Looking Back at the 7 Hottest Magic: The Gathering Stories from 2025

Last updated on December 17, 2025

Y'shtola, Night's Blessed | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

“That's yesterday's news” is not exactly a compliment when you're in the news-writing business. Or when, like in Magic, a lot of your business model relies on hyping up the next cool thing that's just around the corner.

But it's the second half of December, folks! Time for a breather, looking back a bit, and go through this year's biggest Magic news.

We're Past Peak MTG Output

Haliya, Guided by Light | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

By the start of this decade, the most important keyword in Magic was “More.” Above all, more, more cards. Magic released both more cards (including reprints) and more new cards in 2020 than in any previous year; then broke both records in 2022, and then again in 2024.

Which in turn caused a spike of complaints among players about product fatigue, loud enough for even Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater to clearly acknowledge it that year.

But, as Mark promised, things have cooled down in 2025: This year has one of the lowest output of total cards, the number of new cards has remained stable, and a couple of the premier sets have shipped without Commander precons.

Not everything is down, though. In particular, 2025 has seen the most new cards added to Standard (a whopping 50% increase if you compare with 2023!), which was to be expected given WotC's pivot to making all premier sets Standard-legal (unlike, for example, Modern Horizons III in 2024, or Lord of the Rings in 2023, which were straight to Modern).

The other number that is starkly up is the number of cards new that can be your Commander: We've got more than 480 new, command-zone-able creatures this year, up to about 340-ish in 2024, 2023, or 2022.

Commander Brackets Changed How the Most Popular Format Talks About Power

Sol Ring | Illustration by Mike Bierek

Speaking of the Commander format, Magic's most popular format had its most impactful change in years: WotC launched the Commander Brackets, with five brackets meant to describe different gameplay experiences, plus a Game Changers list to flag high-impact cards that warp games.

As Captain Barbosa would say, the Commander brackets are not rules; more like a bunch of guidelines. Or, on a more serious note, they are WotC's attempt at stablishing a common language among commander players, to help them in their rule 0 conversation.

The new guidelines seem to have been well-received, and are a usual part of the conversation now.

The Secret Lair Queues From Hell

A lot of Secret Lairs this year were a love-hate relationship: Cards you'd love to buy… if only those $%#& queues would actually work. Which in response triggered loud calls from the Magic community to bring back print-to-demand.

2025 was also the year when Secret Lairs really jumped the shark when it came to crossovers, from SpongeBob SquarePants to The Office.

Spider-Man: The Worst Premier Set Ever?

In April, WotC announced that Marvel’s Spider-Man wouldn’t come to MTG Arena or Magic Online the way a “normal” release would. Instead, WotC announced an in-Universe “reskin” for their digital platforms, called Through the Omenpaths.

Later, we learned it would not include Commander precons.

And when Spider-Man finally arrived, it was just a big disappointment: From lack of proper drafting, to underwhelming cards, to lots and lots of spiders but nothing really cool about it.

As Tim wrote yesterday when raking the 2025 sets, everything about the upcoming Marvel Super Heroes has been tainted by the complete disaster that was Marvel's Spider-Man.

“This small-set-made-big was not just a poor outing that floundered Magic's first attempt at a Marvel cross-over,” Tim notes, “it might actually be the worst Standard set ever made.”

Izzet Shines in Standard, A Huge Year For Banned Cards

Cori-Steel Cutter | Illustration by Xabi Gaztelua

“Standard is flourishing, and there are no changes to the format with this announcement.”

That's (literally!) what WotC said by the end of March this year, when they announced that no Standard card needed banning at that point.

“Hold my beer,” said Izzet, then grabbed playset of Cori-Steel Cutters from Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and proceeded to turn Standard into a sea of Islands and Mountains.

Just three months later, Standard saw the largest number of bans in a single day… ever!

Source: WotC

So, what did Izzet do after the bans?

“Hold my beer,” it said, then invited Vivi Ornitier to the party and again became Standard's Deck to Beat.

A bit more than three months later, Standards had three more bans (for ten in total during 2025, another record!), all of them aimed at keeping Izzet in check.

And what did Izzet do?

Yeah, exactly: Just two weeks ago, it wrapped up 2025 by placing four decks in the Top 8 of the Magic World Championship…

… including both finalists!

Universes Beyond Becomes One of Magic's Core Features

Aang, Airbending Master | Illustration by Tomoyo Asatani

This is hardly news in the sense of “Breaking news that caught us totally left-field,” above all since WotC announced it loud and clear back in 2024, but 2025 is nevertheless the year in which Universes Beyond, for better or worse, became one of Magic's core features.

For starters, half of six Standard sets were Universes Beyond sets, a trend that will continue next year and, as far as we know, for the foreseeable future. After being just recurring characters (or recurring villains, depending how you feel about them…), in 2025 UB sets became part of the main cast.

Meme-ish as it may have sounded a few years ago, Cloud blocking Aang's attack while dodging a Shock from Shocker is now a thing in Magic. 

Final Fantasy Broke Every Record

At the end of the day, WotC's job is to sell cards. That's the one job every MTG set (and everybody who works at Magic…) has.

Until this year, nobody had done that job better than The Lord of the Rings.

Then Cloud and Vivi showed up, and made the Fellowship look like a bunch of wannabes: Final Fantasy outsold LotR on day one.

And as Hasbro's CEO Chris Cocks, would later reveal, they even left money on the table and couldn't print enough packs to meet demand.

Wrap Up

Accumulate Wisdom | Illustration by Gemi

2024 was the year in which WotC announced quite a few pivotal changes: They took full control Commander, most (or even all) Premier sets going forward would be Standard sets; half of those sets would be Universes Beyond IPs. There's such a thing as too much of a good thing and players were getting exhausted by too much product releasing too fast.

2025 had its fair share of surprises and it's not all home-runs, to be sure (looking at you, Spidey!). But, fun as it is to poke fun at Wizards, I think perhaps the biggest news this year is that the makers of Magic have kept their word.