It’s a new year, and plenty of things are coming to the world’s most popular trading card game in 2025. Magic: The Gathering in 2025 has 6 main (or tentpole) sets coming out for standard, along with Innistrad Remastered. We’ll be breaking all of it down so that you know what’s new, what you can expect, when you can find it, and more.
Table of Contents:
New Magic: The Gathering 2025 Features
Headliners
Japan Showcase Cards
Secret Lair Changes
Chaos Vault
Distributing Mechanically Unique Secret Lair Cards
Magic:The Gathering Sets of 2025
Innistrad Remastered
Aetherdrift
Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Final Fantasy (Universes Beyond)
Edge of Eternities
Marvel: Spiderman Set (Universes Beyond)
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Universes Beyond)
New Magic: The Gathering in 2025 Features
Headliners
Starting with Innistrad Remastered, 2025 premieres Headliners – a new part of the ongoing booster fun initiative. This means a single card from the set has been given special treatments and illustrations to be unique. This can include serialization, like we see with the first two Headliners of the year in Edgar Markov and The Aetherspark.
Japan Showcase Cards
Continuing from the end of last year, Japanese Showcase Cards will be in at least some of 2025’s sets, after debuting in Duskmourn. These are a few (so far 10 each time) cards that have been given alternate art by Japanese artists, and appear only in collector boosters. They appear in about 10% of collector boosters, and 10% of those will have the Japan Showcase exclusive fracture foiling.
Secret Lair Changes to Magic: The Gathering in 2025
Wizards Secret Lair program is seeing changes this year as they attempt to innovate with it, and address ongoing problems.
Chaos Vault
On the experimental side of things, Wizards introduced the Chaos Vault this year, where they promise to have unusual items, at unusual times. This is where we’re going to see some of the product innovation it appears, and we have seen a couple of things so far. So far they have experimented with a foil only drop, and changing the way they handle basic land drops in the first two this year.
Distributing Mechanically Unique Secret Lair Cards
Without The List to put Universes Within versions of mechanically unique secret lair cards, Wizards has worked out a few ideas on how to fulfill the promise of making these cards available outside of ordering via the Secret Lair website. While reprints in sets are an option, another is via promo distribution, such as they are doing with the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves secret lair cards.
The bigger experiment though, is that Wizards of the Coast will be allowing game stores to sell secret lairs that have mechanically unique cards. This won’t solve all the issues people have, but should make them more available.
Magic: The Gathering Sets of 2025
2025 will have 6 standard legal, tentpole set releases, with three of them being universes beyond sets. Additionally, Innistrad Remastered will be coming out, though its cards will retain whatever current legality they have, much like they have for past remastered sets.
The reduction in the number of sets released this year to ‘only’ 6 has meant that they have decided to delay the release of the previously announced set codenamed Wrestling. Announced back in 2023 as part of their longterm showing, Wrestling is a return to the plane of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, a celtic inspired plane of duality. It was scheduled to release in 2025, but now will instead be the first set released in 2026.
Innistrad Remastered
Release date: January 24
The first release of 2025 is magic’s latest remaster set, this time taking us to the horror plane of Innistrad. Like past remaster sets, this is all reprints, and it’s of cords that have ties to the plane of Innistrad.
One small change here is that the card’s don’t need to have been printed in an Innistrad set before. These cards do need to fit the set, and either depict Innistrad, or appear to be cards that could have been printed there in the past. The most notable reprint introduced in this way is Hermit Druid, a card that hasn’t been printed in a paper set since 1995, outside of an appearance on The List.
Headliner: Edgar Markov
The Headliner program starts with Innistrad Remastered and we see that Edgar Markov gets to appear in several different ways. In any pack he can be in a standard, retro border, or fang treatment (from Innistrad: Crimson Vow). Exclusively in collector boosters though he can be in a secret lair style movie poster, as a serialized card out of 500.
Aetherdrift
Release Date: February 14
Magic’s first attempt at a ‘travelogue’ set, Aetherdrift is Magic’s take on racing, in particular the death race area. It involves the planes of Avishkar (formerly known as Kaladesh), Amonkhet, and Muraganda, as ten teams race across them representing each two color pairing.
The set leans into its themes of racing and features a large number of vehicles, and mounts, with new mechanics designed to further and complement the theme. A number of callbacks, and cameo mechanics to past visits to Amonkhet and Avishkar are also present, as well as the first time we’re seeing more of Murganda.
Headliner: The Aetherspark
The Headliner for Aetherdrift is the grand prize of the race itself, The Aetherspark, the first ever Planeswalker card with another type. The headliner version of The Aetherspark is like Edgar Markov, in that it is a borderless, serialized (out of 500), double rainbow foiled card only findable in collector boosters. This version also has distinct art, though it’s much more normal than the poster art of Edgar Markov.
