Here's Our Ranking Of Every MTG Set Released This Year

Magic: The Gathering - All 2026 Sets, Ranked Published Nov 10, 2026, 6:06 AM EST Niall (pronounced Ny-ul) is a UK-based writer who has been writing about Magic: The Gathering throughout his entire career, with everything from new set breakdowns and individual deck guides to offering his opinions on the state of formats and the general direction of the iconic TCG. Niall also has a rich history covering triple-A releases, sports games, and PC hardware. Sign in to your TheGamer account Another year has come and gone for Magic: The Gathering, at least from a set perspective, with seven total releases from Lorywn Eclipsed up to Star Trek. Not all sets are created equal, and fan reaction has ranged from jubilation to disdain, but each set has had positives; the question is whetherthe negatives outweighed them. Our ranking considers each release's full product lineup, fan reception, draftability and impact across formats, and, finally, the set's mechanical and artistic design. With that tidied up, here are our Magic: The Gathering set rankings for 2026 as we now turn our attention to what's to come from Magic in 2027. 7 Star Trek Some Universes Are Better Left Unexplored Recency bias may be playing a role here, but Star Trek has too many problems to be anywhere else on this list right now. Magic purists have plenty to dislike, from artwork that is mostly just "character standing and maybe pointing" to the fact that this set seemed like a prime Edge of Eternities 2 opportunity, but Star Trek ultimately just doesn't have the chops to compete with any other release this year. The Good Starting with what Star Trek gets right, it's a fun set to draft, and even if you don't have a deep understanding of the lore and universe, the mechanics are fairly sound and do come across like an EOE 2, if that helps. The prerelease experience was good for us, and attendance didn't noticeably dip, although reports from around the world suggest otherwise. The Commander precon decks for Star Trek are pretty good, with We Are The Borg among the better decks released this year, as is Landing Party, though the remaining two decks are a little unremarkable without considerable upgrades. The Bad The first thing Star Trek gets hugely wrong is its stock availability and its proximity to Reality Fracture. This set shouldn't have been released just six weeks after a capstone set that ended the years-long story arc for in-universe lore. On top of that, product availability was at its worst for this set, and while every set has had some sort of problem this year, every Star Trek product has had confirmed issues in some regions, and the Beginner Box was even canceled because things got so bad. Thematically, the art and lore behind Star Trek just don't mesh as well as many other Universes Beyond sets. This issue will come up again for a set released this year, but it came as a slight shock to us, given we actually thought EOE paved the way for Star Trek to feel at home in the Magic universe. Alas, this wasn't the case, and criticisms of the art are well-founded, not because it isn't high quality and gorgeous to look at, but because it isn't what we've come to expect from Magic artwork. Finally, outside the draft experience, very few cards look set to make a big impact in formats like Standard, Commander, or Modern. Time may change that, but for now, it doesn't look promising. 6 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles A Chance Worth Taking, But It Didn't Pay Off Even hardcore TMNT fans probably struggled to see how this property would translate to a game like Magic: The Gathering, and the answer ended up being: not very well. However, the TMNT set explored some interesting cards and concepts, including the introduction of mechanics like Sneak, an upgrade on Ninjitsu that may return in Kamigawa next year. Still, there wasn't enough effort to bring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the world of Magic; instead, this set fell into the common Universes Beyond trap of putting the property first, not the game of Magic. The Good While it won't be winning any awards for being the most powerful or outright best Commander precon of the year, the Heroes in a Half Shell deck tried something different and told a thematic story within itself, and in truth had more effort put into it than the rest of the set combined, from a lore standpoint. This makes it super fun to play with, and we're happy to leave it untouched as a result. This is also another fun drafting set, and while our prerelease experience wasn't quite as fun because of poor local attendance, we've since enjoyed a lot of drafting via MTG Arena instead. Finally, Turtle Team-Up was a great idea for a new product to focus on co-op play as a way to get new players into Magic, and everything in this kit could then be used to get a new player into the one-vs-one version of the game, too. The Bad Pretty much everything else about TMNT was bad. Its impact on the game and across formats has been minimal. Art-wise, so many of the cards are once again just character portraits, and while that may suit fans of the property, it isn't good enough for Magic. On top of this, the Kevin Eastman-signed headliner cards felt like a cash grab to push collector booster boxes. TMNT should be used as the poster child for why animated kids' shows should stick to Secret Lair drops and not become the centerpiece of an entire Magic set. 5 Marvel Super Heroes Better Than Spider-Man, That's Something, Right? Marvel Super Heroes was a set with a lot of hype, and that ultimately became its downfall: it didn't quite land with players and was over-marketed, overstocked, and finds itself classed as overrated. