Banned and Restricted Announcement – May 18, 2026
Standard
No changes
Pioneer
Cori-Steel Cutter is banned.
Modern
Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury is banned.
Lotus Field is banned.
Violent Outburst is unbanned.
Umezawa's Jitte is unbanned.
Legacy
Undercity Informer is banned.
Vintage
No changes
Pauper
Bonder's Ornament is unbanned.
Alchemy
Sewer-veillance Cam is banned.
Historic
No changes
Timeless
No changes
Brawl
No changes
Next announcement: June 30, 2026
Howdy, gamers!
My name's Carmen Klomparens. I'm a senior game designer on Magic's Play Design team. After a fairly quiet update in March, we're back with a massive update for several formats. Magic's a great game, but we're always looking to improve it for its most important people: the players.
As usual, we'll be on WeeklyMTG via twitch.tv/magic tomorrow, May 19, at 10 a.m. PT to discuss these changes. As a reminder, the next update to the banned and restricted list will be coming on June 30. Instead of spending too long rolling out the red carpet for everyone on the team to talk about their respective formats, let's get right into it!
Standard
Written by Jadine Klomparens
No changes
Standard has been a volatile format in 2026, with headline contenders Badgermole Cub and Izzet variants evolving week to week in a quest to one-up each other and the rest of the format. Going into Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven, the wisdom of the crowd was that Izzet Prowess was the deck to beat. It claimed a metagame share of 30.5% on Day One, but with middling performance it failed to claim a Top 8 berth and posted an overall non-mirror win rate slightly below 50%. Overall, a disappointing performance for the pre-tournament best deck.
6 Island4 Eddymurk Crab4 Opt4 Stormchaser's Talent4 Burst Lightning1 Stormcarved Coast1 Bounce Off1 Great Hall of the Biblioplex4 Boomerang Basics1 Get Out1 Roaring Furnace Steaming Sauna4 Flow State1 Impractical Joke1 Multiversal Passage1 Spell Pierce1 Stock Up1 Prismari Charm4 Riverpyre Verge4 Steam Vents4 Spirebluff Canal4 Sleight of Hand4 Slickshot Show-Off1 Disdainful Stroke1 Wan Shi Tong, Librarian1 Slagstorm1 Get Out1 Ghost Vacuum1 Roaring Furnace Steaming Sauna2 Ral, Crackling Wit1 Pyroclasm1 Abrade1 Soul-Guide Lantern1 Spell Pierce1 Spell Snare1 Negate1 Broadside Barrage
Instead, Badgermole Cub-powered Landfall decks proved triumphant. Both Mono-Green and Selesnya Landfall decks earned high win rates and great finishes at the Pro Tour, with the finals of the tournament even being a Selesnya Landfall mirror. The evolution of Badgermole Cub decks, from Nature's Rhythm shells to Landfall decks, is notable and follows a poor performance from the Nature's Rhythm Badgermole Cub decks at Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed earlier this year, where they were the most popular decks by a significant margin.
4 Erode1 Surrak, Elusive Hunter2 Lumbering Worldwagon2 Bushwhack4 Earthbender Ascension7 Forest4 Sazh's Chocobo2 Temple Garden2 Icetill Explorer1 Keen-Eyed Curator4 Llanowar Elves4 Badgermole Cub4 Fabled Passage2 Dyadrine, Synthesis Amalgam4 Hushwood Verge4 Mightform Harmonizer3 Escape Tunnel2 Plains3 Ba Sing Se1 Mossborn Hydra2 Surrak, Elusive Hunter3 Sheltered by Ghosts1 Restoration Magic1 Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar2 Mossborn Hydra3 Rest in Peace2 Snakeskin Veil1 Voice of Victory
The story of Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven is a common one for this year of Standard. We've seen Badgermole Cub decks evolve from Nature's Rhythm to Landfall builds and watched Izzet decks get created and gain and lose popularity on their way to coalescing into the current trifecta of Prowess, Lessons, and Spellementals. We've seen a number of weeks where a particular build of one or the other looked truly dominant, only for the next weekend's tournament to turn the narrative on its head.
