Victory conditions are the requirements that decide who wins a game of Star Wars: Rebellion. They differ for the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, and each side must take or destroy the opposing headquarters and capture and hold the opposing side's two top characters.

Conditions for each side

The manual states that beating the opponent in battle and raising popular support help a player but are not themselves what wins the game.

• The Alliance must capture and hold the Imperial headquarters at Coruscant, and must capture and hold Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.
• The Empire must find and destroy Alliance headquarters, and must take and keep both Mon Mothma and Luke Skywalker as prisoners.

The multiplayer setup screen describes the same standard game as capturing the system that holds the opposing base plus the opposing side's two leaders. The Abduction mission is the mission that captures a chosen enemy character; the manual notes that characters can also be captured when their mission is foiled or when they try to leave a blockaded system.

Headquarters-only victory

When starting a game, a player can choose the Headquarters Only Victory option. In that case the Alliance only needs to capture Coruscant and the Empire only needs to destroy Alliance headquarters, with no key characters to capture. The manual says this can shorten a game considerably. The same choice is offered to the host of a head-to-head game under the name HQ Only Victory.

Once a game has begun, the setting cannot be checked from the game, so the manual suggests recording it in the name of the saved game.

Capturing and holding

The manual stresses that meeting a condition once is not enough, because the condition must still hold when the others are met. Winning requires all of the conditions to be satisfied.

• Key characters must be captured and held. A captured character can be freed by a Rescue mission, so the manual advises keeping prisoners in a well-defended system or on the move.
• Coruscant must be captured and then held until the other conditions are also met.
• Alliance headquarters must first be found, and the manual notes that the Alliance can move it. Its suggested approach is to scout unexplored systems with Reconnaissance missions, then keep probing with Espionage missions, and then blockade of the system once the headquarters is located. The headquarters is destroyed either by bombarding it and then invading the system, or by destroying the system with the Death Star. Unlike Coruscant, a destroyed Alliance headquarters cannot be retaken.

Because the opponent must capture two key characters, the manual advises basing Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader, Mon Mothma and Luke Skywalker on well-defended systems and sending decoys with them on missions.

Checking progress

The agent droid's Objectives option (listed as Game Objectives in the agent menu description) opens a window showing the state of all three victory conditions for both sides. When a key character is captured, the wording changes; for example, a line reading Defend Luke or Capture Vader becomes Luke Captured or Vader Captured. A keyboard command for the same window is also listed.