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though, because lessons have been learned from this and the Spider-Man set, and the next Marvel set, Darkhold Destiny, will follow a Magic-first design. This means a brand-new story created just for Magic, including a brand-new character, helping put players' fears to rest, for now, that future Marvel Universe Beyond products will improve. The Good All four Marvel Super Heroes Commander precons are pretty solid, both out of the box and with some upgrades. We're particularly big fans of Avengers Assemble and Doom Previews. The collectibility of this set is a positive, with certain card art styles being very eye-catching, and the continuation of the Infinity Stones slowly releasing in MTG means the set carried a high initial value, which was good for players who were looking to buy product early and ditch their "valuable" cards to keep the essentials they needed or wanted for projects. The Bad This set truly started the debate about legendary creatures and the insane number of them in Universes Beyond sets. As a result, the sets' draftability suffered, and their fairly weak archetypes didn't help either. While some Marvel cards have penetrated other formats, like Hawkeye's Bow, some went too far, like Fantasticar, and required an immediate ban. Scalping and the general value of sealed products were also issues, which created a bubble of sorts. For example, Draft Night bundles were hard to find at MSRP in a few stores we visited around launch, yet barely two months later at MagicCon Amsterdam, they were selling for almost half MSRP as retailers tried to offload stock. Finally, for a property with so many well-known household names, there were simply too many big names missing from the set, and lesser-known characters made up quite a large portion of the card, which then let players know that their favorite characters are likely coming in future sets, or have arrived in one of the 10 or so Secret Lair bundles that have dropped since Marvel Super Heroes launched. 4 Lorwyn Eclipsed A Worthy Return To A Fan Favorite Plane Kicking off the year was Lorwyn Eclipsed, which was bumped from 2025 due to issues with the Spider-Man set. That meant this year got off to a very strong start, and despite releasing back in January, there's still plenty of love and fondness for the settoday. The lead-up to the launch of Lorwyn Eclipsed also set a new standard for how in-universe sets are handled now compared to Universes Beyond, and we're big fans of the approach. The Good Lorwyn Eclipsed has a great draft experience and prerelease window, and while the failure of Spider-Man would have helped this, Lorwyn still had to show up and get the job done, and it did. Both of Lorwyn's Commander precons are solid, but we'd argue Dance of the Elements is one of the stronger precons in recent memory when you fully understand what the deck is trying to achieve and the benefit of Ashling, the Limitless' Evoke ability. The card art is fantastic, although it does still sit behind every set that outranks it, but it's light-years better than the three preceding it. Lore-wise, the story is strong, but it would have been a little better tied into the overarching story of Jace, the Multiverse, and where we would eventually end up come Reality Fracture. By this, we mean that much of the flavor and lore was delivered outside the set, rather than directly through the cards. Finally, Lorwyn Eclipsed introduced the Draft Night product, which has become a staple for all releases and remains a great value for groups of four who want to run a draft and give the winner a prize. The Bad Lorwyn's long-term viability is poor, and by the end of 2026, its impact on Standard in particular felt quite limited, although a few cards are still hanging on as part of some popular meta decks. The upcoming Standard rotation could change this, though. The booster fun side of the card design is a little boring, and while there are some nice cards, the forced introduction of a serialized chase card is a bit nauseating, and it felt like there was no real freedom with some of the variants; i.e., the Japanese fractured foils didn't really fit the feel of the set, so why were they included? 3 The Hobbit A Very Expected Hit The return of The Lord of the Rings property to Magic as a Standard set was always going to be a hit, and The Hobbit didn't disappoint. While the set pulls from much smaller source material, that helped keep it streamlined from a lore and gameplay perspective, while still leaving fans wanting more. The Good The Hobbit is up there as one of our favorite drafting experiences yet, and the set's smaller size played a big role. This also explains why we didn't like other aspects of the set, but it really worked for the Limited format and made for a brilliant prerelease. Art in this set is incredible, and fits both the Magic and Tolkien feel perfectly, which isn't often the case with Universes Beyond sets. This set also beefed up some exciting creature types like Dwarves, Goblins, and Dragons, making it fun to build decks exclusively from the set while also benefiting decks across a bunch of formats, especially Commander. The product lineup for The Hobbit was great, with the Scene Boxes being among the first of their kind to be worth collecting. Finally, this set opened the door for the return of some very powerful reprints, with Mox Amber among the Eternal cards released in the set. While not confirmed, this feels like a test run for future Mox cards and other iconic Vintage cards to return as reprints, which would hopefully bring market prices down and make them easier to collect overall. The Bad The Hobbit is a smaller Standard set, which made it feel light on cards and didn't really give it a chance to have much impact on Standard or Commander, despite the size being a plus for drafting. We didn't need a gold, numbered Smaug card, and the controversy this card ended up causing with prices and sales just proves that serialized products don't belong anywhere near Magic: The Gathering. 