Commander Brackets Beta Update – February 9, 2026

Hello, everybody! This is Gavin Verhey on behalf of the Commander Format Panel.

Today, I want to check in with you on a few big topics for Commander and talk about some changes we mentioned when looking at the format previously.

We’re going to start with a general update, followed by three major topics for this article: hybrid, brackets, and an addition to the Game Changers list. There’s also a Commander banned and restricted announcement today, which you can read more about here. That article says plenty about the two cards we’ve unbanned, so we’re going to focus on those other topics here today.

There’s plenty to get into, so let’s dive right in.

Commander in 2026

Last year, we headed into 2025 with a bit of unsure footing. A lot had happened in the prior months and the Commander Format Panel was a newly formed group. As we kick off 2026, we overall feel good about the state of Commander right now.

Between all the MagicCons, CommandFests, and other events last year, it’s clear Commander is still going strong and people are having a lot of fun with it. We’re also happy with a lot of the changes we’ve made. The Commander Brackets system has, overall, been working well (more about this in a bit), and the announcement last year unbanned a number of cards that players had questioned being on the banned list, giving deck builders more options.

That’s not to say it’s all sunshine and roses. On a micro level, there are a number of design trends we’ve seen and even provided feedback on, such as the wordiness of cards, the pace of similar effects in releases creating too many redundancies, and self-solving commanders. On the Wizards side, we’ve been trying to get more cards in front of the Commander Format Panel for feedback early, and they’ve done a great job providing notes on them.

On a macro level, one thing that is facing Commander is how, as it’s grown to become the largest format in Magic, it’s become a little one-size-fits-all—which it wasn’t originally built for. People playing Commander today are looking for so many kinds of game experiences, from extremely thematic and casual all the way to cEDH. Making sure people can find games that make them happy is a priority. The bracket system has made great strides here, and just some of the new nomenclature we’ve created has been helpful. Still, we want to look for other ways that can help people find the right kinds of games for them. What other kinds of language could we help create? This is definitely something we have an eye on.

One other thing we want to really be conscious of going into this year is the rate of change. Commander is a format that tends to take its time. People build decks and hold onto them, cards take a while to trickle into popular adoption, and players like that things aren’t changing all the time. And in the last year, we’ve had unbans, introduced the Commander Brackets system, made multiple tweaks to those brackets and the Game Changers list, and introduced a rules change for legendary Vehicles and Spacecraft (which was in motion before the Commander Format Panel was even created, but still), just to name a few.

These things were important, and we’re proud of them, but it means a lot happened in Commander within a single year that might have made things feel in motion for the format. That’s not to say that we aren’t going to make updates this year (we’ve just unbanned even more cards!) but just that we’re going to be conscious of the rate of change. So, while we want to keep up good communication, I hope that pace feels a little more relaxed this year.

Thanks to all of you for playing this format, following along, and being part of what makes it the most popular way to play Magic in the world.

Now, let’s get into some of the topics for today.

Hybrid

I’ll cut right to the chase: we are not making any change to how hybrid works in Commander today.

In our last major update in October 2025, we talked about a potential change to the hybrid mana rule. Right now, hybrid functions like an “and” in terms of color identity, where only a deck of all the colors of a hybrid card could play it. The proposed change was to go to an “or” rather than an “and,” meaning Kitchen Finks could go into a green or white deck and not just a deck with a green and white color identity. I made a video talking a lot about this change and why it’s a common ask from Magic design. You can watch that video here if you’re interested. This has caused plenty of discussion ever since.

When we asked about it, we asked for your feedback. And we got tons of it. I alone have spent hours watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading articles, and scrolling social media. Opinions among Commander Format Panel members have moved back and forth and sometimes back again as discussion has continued. This has been an incredibly polarizing topic.

Transparently, in my history at Wizards, I have never seen something quite so split right down the middle in terms of community sentiment. I really expected this to clearly land one way or another, and it absolutely has not.

