Magic Is Still Great. Keeping Up With It Is the Hard Part.

I love Magic: The Gathering. I’m saying that first because the rest of this might sound like I don’t.

Magic was my first trading card game, played in a small town with a group of guys who seemed to have every card in the game memorized. Every mechanic, every counter. I loved Commander. I loved Standard. What I never got was enough time to enjoy what I’d bought before the next thing showed up.

That’s the problem, and in 2026 it has numbers behind it.

The calendar

Wizards of the Coast is releasing seven Magic sets this year, according to Misprint’s 2026 schedule: Lorwyn Eclipsed, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Secrets of Strixhaven, Marvel Super Heroes, The Hobbit, Reality Fracture, and Star Trek. Four of the seven are Universes Beyond crossovers, and Misprint calls it the busiest premier-set year Wizards has ever run.

The price tag

Prices are moving the wrong way too. MTGRocks reports that for 2026 sets, a Collector Booster goes from $24.99 to $26.99 and a Commander deck goes from $44.99 to $49.99. The Commander decks also lose their Collector Booster sample pack, replaced by a reference card. Wizards gave no official reason for the increase.

Two dollars on a booster doesn’t sound like much. It’s the direction that matters: more sets, higher prices, a little less in the box. It’s like a bar where the cover charge goes up every month and the band plays shorter sets.

Sitting down against the old stuff

Commander is where I had the most fun, and where I felt this the most. Four people at a table, great games, and then someone sits down with cards from way back that I’ll never get the chance to buy.

Some of that is the Reserved List: 572 cards Wizards has promised never to reprint in functionally identical, tournament-legal form, a promise made in 1996 after players pushed back on reprints devaluing older cards. Misprint puts Mishra’s Workshop at roughly $3,000 to $3,400 this year. To be fair, that’s a tiny corner of the game, and nobody needs a $3,000 land to have a good time. But a new player looking at that table can tell the game has a price of admission, and it keeps going up.

Credit where it’s due

Wizards is doing at least one thing right. The new Foundations Commander decks launch October 2: five mono-colored, 100-card decks (Angels, Artifacts, Zombies, Dragons, and Dinosaurs) at $29.99 each, aimed squarely at new players. That’s $20 under the new $49.99 price of a regular Commander deck, and each one comes with a foil mythic rare commander. That’s what a hobby does when it wants new people at the table.

The part nobody prices in

The cost isn’t just yours. When one person grabs the hot new thing, everyone else in the playgroup feels pushed to follow just to keep the games fair. The industry prices the hobby per person, but we play it as a group.

That’s what I think gets missed. I’d like to see fewer sets you feel you have to follow, more products priced like the Foundations decks, and a straight answer when prices go up.

We’ll be watching whether the Foundations decks sell, and whether the 2026 price changes hold into 2027.

Shop this: Magic: The Gathering Foundations Starter Collection