In November of 2025, Wizards of the Coast unexpectedly laid out a blueprint for 2026’s ban structure. The first of these announcements took place on February 9th, bringing changes to Commander, Historic, and Timeless. Now, we’ve got our next announcement on the horizon, scheduled for Monday, March 23rd.
Outside of these changes, when the last ban announcement surfaced, Magic’s formats were, for better or worse, all relatively balanced. That really hasn’t changed since then, but a new Magic Online format does have many players speculating about potential unbans. With Modern unbanning talk sweeping the community, here are our predictions on everything that might occur this Monday.
Plausible Unbans
As more and more No Banlist Modern Challenges have taken place over the past few weeks, we’re starting to see a stark contrast in just how much each currently banned card is played. While cards like Chrome Mox, Sensei’s Divining Top and Eye of Ugin appear to be banned for good reason, a lot of banned Modern cards are seeing no notable success in the format at all.
Of all the cards to make zero top eight appearances in these events, Punishing Fire seems one of the most likely to see an unban. Originally banned alongside Wild Nacatl back in 2011, Punishing Fire was part of a nasty two-card combo with Grove of the Burnwillows. Together, these two cards essentially offered infinite removal over the course of the game.
While this combo is quite powerful, Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows are far too slow for Modern’s current speed. Two-mana removal spells often won’t cut it against Ocelot Pride, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, and other top aggressive threats. Late game options for aggressive decks have become more powerful, too, with creatures like Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury offering a recurring win condition. Considering all this, pseudo three-mana Shock seems unlikely to keep up.
In a similar vein, Umezawa’s Jitte suffers from some of the same flaws in format speed. Jitte’s ability to punish small creature decks used to be quite problematic, but paying four mana to cast and equip the card arguably makes Jitte too slow for its payoff. Removal spells like Solitude and Fatal Push are also more efficient than ever, making it that much harder to connect with your equipped creature.
Even the setup cost for Birthing Pod is extremely high by today’s standards. Paying a total of four mana and four life to get your first activation is a lot, and that’s not even factoring in the other resources needed. Creature combo is basically extinct in current Modern, too, meaning that a Birthing Pod unbanning could add some additional variety.
Getting into some riskier choices, Hypergenesis and Bridge from Below unbans have become common talking points. Both cards can singlehandedly take over games in their own right, but there’s a strong argument that they can still be unbanned. While the upside of putting huge creatures into play with Hypergenesis is high, the game plan seems less consistent and reliable than Living End. Bridge from Below, on the other hand, could help give Dredge decks new life in the format, and is probably fine with Hogaak, Arisen Necroplis out of the picture.
While we wouldn’t expect all five of these cards to be unbanned in Modern at the same time, we wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were made legal on this coming Monday.
A Problem Waiting to Happen
While we ultimately feel that the risk of unbanning cards like Bridge from Below and Hypergenesis is low enough, some of the potential unbannings being discussed are too risky. Despite these cards performing poorly in No Ban Modern events, the inherent bias in using this data makes them seem much less offensive than their potential suggests. All No Ban Modern tells us is what the most problematic banned cards are, not what banned cards would be fine in current Modern.
Of all the commonly discussed cards for an unban, Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath seems the most problematic. The ramp ability of Uro, combined with the life gain buffer, makes the legend strong just at face value. While this could help slower strategies get a stronger foothold in Modern, the card could also provide a meaningful upgrade to Amulet Titan, a deck that’s already causing some banning concerns. Field of the Dead spawns similar concerns for us, giving Amulet Titan and other lands decks endless inevitability. Without No Banlist Modern’s lightning-fast combo decks to stop them, these inevitability machines could do a lot more damage.
The fast combo nature of No Banlist Modern has also made a few other popular unban choices seem a bit less powerful than they really are. Dig Through Time is a massive example of this, as the card threatens to make some Modern combo decks too consistent. Krark-Clan Ironworks, alongside causing massive tournament logistics issues, could also be fast enough in an 8-Mox world to cause problems.
Deathrite Shaman, another popular unban choice, is also a concern for us due to homogeneity issues. While the card doesn’t stick out from a power level perspective, it could make graveyard-focused decks impossible to play. Between its hybrid mana value and its mass versatility, there will be little reason for green or black decks not to play this card, which could cause the death of multiple archetypes.
What About Bans?
While most of the MTG community is focused on what could be unbanned in Modern, there is always the chance that something could be leaving one of MTG’s many formats on Monday. That said, we would personally be surprised if anything did.
Modern, in its current state, is extremely well-balanced. While Boros Energy does look a bit ahead of the rest, we’ve already seen that story be overturned once before in the last Modern Pro Tour. Besides, if cards are unbanned in Modern, that in itself will be a massive shakeup.
As a whole, Standard also feels pretty healthy, making bans very unlikely. While it is true that the win rates of Izzet Prowes and Mono-Green Landfall are pretty high, neither archetype is overly dominant. Lessons and Multicolor Rhythm shells still see lots of play and put up consistent results, too, so no one deck seems too strong.
Similarly, Izzet Prowess is still very strong in Pioneer, but the results aren’t too concerning. The rise in Abzan Greasefang decks since the printing of Formidable Speaker has seemingly loosened Izzet’s grip on the format. So, even if Cori-Steel Cutter is on the watchlist, a ban this time around seems doubtful.
For Legacy, even if there’s reason to believe the format isn’t exactly “healthy,” there isn’t a clear ban or two to solve this. Instead, we’d need to see a major shakeup with a bunch of bans, which isn’t likely considering that the metagame is at least balanced.
Pauper is in a similar boat, where Mono-Red Madness and Mono-Blue Terror are arguably both too strong, but either getting nerfed is doubtful. There’s also a risk that multiple bans could help other decks like Golgari Gardens and Spy Combo spike to unhealthy numbers.
All in all, if we’re expecting anything, it’ll be Modern unbans. So make sure to keep your eyes peeled for an announcement on Monday, March 23rd at 11 a.m. EST.
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