Next year Magic: The Gathering will return to Lorwyn, Strixhaven, Middle-earth, the Marvel Universe—and space, with a Star Trek set

Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise, as seen in Magic: The Gathering

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

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 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.

The Preview Panel at MagicCon: Atlanta - YouTube

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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.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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