Wizards of the Coast has released details on 2025’s Magic: The Gathering’s Regional Championship Qualifiers, and it looks like Standard is going to be the main competitive format for next year. Three of the next four RCQs are Standard Constructed, with the only outlier being a bout of Modern as the first round of the 2025-2026 season.
RCQs are sanctioned events held by stores, where the best players can qualify for Regional Championship tournaments. The decision to make Standard the main format for these events is going to push players who want to be competitive to come back to it. Sticking with just Modern is going to drastically reduce your chances of qualifying.
Standard has plenty of players on Arena, of course, where it’s by far the most popular MTG format. But paper Standard has struggled in the last few years, as players blanche at buying expensive MTG cards that will rotate in just a year or two. This new schedule combats that to an extent: with three events across the next 12 months, players will have the chance to enter multiple RCQs with the same set of decks.
However, the new RCQ schedule is bad news for Pioneer players, who have absolutely zero events to look forward to in the coming year, at least none that have been announced so far. This comes not long after the format was given a much-needed shakeup thanks to recent MTG banlist changes. Furthermore, the recent Pioneer RC event in Washington DC had 2,000 in attendance – a pretty massive turnout.
This Standard-focus is another sign that Wizards is taking steps to revitalize paper Standard, something it promised to do in May of last year. Since then, the biggest step taken is still that early decision to switch to a three year rotation, giving cards greater longevity in the format.
However, next up on the MTG release schedule is MTG Foundations, a set with huge implications for Standard. This batch of cards will be legal for the next five years, if not forever, providing a non-rotating backbone for the format.
Source: Wargamer