Once again, we leave a Standard Pro Tour with the distinct sense that the metagame will continue to evolve from here. Izzet Prowess retaining its title as most-played deck appears unlikely given its modest win rate, but it's within the realm of possibility if the right adjustments are found. Landfall strategies appear poised to take over the title of best deck in the format, but in this Standard format, being thought of as the best deck is usually a good recipe for being beat the very next weekend. Given that those decks are continuing to evolve, and players with innovative strategies are continuing to find ways to attack them, it's clear that there is more of this story to tell.
Indeed, the week after Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven started to paint a different picture of the metagame. Two large Standard tournaments, Magic Spotlight: Secrets in London and the Champions Cup Finals in Japan, featured a more diverse overall metagame than the Pro Tour, and only one Landfall strategy found its way to a Top 8 berth across both events.
Izzet and Badgermole Cub decks are the biggest players in the Standard environment and create constraints that other decks must respect to find success. Most poignantly, successful decks in Standard right now must be capable of consistently interacting very early in games or they will find themselves run over by Izzet and Badgermole Cub decks. The speed of Standard right now is faster than we would like.
However, there are decks in the format capable of existing within the parameters defined by Badgermole Cub and Izzet decks, and those decks are seeing success. We are also seeing signs that the card pool may not have been fully explored yet or that there are under-explored decks capable of standing up to the top two strategies.
4 Momo, Friendly Flier2 Erode2 Aang, Swift Savior2 Haliya, Guided by Light4 Floodfarm Verge4 Hallowed Fountain2 Seam Rip4 Springleaf Drum2 Practiced Offense4 Daydream4 Multiversal Passage2 Abandoned Air Temple7 Plains4 Sage of the Skies4 Starfield Shepherd2 Cosmogrand Zenith2 Nurturing Pixie1 Gran-Gran4 Quantum Riddler1 Disdainful Stroke2 Seam Rip2 Pyrrhic Strike2 Hide on the Ceiling2 No More Lies2 Rest in Peace1 Spell Pierce3 Clarion Conqueror
Various flavors of white-blue creature strategies have found their way to the Top 8 in Standard tournaments. Magic Spotlight: Secrets was won by such a deck, an aggressive version using Momo, Friendly Flier to accelerate out a curve of efficient fliers. A different white-blue deck, known as Azorius Tempo or Azorius Prison, eschewed Momo in favor of a flash gameplan and made the Top 8 of both Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven and the Champions Cup tournament. These decks have been a known quantity in Standard and may now pick up in popularity given recent success.
4 Concealed Courtyard2 Erode4 Iron-Shield Elf2 Inspiring Vantage3 Burst Lightning1 Cecil, Dark Knight4 Starting Town4 Practiced Offense1 Mountain1 Shardmage's Rescue1 Multiversal Passage4 Moonshadow4 Hardened Academic4 Marauding Mako4 Sacred Foundry4 Cool but Rude1 Blazemire Verge3 Tersa Lightshatter4 Bloodghast4 Blood Crypt1 Godless Shrine1 Inti, Seneschal of the Sun2 Strategic Betrayal1 Seam Rip1 Shoot the Sheriff2 Case of the Crimson Pulse1 Erode3 Voice of Victory4 Leyline of the Void
A small number of pilots brought Mardu Discard to Pro Tour Secrets of Strixhaven, and despite failing to make the Top 8, the deck looked quite good. At Magic Spotlight: Secrets, a Mardu Discard deck made it all the way to the finals. Secrets of Strixhaven cards Hardened Academic and Practiced Offense are new additions giving Standard discard strategies new legs, and the early returns are promising.
