The Magic: The Gathering The landscape in 2025 has been shaped by an eclectic mix of universes, crossover sets, and experimental mechanical themes that make deciding on the best cards to come out this year an interesting and unique task. Along with universal crossovers with the likes of Final Fantasy, Marvel's Spider-Man, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, there are also original sets like Edge of Eternities that have offered stellar MTG cards in their own right.
Even Innistrad Remastered, which brings some classic cards back into the mainstream via long-awaited reprints, has given deck builders plenty of options—some even redefining how decks work across formats. To help you decide which ones you should try to stack in your Commander, Standard, Pioneer, and even fringe competitive formats, here are the best Magic: The Gathering cards released in 2025 to carry into 2026.
20
Initial city
Color-fixing launcher for creature strategies
Starting Town may enter tapped, but its real power lies within the ability to generate any color of mana each turn for creature spells if you control a legendary creature. This makes it a quiet but effective backbone of command decks focused on iconic heroes, especially those who juggle multi-colored creature curves.
In limited and casual play, it smoothes out awkward openings and rewards early deployment of legendaries. It rarely wins games by itself, but Starting Town is exactly the kind of finesse card that quietly keeps the deck going and offers a reliable fix for creature-heavy openings without having to build heavily around it.
Since it can only enter by tapping during the first three turns, Starting Town they see their best performance in packs whose commanders naturally hit the battlefield earlyyou will ensure that rainbow mana is online from the second turn.
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19
Repurposing Ray
A precise artifact teacher who turns trinkets into threats
Repurposing Bay is a compact but powerful engine for artifact-heavy decks that ranks as the second best MTG card in 2025. By paying two mana, tapping it, and sacrificing an artifact, you tutor another artifact with exactly one more mana and place it directly on the battlefield. This creates a controlled chain of upgrades: treasures become one-drops, trinkets become two-drops, and early utility pieces scale naturally to the main mid-game engines.
Sorcery's speed cap keeps it fair, but decks built around expendable artifacts or death triggers gain consistent value with each activation. It is especially strong in strategies that want to build multi-piece combos or improve their curve on the battlefield instead of in the hand.
Cheap artifacts with death triggers or refund abilities maximize the effectiveness of Repurposing Bay.
18
Soul Stone
Incremental benefit through life and cards
Along with its Cosmic Foil counterpart being among the most valuable Magic: The Gathering cards of 2025, Soul Stone starts out as a simple but reliable resource: an indestructible rock that taps black, perfect for decks that want a solid early ramp. Its true power comes once you pay 6B and sacrifice a creature to use it, which unlocks an upkeep trigger that revives a creature from your graveyard each turn.
That constant stream of free bodies it overwhelms slower opponents and forces constant responses, especially in Commander games or long mid-range games. Decks with sacrificial outlets or creatures that naturally trade to the graveyard make using the stone painless and turn it into a recursive engine that takes over the board in turn.
It is especially strong with creatures that create value on entry or exit battlefield.
17
A cryogenic relic
A cheap Cantrip artifact with reliable crowd control
Cryogen Relic is one of the best Magic: The Gathering cards in 2025 because it offers effective value for just 1U, drawing a card both when entering and leaving the battlefield. This alone makes it attractive to artifact-focused decks that want to maintain card flow while developing board presence.
Its activated ability, which allows you to sacrifice it to put a stun token on a tapped creature, it gives blue decks an unusual form of tempo-like removalthus preventing key threats from being tapped for multiple rounds.
This makes Relic a flexible tool in mid and control strategies, where disrupting an opponent's top attacker can completely shift the fight. Because it effectively replaces itself twice, too sort neatly into decks that take care of artifacts entering or leaving the game.
Reflection and flickering effects pairs exceptionally well with Cryogen Relicwhich allows you to draw more cards before redeeming them for the stun counter.
16
Insight Engine
A repeatable card advantage for artifact decks
Insight Engine is a seemingly simple value engine thatawards packages planning to play for the long haul. For just two mana each turn, he adds a charge counter and then draws a number of cards equal to the total number of tokens on it.