It seemed so split that I worked with our internal insights team to run a survey in December and early January among players of many different types. It was worth getting more opinions other than just people on social media, something a little more quantitative. Maybe that would help shed some light.

And, well, the results of that research … also showed it nearly perfectly split. On a rating scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is feeling very negatively about the change and 5 is feeling very positively about the change, the responses broke down like this:

• 5 (Very positively): 25%
• 4 (Positively): 19%
• 3 (Neutral): 19%
• 2 (Negatively): 17%
• 1 (Very negatively): 21%

Once again, pretty much right down the middle. Now, while you can argue for factors to read that data in many different ways, it’s still incredibly close for something that would change the rules for the biggest format in Magic.

Weighing Commander Format Panel members’ opinions, general social sentiment, and this survey together, it all blends into something extremely close. Ultimately, I want to listen to our experts here. And while originally more people on the Commander Format Panel were for doing this change, it has since switched to more people being against than for. Given that the Commander Format Panel is meant to be the major eyes and ears for the format, I want to trust that here.

Additionally in listening to feedback across the format panel, social media, and the write-ins on our survey, there were several themes and opinions throughout. And while there are people firmly entrenched on both sides, with one side taking it as unnecessarily undermining fundamentals of Commander and another feeling as if it would make a lot of sense and add something, there are a lot of people in the middle or of two minds about it. And one thing I heard pretty consistently from people is that it feels like a lot of change happening fast, and if we’re going to make increased numbers of hybrid cards (as we’ve said we’re going to) they would love to live in a world where they see what they are and what that feels like.

And that makes sense! While Magic design has lived in that world for a while, Magic players have not.

With that in mind, I want to shelve this topic for now. We can always reopen the discussion and talk about it at a future point, which would probably naturally happen anyways, as this conversation tends to resurface! But (as mentioned earlier) there’s been a lot of change in the past year, and this is far from clear one way or another.

So, let’s take our time, see how things feel, and we can always talk more about this later and check back in at another point if we want to—maybe sometime next year. But I’m happy to close this discussion for the time being.

Brackets

Overall, we’re quite happy with the bracket system after the last round of tweaks. From what we can tell, the adoption of brackets continues to grow as more and more people use them in their pregame discussions.

The last round of changes, doing things like decoupling precons from Bracket 2 (Core) and adding better expectations of the kind of gameplay you can see from each bracket have done a lot for helping people know which bracket their decks live in. We are also seeing some signs it has caused a meaningful shift of people assigning more decks the Bracket 2 (Core) label, which helps makes Bracket 3 (Upgraded) feel less overloaded.

While we like the changes, we have noticed the toll of changes. Word of mouth and explanations have helped carry the bracket system pretty far, and every time we make small incremental changes it makes it more of a game of telephone as the new changes slowly trickle out to some people but not everybody. Not everybody has seen or internalized all the small tweaks and updates, and we have seen plenty of people who have delivered feedback to us about elements we’ve already addressed with changes. So, we really want to cool it on bracket-level changes for the time being. We continue to discuss if we want to add an additional bracket to help distinguish Bracket 3 decks, but that’s a pretty large change that might really fray understanding. Ultimately, Bracket 3 is meant to be a pretty wide space; we only want to slice so thin.

One thing we haven’t seen yet is a MagicCon with these changes in place. Those are great places to see changes in action and receive a lot of feedback. We won’t be making any bracket-level changes until we’ve seen at least one MagicCon this year (but probably more). If we’re happy as is after that, you will likely see us drop the beta tag later this year. If we want to fine-tune it a bit more, you would also likely see that happen later this year.

There are two things we want to bring up, just as reminders.

The brackets are meant as a tool to guide pregame conversations—not an ultimate arbiter of who can play against whom. There can still be plenty of good games with Bracket 2 decks playing against Bracket 3 decks, and Bracket 3 decks against Bracket 4 decks, for example. When you identify these differences in your pregame conversations, you can always talk about your expectations for the game and see if the decks would be a good fit to play.

