Next year Magic: The…
During a preview panel at MagicCon: Atlanta, Wizards of the Coast revealed most of the 2026 lineup for Magic: The Gathering. It’s looking like a year dominated by returns to existing settings—with two popular planes from Magic’s multiverse, and two Universes Beyond crossovers enjoying comebacks—though we’ll also be getting a Star Trek set and something called Reality Fractures as well.
Beginning with Universes Beyond, while it was already known that the current Spider-Man set would only be the first dip in the Marvel waters for Magic, we didn’t know exactly what corner of the Marvel Universe we’d visit next. Now we do. June will bring a set called Marvel Super Heroes that features the Avengers and various Avenger-adjacent characters like the Fantastic Four, Squirrel Girl, the Heroes For Hire, and Wolverine, as well as villains like Killmonger, MODOK, and Loki.
The next return is a less-expected one, with The Hobbit double-dipping on Middle-earth after the success of the Lord of the Rings expansion. Expect Smaug and Bilbo and alternate takes on characters who already featured in the Tales of Middle-earth set like Gandalf and Gollum in August.
The Star Trek cards coming in November represent a much broader look at a setting than those two, covering everything Trek-related from the original series up to the currently ongoing Strange New Worlds. The spaceship mechanics introduced in Edge of Eternities will get a workout with cards for the Starship Enterprise and no doubt a host of other craft. One more Universes Beyond set was mentioned for March, but it remains unannounced as yet.
For fans who prefer the Magic multiverse, 2026 starts strong with Lorwyn Eclipsed, a return to the plane that debuted in 2007. Lorwyn’s inspired by Celtic mythology, full of giants and faeries, with a light-and-darkness theme that’ll be fully explored in transforming double-faced cards. That one’s the first set for the year, due out on January 23.
Secrets of Strixhaven follows in April, returning to the magical university from Strixhaven: School of Mages, and detailing a little more of the larger plane around it as previous students graduate and, I assume, end up working in retail and living in squalid sharehouses. But with wizards.
The storyline running through both of those sets will climax in October with an event set that WotC is being fairly tight-lipped about, saying only that it’s called Reality Fractures and will bring to a close the “Metronome” plot that began back in Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
The preview panel closed with one more return being revealed, with the announcement of a holiday release coming on December 5 of this year that will bring back Final Fantasy for another round of cards that will probably sell out instantly, if not faster. Cards based on the first Final Fantasy’s boss battle against Garland in the Chaos Shrine and a whole bundle of chocobos will doubtless be less divisive than the addition of cards featuring Dwight from The Office.
