Wizards of the Coast shakes up what sets are legal in which formats
Wizards of the Coast has recently released its 2025 release calendar. It features 3 Universes Beyond sets as well as 3 in-world Magic sets. With that new release schedule, there has been a shift in set design as well as all major Constructed formats. Starting in 2025, new Universes Beyond booster sets will be legal in all Constructed formats. That means there will be six new booster sets in 2025 with identical legality.
The change to Universe Beyond achieves three goals according to the Wizards of the Coast reveal.
- Newer players that come into Magic through Universes Beyond can be properly pathed into smaller formats where their decks have a chance to be competitive.
- Veteran players should appreciate a reduction in “straight-to-Modern” sets that have created more churn in that format than typical sets do.
- The design team gets to do what they’re best at—they have decades of reps making sets built for this “default” use case.
As is, any new players with a want to try 60-card Constructed Magic with their new Universes Beyond cards would have had to gone straight to Modern to play. That not only could be confusing with so many possibilities but also will now be more likely to see “their” set being played and also other cards and mechanics that can boost their gameplay.
Universes Beyond sets will go through the more typical lifecycle of booster sets, with a lot of Limited play at release and contributions to each Constructed format in ratios appropriate to the size of the format, thus reducing the churn of the larger nonrotating formats.
Details and Clarifications
- This change is purely forward facing and pertains to sets releasing in 2025 and later. The format legality of existing sets, such as The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth and Assassin’s Creed, is not changing.
- This change was anticipated, and all products were developed with these targets in mind.
- Although the main content of these booster releases will be legal in all formats, they will contain products (like Commander decks) and cards (like Special Guests) that are not part of the main sets and will be Eternal legal (i.e., legal only in Commander, Legacy, and Vintage for new Commander and/or Jumpstart content) or wherever the cards are otherwise legal (for reprint content). This matches the structure of recent sets like Duskmourn: House of Horror or Bloomburrow.
- Standard rotation in 2025 will occur with the release of Edge of Eternities .
Standard Rotation Changes in 2027
While 2025 Standard rotation will happen at the expected time as mentioned above, Wizards has recently stated that they’ll be moving the time of the annual Standard rotation to coincide with the first set of the calendar year starting in 2027. There will be no rotation in 2026 as they gear up for this change. Standard will continue to encompass three years’ worth of sets in this new model.
The impetus for this change is purely for ease of communication. For example, as of the first release of 2027, card sets released in 2025, 2026, and 2027 will be legal in Standard, and that pattern continues seamlessly into the future. The days of the “large fall set” being the reset point for the format are behind us; that pattern began back in 1995 as a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but as they’ve been releasing similarly sized sets throughout the year for a while now, they’ve found there’s nothing special about the fall. So, Wizards is opting for a more logical system overall. Note that this means Bloomburrow and Duskmourn: House of Horror will both be legal for slightly shorter than originally anticipated.