2 Mistrise Village1 Cori Mountain Monastery1 Erode1 Traumatic Critique2 Shattered Sanctum1 Stormcarved Coast3 Inevitable Defeat1 Pyroclasm2 Flashback4 Great Hall of the Biblioplex1 Ill-Timed Explosion3 Hallowed Fountain4 Jeskai Revelation1 Sundown Pass2 Consult the Star Charts2 No More Lies2 Sear1 Multiversal Passage2 Lightning Helix1 Day of Judgment2 Sacred Foundry1 Meticulous Archive4 Stock Up1 Plains4 Steam Vents4 Tablet of Discovery1 Sunbillow Verge2 Gloomlake Verge1 Godless Shrine2 Swallowed by Leviathan1 Fire Magic1 Ultima1 Disdainful Stroke2 High Noon1 Wan Shi Tong, Librarian1 Annul2 Pyroclasm2 Emeritus of Ideation2 Rest in Peace2 Flashfreeze1 Erode
The week after the Pro Tour also saw a rash of success from various Tablet of Discovery-powered control strategies. In addition to the Four-Color Control deck above, two other Tablet of Discovery control decks made the Top 4 of the Champions Cup tournament, and an Izzet Opus deck using the card made the Top 8 of Magic Spotlight: Secrets. Tablet of Discovery previously had made few waves in Standard, and its success in these tournaments is an encouraging sign that Secrets of Strixhaven still has relevant Standard content to explore.
Standard continues to churn, and new decks are finding their way to success with each tournament. Given that we expect the Standard metagame to continue to change and evolve, we are electing to make no changes to the Standard banned list in this update. We will continue to monitor Standard and reevaluate its state with our next banned and restricted update on June 30 following the release of Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes.
Pioneer
Written by Arya Karamchandani
Cori-Steel Cutter is banned.
Pioneer is in a complicated spot. In a broader sense, the metagame is diverse, with a good spread of macro-strategies. Tournament results look good, with fairer midrange strategies like Selesnya Company and Golgari Midrange putting up a lot of strong results while combo decks like Greasefang still see a lot of play. There is a wealth of viable decks that put up occasional results, such as Lotus Field Combo, Niv to Light, and Cat-Oven Sacrifice, giving the format a lot of depth.
2 Abandoned Air Temple4 Archon of Emeria4 Badgermole Cub1 Boseiju, Who Endures4 Brushland4 Collected Company1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire2 Elspeth, Storm Slayer4 Elvish Mystic4 Enduring Innocence1 Forest4 Llanowar Elves3 Ouroboroid4 Plains4 Razorverge Thicket4 Skyclave Apparition1 Starting Town4 Temple Garden3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben2 The Wandering Emperor4 Aven Interrupter3 Beza, the Bounding Spring1 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines2 March of Otherworldly Light2 Seam Rip3 Unlicensed Hearse
Despite the breadth of play patterns in Pioneer today, diversity in competitive play has slowly declined over the last few months. Various Izzet shells have grown to have a larger share of the metagame bolstered by the Lessons package out of Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™ and more recently Flow State out of Secrets of Strixhaven. Izzet spells decks have always been a core part of Pioneer, and we believe they are healthy to have around to a certain degree. That said, the Izzet decks' recent play-rate and win-rate numbers in our data from MTG Arena have looked clearly out of line. To help with competitive diversity, we felt the need to take action against these decks.
3 Academic Dispute3 Boomerang Basics2 Consider4 Cori-Steel Cutter1 Experimental Synthesizer3 Fiery Impulse4 Flow State3 Monastery Swiftspear4 Mountain2 Reckless Rage1 Riverglide Pathway4 Riverpyre Verge3 Shivan Reef3 Sleight of Hand3 Soul-Scar Mage4 Spirebluff Canal4 Steam Vents4 Stormchaser's Talent3 Vivi Ornitier2 Wild Ride2 Abrade1 Boomerang Basics2 Divide by Zero1 Firebending Lesson1 Iroh's Demonstration1 It'll Quench Ya!1 Octopus Form1 Price of Freedom3 Pyroclasm2 Spell Pierce