This means that each activation is stronger than the previous one. Control and midrange Commander decks especially appreciate this escalating draw pattern, as it turns unused mana into overwhelming hand advantage over time. While it takes a few turns to get going, Engine quickly becomes a threat to answer once it reaches three or four tokens.
Untapping effects dramatically speed up the Insight Engineallowing you to stack multiple chips and lick batches of cards in one turn cycle.
15
Terrasymbiosis
Counter-Directional Traction Motor for Green Medium Band
Terrasymbiosis rewards decks that rely heavily on +1/+1 synergies. Limiting the trigger to once per turn prevents it from becoming overwhelming, yet the card remains a reliable source of draw in any ladder-based strategy.
Green midrange decks that develop wide boards value the ability to replace creatures while continuing to escalate power on the battlefield. In Commander, the card slots neatly into evolving creature lists, allowing for consistent hand replenishment without deviating from their natural play.
Terrasymbiosis it works best in strategies that place chips on multiple moves: including combat, activated abilities or modular effects.
14
Smile to death
A powerful recursion engine for small creature decks
Smile at Death offers a tremendously effective recursion loop for decks that rely on low-cost creatures, easily cementing its place as one of the best Magic: The Gathering cards this year. At the start of each upkeep, it returns up to two creatures with power 2 or less from your graveyard directly to the battlefield, then buffs them with +1/+1 counters.
This creates constant value for Aristocrat strategies, creature combo shells, or any deck built around the enter-the-battlefield triggerpp. Since it provides both recursion and board growth, Smile at Death allows grind decks to effortlessly recover from board wipes and keep pressure on opponents during long games. It's especially strong in Commander, where repeatable upkeep naturally triggers range in multiplayer settings.
Creatures with powerful ETB effects (like token creators or card draw options) to make Smile at Death feel overwhelming very quickly.
13
Earth Crystal
Premium counter engine and ramp for green decks
Earth Crystal provides two extremely desirable effects in counter or creature focused green decks. First, it lowers the cost of all your green spells, smooths out early curves, and allows for explosive mid-game turnarounds.
Second, it doubles all +1/+1 counters placed on your creatures, turning even meager counter resources into major deck threats. Its activated ability offers another reliable way to farm creatures and ensures that Crystal contributes even if your deck doesn't naturally produce tokens.
In Commander, counter-matter decks love how consistently this artifact accelerates both mana and board presence, giving it exceptional long-game value.
Cards that place counters in small increments (like adaptations, buffs, or modular creatures) they become dramatically more threatening when paired with an Earth Crystal.
12
Electro, Assault Battery
Volatile storm engine with explosive mana output
Electro, Assaulting Battery offers incredibly aggressive mana generation engine for any spell-heavy red deck. Its static ability to retain unspent red mana means that every instant or sorcery you cast is effectively storing resources for later turns. Each spell also adds additional red mana, allows you to chain several cheap spells together build a huge swimming pool in one go.
Flying gives him early escape pressure, but the real threat comes when he leaves the battlefield: you can pay any amount of accumulated mana to deal that much damage to a player. This makes Electro both a scaling threat and a surprising finisher.
Electro it excels in decks built around cantrips and cheap burn spellsturning each interaction into incremental mana and potential lethal damage.
11
Vibrant cityscape
A flexible fixing plot that smooths out early development
The vibrant cityscape is simple, but highly reliable mounting surface for decks that prioritize consistency over speedmaking it a surprise entry among the best MTG cards released in 2025. While it doesn't go in untapped or produce mana on its own for longer than a turn, its real value lies in its ability to convert to any basic land in your library.
Sacrificing him provides a color correction, land drop, or guaranteed hit for strategies that are simple to the basics. Control and midrange decks appreciate how this thins out the deck slightly while guaranteeing future land drops, and Commander players like a way to get whatever essentials they're missing at low cost.
Because earth enters earth, Vibrant Cityscape is best used early, before tempo matters, or latewhen launching landfall becomes a priority.