Second, we wanted to reemphasize that Bracket 1 is meant to be a place where stretching the rules of card legality is okay. We get asked sometimes about playing with Un– cards or similar, and Bracket 1 is a place where the pregame conversation can be expected to include “My deck is using something that wouldn’t normally be legal in Commander.”

We continue to really appreciate your feedback on brackets. We’ve read through so many Reddit threads and think-pieces on them. Thanks for all the notes and suggestions and all the time you’ve taken to provide your take on things!

Game Changers

Similar to the brackets system, we’ve been quite happy overall with the updates to the Game Changers list. There’s still been some chatter and feedback about the legends on the list, and we’re taking all of that in. But with the most recent round of updates, it feels like we’re in a pretty good place. You may continue to see small tweaks, but we want to focus on a couple of cards rather than huge sweeping changes.

First, let’s talk about a new card on the Game Changers list. It’s one that we (and many others) have asked about since the bracket system kicked off: Farewell.

Farewell is a large reset to a lot of what has happened in the game before it. It removes pretty much everything, adding a lot of rebuilding time and starting from square one, which isn’t enjoyable for many players. When you think about the goal of having cards on the Game Changers list, they’re often cards that people would want to know about appearing in their games and would prefer opting out of playing if needed. By putting it only at Bracket 3 and above, that lets people get into games that could have a Farewell only if they want to.

While it does take a lot to get a card at this mana value on the list at this point—we talked in the last update about how we were really going to be scrutinizing high-mana value cards because it takes a lot of work for them to impact the game. We have talked about Farewell plenty and decided it clears that bar.

I do want to call out that many precons have included Farewell—and especially Universes Beyond ones, since it tends to be so resonant for some of those story moments. While we did decouple precons from Bracket 2 in the last update (a change we’re very happy with!), it is still something we’ll be mindful of going forward. This isn’t saying that precons will never have Farewell again (they definitely will!), but it’s worth acknowledging that it’s a sweeper on a little different tier than most board sweepers, and not everybody finds that level of cleaning up the game enjoyable.

The only other change at this time is that Biorhythm will be going on the Game Changers list. This is what we do when a card comes off the banned list.

We are, however, making a special exception for Lutri, the Spellchaser. This Otter is not going on the Game Changers list. Lutri was not banned because of its inherent power, or because of the companion mechanic making it an auto-include, so making it a Game Changer doesn’t really make any sense.

Into 2026 We Go

We’ve had some small updates and changes today, along with some unbans.

What else can you expect in 2026?

Well, for one, we want to keep providing you with fairly regular updates on how things are going. You can expect to hear from us again likely in May or June, with something after some of the MagicCons this year.

Additionally, unlike 2025 where we made a Commander banned and restricted update early in the year and said we wouldn’t be touching it for the rest of the year, this year doesn’t have that self-imposed restriction. Now, to be clear, I don’t expect a huge rate of change—that goes against the very stability I talked about at the top of this article. If there were any other changes we knew we wanted to do at this time, we would make those changes. But with that said, it’s certainly in the realm of possibility that another Commander ban update could happen at some point this year. Let’s see how today’s changes go over, and we’ll continue to monitor them. There are some cards we mentioned in the banned and restricted update article that we have our eye on and would love feedback about, and I could see something changing there.

Thanks for reading today, and we look forward to reading all your thoughts. We’ll all be glued to social media as your posts, articles, and videos start coming out—and you can also bring your thoughts to the official Magic: The Gathering Discord, where we have channels dedicated to providing feedback.

Thanks for reading—this is Gavin and the Commander Format Panel signing off.

Alex Heyer
Bandit
Ben Wheeler
Deco
Ittetu
Josh Lee Kwai
Lua Stardust
Olivia Gobert-Hicks
Rachel Weeks
Rebell Lily
Tim Willoughby
Toby Elliott
Tomer Abramovici