Over the last few months, emotions have been running high in the world of Magic: The Gathering. The sorry state of current Standard, and Wizards’ refusal to fix it ahead of schedule is just one part of this. The other is the absolute deluge of Universes Beyond announcements we’ve had recently, seemingly swallowing much of what Magic once was as a game. Wherever you go in the community, these sentiments are clear. When Mark Rosewater put out a poll on Blogatog yesterday to discover the most-hyped MTG set of 2026, this point was hammered home further.
The 2026 MTG ‘Set Hype’ Poll
Mark Rosewater: Which 2026 set are you most excited about?
Via Blogatog
- Lorwyn Eclipsed: 50.1%
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 2%
- Secrets of Strixhaven: 10.8%
- Marvel Super Heroes: 9.4%
- The Hobbit: 3.4%
- Reality Fracture: 15.4%
- Star Trek: 5.6%
- I can’t pick one: 3.3%
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the 2026 MTG set poll is just how much demand there is for in-universe sets right now. A lot of players expressed concerns about the move to Universes Beyond in Standard when it was announced. Now, with a 2026 calendar that breaks the ‘half in-universe, half Universes Beyond’ rule looming, players seem to be feeling them more than ever.
What’s interesting about today’s poll results is just how much Lorwyn Eclipsed is leading by. Original Lorwyn is undeniably part of a different era of Magic. It’s been 17 years since Eventide, the last expansion set on the plane. There are many players, myself included, who weren’t playing back when it was in Standard. Heck, there are a lot of players who weren’t even alive back then. Despite this, the set is wildly outperforming both a more modern return set and a big story capstone set.
When you consider these results, it’s hard to deny the massive role that nostalgia is playing in proceedings. For some players, this is a direct nostalgia, and a longing to return to a setting they loved in the past that’s gone neglected for nearly two decades. For others, it’s more of a conceptual nostalgia. Lorwyn feels like traditional Magic: The Gathering, which is a very rare thing nowadays.
Of course, another major factor here is that we’ve actually seen spoilers for Lorwyn Eclipsed. All we’ve had from Strixhaven is a couple of art pieces, and all we’ve had from Reality Fracture is the logo. It’s hard to build hype on so little, so it’s not too surprising that Lorwyn Eclipsed vastly outperformed both. It helps that the spoilers themselves look great, too.
A Shifting Tide
That said, the results of Rosewater’s 2026 MTG set poll clearly prove that spoilers aren’t everything. We’ve also seen spoilers from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, less than two weeks ago in fact. Despite this, the set ranked dead last in the poll.
What we’re seeing here are likely the effects of Universes Beyond overload in practice. Wizards’ big announcement back at MagicCon Atlanta revealed three new Universes Beyond sets. This was swiftly followed by an eye-watering 19 Secret Lair reveals, 14 of which were based on Universes Beyond properties. The TMNT set reveal then landed two weeks later. This was after much of the MTG community had put out posts and videos complaining of Universes Beyond fatigue.
It’s just too much too quickly, in other words. While the actual cards from TMNT so far look solid, and we’ve been reassured that it’s not another last-minute readjusted set like Spider-Man, players still seem to have very little opinion of it. This is likely due to its position as the last reveal we saw, and also due to the subject matter. TMNT is significantly sillier than the other Universes Beyond sets next year. In fact, its tone has already started rubbing players the wrong way. That The Hobbit and Star Trek didn’t do much better than this definitely speaks to a broader Universes Beyond problem, mind you.
Of course, it’s important to remember that the results of a Blogatog poll don’t necessarily represent the views of the Magic community at large. As Rosewater is always saying, the constant Universes Beyond complaints on there don’t really match up with the wider data that Wizards tracks. Because of this, it’d be best not to write the 2026 Universes Beyond lineup off just yet.
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