In Full Deck : This counts some attribute of your complete deck, referencing all cards whether they were drawn, played, discarded, or are held in hand.

Add : Adds a playing card to your deck permanently.

Destroy : Remove the target card. If a Joker is destroyed, no money or bonuses are gained that selling it would give.

Create : Creates a certain type of card, be it a consumable or Joker. This action always requires room for the card in question to take up.

Gains : Adds a (usually) permanent effect to the target card. This is usually referring to the Joker with the effect, though not always, as seen with Hiker.

Retrigger : This Joker will score a card again under certain conditions outlined by the Joker. This extra score will activate all effects that take place when the card scores, including effects from other Jokers, enhancements, editions, seals (besides Red Seal), and chips from the card itself.

Debuffed : This Joker and its edition can no longer trigger. It retains its full sell value (and can still be used by Swashbuckler/Temperance/etc). It can still be targeted by random effects such as Madness or Wheel of Fortune, but not by the Crimson Heart boss blind.

(also see Activation type and Activation sequence for additional information)

Source: balatro.fandom.com · verified 2026-10-27

List of Jokers

Available Jokers show as Not Discovered in the player's Collection until they are obtained in the course of an unseeded run. Most locked Jokers in the Collection show the unlock condition, and in some cases will show how close the player is to fulfilling that condition. There are also five secret Legendary Jokers that cannot be bought in the store, and get unlocked when obtained through the Soul spectral card . More information on each Joker such as the detail of their interactions and exceptions can be found on that Joker's respective page.

The Balatro Wiki sorts Jokers into seven types. In the table below, the Joker type is shown using the following symbols:

Source: balatro.fandom.com · verified 2026-10-27

Trivia

Jokers, like with every other purchasable cards, only need to be purchased once to be "discovered", even if the action is cancelled by quitting and reloading the save. Players can take advantage of this to sell their winning Jokers then buy undiscovered ones, quit to Main Menu and come back to undo the purchase while still have new Jokers discovered for their collection.

Before Balatro's first release , there was an unused Joker in the sprite sheet of early demo versions. Its name was revealed to be Chaos Theory by its artist Lumpy Touch.

Without the use of   Showman , if all available Jokers of a specific rarity are bought by the player, every Joker instance of that rarity seen in the Shop or created using   Judgement will be replaced by   Joker .

↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Ua-xugI-w

↑ https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4-DBvufkkkc

Source: balatro.fandom.com · verified 2026-10-27

Cross-check

We looked up the terms this guide relies on in an independent source. A check mark means the same term appears there; a question mark means it does not — often because the source describes the game at a higher level.

Source: en.wikipedia.org · verified 2026-10-27