2 Secrets Of Strixhaven It's Never Felt So Good To Go Back To School Despite the fact that we've only been to Strixhaven twice, we're going to call it a pretty iconic setting, with School of Mages being a very popular set and introducing mechanics that are still heavily used in-game today, while Secrets of Strixhaven was the penultimate in-universe set before the resolution of the Jace storyline that has been brewing for years. The Good Secrets of Strixhaven is one of the best sets for lore in recent years, with the surprise drop of "Off the Record" which kickstarted the intrigue over what Reality Fracture would eventually become, and this strong storytelling continued not only in the podcast episodes but into the cards themselves. This is supported by truly phenomenal art throughout the set, with no card looking out of place, and it is a set well worth collecting for art alone. The draft experience was utterly brilliant thanks to the decision to include the Strixhaven College seeded pack in each kit, meaning you already had some direction regarding your draft deck, but a downside to this is that you often couldn't guarantee you would get your chosen college if you did have a preference. When it comes to bonus sheets, the Mystical Archive is our favorite, and it returned even better this time around, with the Japanese and Silver Scroll variants making for some huge chase cards that can freshen up decks across Eternal formats. Card variants across the board felt better suited to Strixhaven and didn't default to forced template designs. Each variant, from the field notes to the borderless showcase cards, all tied in perfectly with the feel of the set. We got a Commander precon for each of the Strixhaven Colleges, and none of them were bad. Each one leaned into a unique Magic strategy, and the prices made them easy to collect without breaking the bank. Better still, if you like to upgrade precons, these decks made it easy to raise the power level, but they were great for casual play right out of the box. The Bad If we're being extremely nitpicky, the introduction of the Codex Bundle has triggered a ripple effect of in-universe sets, now including a limited, premium bundle that feels unnecessary. OG gift bundles are still used for Universes Beyond, so either adopt these back into in-universe sets, or don't bother, but don't start releasing more limited products that are just going to be the target of scalpers. 1 Reality Fracture The End & A New Beginning A great Magic set brings lore, art, and gameplay together and leaves you with no doubt that what you're experiencing is going to be remembered for a long time. Sets of Strixhaven would likely have topped this list in any other year, but Reality Fracture had a huge set of expectations to live up to, and still somehow overdelivered. The Good Everything. No, really, everything about Reality Fracture delivered in a way that only a capstone Magic set can. Everything felt important, everything felt meaningful, and when we finally got our hands on the cards, the gameplay experience was unmatched in the year of 2026. From the incredible drafting experience, which was enhanced by the Echoed Pairs mechanic, which could see normal Play Boosters pop off with some big cards, or just the playability of the set in the Limited format, it was easily up there as one of the best prerelease events ever. While the lore leading up to Reality Fracture was stellar, the story of the set itself tied everything together beautifully, and while Jace may no longer be around to terrorize the Multiverse, we're left with so many exciting story threads that still need to be tied up as we move into the next phase of the Magic universe. Art in the set is perfect again, but we especially have to call out the Shattered Mirror cards and the borderless showcase Planeswalkers, which can be brought together to create complete works of art while still working incredibly well as standalone cards. Gameplay-wise, many cards have gone straight into Standard meta decks, and Commander also got a huge dump of exciting new cards to play with, many of which came in the single precon that launched with the set. Overall, Reality Fracture just had everything you could possibly want from an in-universe Magic set, and now Wizards of the Coast has the monumental task of following that up with Nauctis early next year. The Bad For the sake of fairness, the Secret Lair bundle was this set's Codex Bundle, and it was very poorly handled despite some cool exclusive card art, so that can't be ignored. Franchise Magic: The Gathering Original Release Date August 5, 1993 Publisher Wizards of the Coast Designer(s) Richard Garfield