First Place Foils
Coming in Box Toppers and Finish Line Bundles, First Place Foils are a new type of foiling process that goes heavy on the . To get one of these, you need to buy a Play or Collector booster box, or the Finish Line Bundles. The special packs they come in will have 2 cards, 1 of 10 basic lands in First Place Foil, and 1 of 127 Rare or Mythic Rares in the set.
Commander Decks
There are 2 Commander decks for Aetherdrift, a marked decline from the normal 4 we have seen recently. They are Living Energy (a green/blue/red Energy focused deck), and Eternal Might (a white/blue/black Zombie focused deck).
Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Release Date: April 11
A decade has passed since we last saw the mighty plane of Tarkir, and we return to it in Tarkir: Dragonstorm. We’ve seen various dragons appearing in odd spots in sets (like in Bloomburrow) because of the Dragonstorm, and it appears here we might learn some of what is going on.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm will take a best of both approach in regards to what parts of the first block it will capture: there are going to be dragons, and there will be the wedge-aligned clan factions. We can also expect the return of Sarkhan Vol (desparked as of March of the Machines Aftermath), and more ominously Ugin, who retains his spark but has left his guardianship of Nicol Bolas for some reason.
Headliner: Mox Jasper
Magic's newest Mox will be appearing in Tarkir: Dragonstorm as the headliner. In collector boosters, serialized retro border rainbow double foils will be available of it. There is also going to be a boosterfun version of the dragon Mox, as well as it's normal version.
Commander Decks
There will be 5 Tarkir Commander decks, each aligning with one of the clans.
Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy
Release Date: June 13
The first of the direct to standard Universes Beyond sets will be the Final Fantasy set releasing in June. This set will feature aspects of games all across the Final Fantasy series, with some favorite characters confirmed already to be represented. Cloud, Terra, Lightning, and Noctis, will all be in the set, alongside summons, monsters, chocobos, and more in the set.
Headliner: TBA
We don’t know what the Headliner for Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy will be, or even if the Headliner program will be used with Universes Beyond sets like this one.
Commander Decks
There are 4 commander decks for Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy. These decks are each based on a particular Final Fantasy game. The decks are:
- Revival Trance (Based on Final Fantasy 6 led by Terra, and will be White/Black/Red.)
- Limit Break (Based on Final Fantasy 7 led by Cloud, and will be White/Red/Green.)
- Counter Blitz (Based on Final Fantasy 10 led by Tidus, and will be White/Blue/Green.)
- Scions & Soulcraft (Based on Final Fantasy 14 led by Y'shtola, and will be White/Blue/Black)
Edge of Eternities
Release Date: August 1
For the first time, Magic: The Gathering is heading out into the blind eternities, that space in the multiverse between planes. Edge of Eternities will be a science fantasy set, this will involve Magic’s take on the space opera genre as it takes place beyond the edge of the known multiverse in heretofore unknown Sothera system.
Headliner: Sothera, The Supervoid
We don’t know much of anything about Sothera, merely that it was announced to be the headliner card when they were showing off future sets, and teasing 2025 content.
Commander Decks: TBA
We don’t know what Commander Decks will be released along with Edge of Eternities.
Marvel’s Spider-Man
Release Date: Final Quarter Of 2025
Set to release sometime in September or later, Marvel’s Spider-Man will be the first of several Marvel sets releasing over the next few years. As the set’s name implies, this one will be focused on Spider-Man and will be based on the original comics, not the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the webslinger. Like Final Fantasy, it will be standard legal, and distributed in normal boosters.
Headliner: TBA
We don’t know what the Headliner for Marvel’s Spider-Man will be, or even if the Headliner program will be used with Universes Beyond sets like this one.
Commander Decks
In an odd reveal during an investor's call, Hasbro revealed there will be no Commander Decks released for Marvel's Spider-Man.
Avatar: The Last Air Bender Universes Beyond Set
Release Date: November 21st, 2025
During MagicCon: Chicago, the final set for 2025 was announced, though details on it remain scarce. We have a release date, and know that it will be based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, but the set name is yet to be specified.
Headliner: TBA
We don’t know what the Headliner for Avatar: The Last Airbender will be, or even if the Headliner program will be used with Universes Beyond sets like this one.
Commander Decks
We don't know what Commander Decks there will be, or even if it will have commander decks.
A longtime lover of speculative fiction, in almost all its forms, Don joined TechRaptor in 2014 on a whim sending in an application as he was looking for… More about Don
