Magic and Marvel will team up again in 2026. How will it look the next time around?
Magic : the Gathering and Marvel has so far been very mixed in terms of sales and success. The 2024 Secret Lair Drop sold out in less than 5 hours, while the Spider-Man expansion in the fall of 2025 was a complete disaster. For the latter, Spider-Man had initially been designed as a smaller expansion, but had to be rapidly expanded, causing a lot of issues. What had been designed as a small 100 card expansion was doubled to 198 cards. It was still a small expansion compared to others around it, like the 276 card Edge of Eternities and the 309 card Final Fantasy expansions, but larger than a bonus sheet.
Heading into 2026, Wizards of the Coast doesn't want a repeat of Spider-Man. The drafts were hated, the prerelease was the worst on record, and while sales figures have not been officially released, what has come out has been pretty bad. Following Spider-Man, Avatar: The Last Airbender sales have been great, with Lorwyn Eclipsed and Secrets of Strixhaven already garnering significant hype as original Magic expansions. This circles back to Magic's Marvel worries with the Marvel Super Heroes expansion.
The preview release earlier this month has quelled some fears while heightening others.
There is good in Marvel Super Heroes. Wizards of the Coast seems to have learned from Spider-Man to make it more cohesive and not get overly specific. Spider-Man has been roundly criticized for being too specific, while the Secret Lair Drop was liked because it had some variance. Marvel Super Heroes is going the variety route going with the familiar, like having Captain America and Thanos, to the obscure, like having Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which is surprisingly not something made up.
Also appreciated is one of the few aspects of Spider-Man that was received positively: the original comic art and panel art brought into the cards. Marvel is bringing in many cards that include original comic art, as well as many guest artists, so there is more positivity here.
However, while the preview had many positives, there is a lot of worry over the expansion, and not just because of Marvel utterly failing in Magic in 2025. Hype is a huge factor. Lorwyn Eclipsed, Secrets of Strixhaven, and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all have significant hype around them, either through being the return to beloved original planes or going to IP's not yet visited. Marvel has been done several times with diminishing returns. Superhero fatigue is very real, and going into 2026 it is projected to get even worse.
That doesn't bode well for Marvel Super Heroes.
The best selling Universes Beyond expansions in the past few years have been fantasy related like Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings. Marvel, which is Earth based, has struggled with being fantasy enough. As shown in the preview, they are focusing more on superhero and space aspects to offset this.
Overall, Marvel Super Heroes is currently too early in releasing to really clock in to how it will do. It's not coming until mid-2026. But from what we have seen, there should be both some cause for concern and some cause for optimism. Fans want either wholly original fantasy-heavy expansion (eg: Bloomburrow, Tarkir: Dragonstorm) or a fantasy driven UB.
Another Marvel set this soon, is going to be a hard sell. But there is still time to see if it can pull through.
