MTG Arena April 2024 Event Calendar – Schedule and Formats

Last updated on March 31, 2024

Time Warp (Strixhaven Mystical Archive) | Illustration by Dominik Mayer

Though more formats often equal more fun, MTG Arena, unfortunately, launches new events and features so quickly that it can be confusing to keep track of all the things going on. Don’t worry though, we’re here for you! If you bookmark this page and check back every once in a while, we’ll keep you updated on events, formats, and rotation so that you can plan what to do ahead of time.

There are lots of events to take part in in MTGA and they come up with new ones pretty often. While WotC has a calendar on its website with events, not everything is there and the general consensus is that it’s not the easiest or the most user-friendly experience. That’s why we’ve compiled that information here in one easy spot, that’s hopefully a lot easier to digest!

Current Events (April 2024)

Event tables are updated on Fridays

Evergreen Events

Upcoming Events (April 2024)

Past Events

Choose Events Strategically

Once Upon a Time | Illustration by Matt Stewart

You might be asking yourself, “why bother?” Well, the reason is simple: unless you spend a lot of money, you’ll have to manage your gold carefully while playing different game modes. The cost of these events varies, but if we take the Quick Draft (formerly known as Ranked Draft, since April 2020) as an example, you’ll have to spend 5,000 gold to participate. For a casual player who won around 3 to 4 games every day, it would take about 3 to 4 days to save up 5,000 gold even if you got 750 gold quests all the time.

If you’re trying to climb the ranked ladder, it’s important to have cards that have synergy. The best way to do this is to join the right drafts that have the cards you need to add to your collection. It’s also wise to think ahead while building your decks because there’s something called “Standard rotation” that you should keep in mind.

This might sound like too much of a hassle, but you’ll have to manage your resources if you want to expand your collection. Granted, most of the events don’t cost that much. They’re usually around either 1,000 gold or 100 to 200 gems and if you can manage to get some wins, you’ll have the chance to add more cards to your collection.

You should also be aware of the match structure: traditional drafts are played in best-of-three (BO3) format, so you’ll have to spend a much longer time on those compared to ranked drafts which are best-of-one (BO1). Take a look at our ultimate guide to drafting for a more in-depth analysis.

What Are the Rewards for Participating in Events on the MTG Arena Schedule?

The rewards for each event vary but often include gold, gems, booster packs, cosmetics, and in some cases, individual card rewards or exclusive card styles. In an Arena Open, the prizes for Day 1 include gems and an invitation to the next event. The maximum reward in the second event of Arena Open Day 2, is $2,000 and a qualifier weekend invitation.

So take a look at what’s going on now and what’s coming up so that you can save up your gold and gems to participate.

Currently Available MTG Arena Formats

Timeless Witness (Showcase Frame) | Illustration by Deruchenko Alexander

We’ve also compiled all of the MTGA formats that are currently available in some form whether they're a consistently recurring event or an evergreen one. We've also included each format's cost, max wins/losses, max awards, and match structure associated with the format when it comes to events. If you’re a bit confused or just want some more info, jump over to the formats explained section for more details. For now, take a look:

Formats Explained

We all love playing MTG Arena, but every player wants to take things easy sometimes and try alternative game modes, especially after a series of long games. Since we’re still a long way away from custom games or lobbies for creating chaotic 4-player free-for-all mayhem (Commander, anyone?), we have to make do with the alternative events that occasionally appear on the main page.

What Are the Differences Between Constructed and Limited Events?

The difference is that for a constructed event you bring a deck that you've already built and in a limited event you'll be making your deck during the event. For Sealed and Draft (except phantom ones like Cube or Omniscience) the cards you have in your deck and sideboard are added to your collection.

Here are just some of the repeating game formats available right now:

Singleton

One of our all-time favorites, Singleton is a constructed format that forces you to build a deck without any duplicates (i.e., you can only use one copy of each card in your deck, except for basic lands). Since you can’t stack the same cards, you’ll need either a lot of synergy or a lot of brute force (i.e. power).

Draft

Telling Time | Illustration by Scott M. Fischer

The most important difference is whether you draft against players or bots.

People draft differently than bots, and if you've drafted in person, you may notice quite a difference in card picks. Pay attention to signals from your pod, but don't waste picks on cards you think the next player wants since you'll be playing against players from different pods when you're done.

There are some other note-worthy differences, so let's go through those for you.

Quick Draft

It's untimed, best of one, draft with bots and your matches are against other players, adjusted based on your tier ranking. The set rotates every two weeks. Entry fee, win/loss structure, and rewards are as small as they come for drafts that add to your collection.

Premier Draft

The entry fee and rewards for premier draft are much higher than quick draft. This is player vs. player in which you have a time limit to make each pick (it gets shorter with each card in the pack). You play BO1 either up to 7 wins or 3 losses and the card pool is typically the current set.

Traditional Draft

Traditional draft is BO3, of course, and you skip the player rankings. It's meant to emulate a draft at your LGS: you'll play a total of three matches, win or lose, and receive rewards based on how many matches you won.

Cube Draft

Cube draft works like traditional player vs. player draft, only the set of cards available to you is different, and the cards you pick won't be added to your collection. Instead of only being able to pick cards from a single set (such as a Khans of Tarkir draft), a cube draft may contain cards from several sets. The card quality will be high, yet the entry fee is low compared with non-phantom draft formats.

Omniscience

In this mode, you’ll draft a 40-card deck and begin the BO1 matches with an “omniscience” emblem, which has the following effects:

•  You may cast spells from your hand without paying their mana costs.
•  0: Add . Activate this ability only once each turn.

Aside from these effects, you also have a maximum hand size of three instead of seven.

Competitive Metagame Challenge

This is a high-risk, high-reward game mode. It offers the highest award of any other game mode with 5,000 gold and 30 packs if you can manage to win seven BO3 games. Greed may not always be good, so take care.

Brawl

Wrenn and Six | Illustration by Chase Stone

Brawl can be considered similar to the Commander format. You pick a legendary creature or planeswalker card as a commander from Standard and build your deck around it. While building your deck, you’re limited to the color(s) of your chosen commander (this goes by something known as “color identity”, which includes any activated or triggered abilities on the card as well as its mana cost). Essentially, cards in your Brawl deck can only use mana symbols that also appear on your commander. Colorless cards can, of course, be used in any deck. You’re also limited to one copy of all cards except basic lands.

Each commander starts the game face-up in its controller's command zone, and it can be cast from here for its normal cost (plus an additional two mana for each time it's been cast from the command zone) as though it were in your hand. In addition, the list of banned cards in Standard doesn’t apply here.

Historic Artisan

“Artisan” is a format that includes only uncommon and common cards and is similar to Peasant/Pauper in paper Magic. With Historic Artisan, you have access to all the sets that have been released on MTGA, including ones that have rotated out of standard. There is also a special list of cards that have been ported over from paper MTG solely for Historic purposes.

Wrap Up

Time Sieve | Illustration by Franz Vohwinkel

As an MTGA user, you're probably interested in free stuff so be sure to check out our list of codes for MTGA that get you free packs and cards.

We also have a free MTGA tracker and draft assistant that tells you what to pick during booster draft and what cards your opponent has played during the match. You'll love it, trust us. And finally, be sure to check out Draftsim's namesake draft simulator to practice drafting before you battle with the bots on MTGA.