Magic: The Gathering’s head designer has (more-or-less) confirmed that a new Modern Horizons set isn’t currently in the works, writing on his blog that a Modern Horizons 4 set is an If, not a When.
These direct-to-modern sets have in the past been immensely popular, but also extremely controversial, and for much the same reason: they are full of powerful, format-warping cards.
While it’s since been outpaced by sets like Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings, back in 2022, Rosewater revealed that Modern Horizons 2 was the best-selling set of all time. Turns out power creep sells. As Magic has seen huge growth during this new UB era, it’s likely that some of the best-performing in-universe premier sets like Tarkir Dragonstorm have now topped it too.
While they were great for Wizards’ bottom line, Modern Horizons sets sparked a great deal of complaining from Modern players online. These fans were used to seeing relevant Modern cards trickle into their format gradually, as each Standard release provided perhaps one or two newcomers worth testing out.
Throwing a full 300-card release of highly relevant cards into this system was like plonking a dragon into a delicate British woodland of hedgehogs and squirrels. It upset the whole ecosystem and risked burning everything down.
For many fans, these releases removed a major reason to play a non-rotating format: that your deck, once invested in, would remain powerful and relevant for years to come.
The number of cards from Modern Horizons sets that now litter the MTG banlist is a testament to the idea that WotC may have pushed things a bit too far, and it sounds like now they’re hesitant to go in this direction again. This is not the first time Rosewater has expressed this view, either. In August 2025, he mentioned off-hand that Wizards was “moving away” from direct-to-Modern sets.
On the other hand, the change in strategy may have nothing to do with the impact Modern Horizons 1, 2, or 3 had on the Modern format. It could just be that Wizards is less interested in creating cards for Constructed formats that aren’t Standard. It has bigger money-makers to concern itself with these days.
Currently, it seems like Standard-legal Universes Beyond sets have more or less filled the space that might previously have been used for supplemental products like Modern Horizons – with Horizons and Remastered sets both going the way of the dodo.
Would you relish a Modern Horizons 4 or does the thought fill you with dread? Let us know over on the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
