Your Journey Continues in 2027

The 2026 Organized Play season is still underway. There are Regional Championships left to play, Riftbound Worlds invitations still to earn, and plenty of stories that haven't been written yet.

So, before we look ahead to next year, we want to say thank you.

Over the past year, you've made Riftbound a thriving global community. You've filled local game stores, traveled across regions to compete, introduced friends to the game, and shown us what Organized Play can become.

Everything we're announcing today has been shaped by this first year and the lessons we've learned together. Our goal is to make Riftbound the best trading card game for players in the world. Yesterday we shared updates and answered your questions about how we’re continuing to do that with the sets and products we make, but today is about how we’re working to do that through our play programs.

In 2027, Riftbound Organized Play goes bigger.

More ways to play. More opportunities to compete. More reasons to come together throughout the year.

What’s New for 2027

2027 represents a year of evolution for Riftbound play. Here’s a high-level summary of what is changing:

• We’re adding the new Nexus Cup program, a new monthly tournament at local game stores.
• We are retiring Summoner Skirmish and introducing the Riftbound Challenge Series to act as the first rung of our competitive ladder.
• Regional Qualifiers are becoming Riftbound Regionals, with more of them spread around the world and throughout the year.
• Regional Championships are becoming Riftbound Continentals, which will be our cornerstone event of each set.

Let’s Talk about Summoner Skirmish

Summoner Skirmish has been trying to do two things: first, it was trying to be the local championship event for your store, and second, it was also meant to be the on-ramp of our competitive play program. The prizing for Summoner Skirmish includes a bye to our Regional Qualifiers. It was a great idea in theory, but we underestimated how popular these events and RQs would be. This misalignment means that many of the byes awarded have gone unused because players simply can’t make it to events to use them.

Given these issues, and understanding what we needed, we felt it was the right decision to retire the Skirmish events after Radiance, and introduce two new programs for local game stores: the Riftbound Challenge Series, and the Nexus Cup. They are aimed at serving the two different goals we outlined above. Challenge Series will be the on-ramp for competitive play, while Nexus Cup acts as a local event aimed at crowning a local champion without directly driving into our competitive structure. We’ll talk about both below.

Summoner Skirmish events will continue through Radiance, but they will not offer byes, and their prizing will be augmented instead.

We want to make clear, byes are not suddenly being made useless. If you earn a bye from a Vendetta Summoner Skirmish, or if you have byes which you have not yet used at an RQ, you have the following options of what to do with them:

1. You can still make use of your bye at a Regional Qualifier this year, as well as at a Riftbound Regional event through 2027. They will still be honored for redemption to receive a first round bye.
2. We are working on plans to offer a make good for players who have unused byes and we will share more about it in the future.

That was a lot, and we're excited to show you the structure of Organized Play for 2027, but we know this would be an important topic for players to understand.

Now, onto the future!

One Community. More Ways to Play.

Every player comes to Riftbound for different reasons.

Some players are looking for a welcoming place to meet up each week, try a new deck, and celebrate every new set with their local community. Others are looking for tougher opponents, bigger tournaments, and the opportunity to compete on Riftbound's biggest stages.

The 2027 ecosystem is designed to support both experiences.

Premier Play Ladder

Riftbound Challenge Series

The First Step on Your Competitive Journey

The foot of our competitive ladder starts in the game store. The Challenge Series is the successor to our Summoner Skirmishes. As we looked at our play programs, we found Summoner Skirmish was trying to do two things: It was trying to be both the local championship and it was also meant to be the lowest rung of our competitive program. Additionally, offering byes as a prize hasn't worked out the way we hoped, given how popular the game has been since launch. Many of the byes awarded have gone unused because players simply can’t make it to events to use them.

Given these issues, and understanding what we needed, we felt it was the right decision to retire the Skirmish series and introduce two replacements: this new Challenge Series, and a new program called the Nexus Cup which you’ll hear more about later.

Rather than spreading competitive play across thousands of overlapping events, Challenge Series focuses those moments into a curated network of stores throughout the season.

Riftbound Showdown Series

Our Bridge to Bigger Competition

One of the newest additions to Organized Play is going to grow in 2027. This year we saw thousands of players join these events, run by a myriad of organizers around the world. Expanding the Riftbound competitive footprint from New Zealand to Canada to Poland! And we’re expanding on it for 2027.

2027 will see more Showdown Series events, more tournament organizers, and more regions receiving them. If Challenge Series is where your competitive journey begins, Showdown Series is a great next step.

Riftbound Regionals

Prove Yourself

We’re streamlining the name of Regional Qualifiers to just Riftbound Regionals. These events will remain fun global events for regional communities to come together for, with side events, vendors, and more fun activities for all Riftbounders to come and enjoy.

They'll be held throughout every set (generally three to four per set). They are still the premier destination for players looking to test themselves against the best in their part of the world. Regionals will qualify players for future Continental events.

Where our schedule for 2026 has been uneven, next year will see a more consistent global cadence for players. This means players will have regular opportunities to compete closer to home throughout the season, and to create lasting memories and friendships from the first set of the year to the last.

And yes, Best-Of Metal Legend prizes will continue.

Riftbound Continentals

The Biggest Stage… Yet

Riftbound Continentals will be held in four marquee destinations around the world each year. They'll bring together Riftbound's biggest names, the game's rising competitors, creators, and players for weekends built around the highest level of Riftbound play.

These are the successor to this year’s Regional Championships, though they will differ in a few important ways:

1. Rather than occurring at the end of the year, we will hold Continentals throughout the year with a Continental tied to each set in cities around the world.
2. Continentals are three-day events, with Day 1 being open entry as a qualifier for those who haven’t already qualified to the Saturday and Sunday event, meaning everyone has an opportunity to compete in the main event at the Continental.
3. And for those who don’t qualify for the main event or don’t want to, there will still be lots of side events, chances to meet creators and members of the Riftbound team throughout the weekends.

Riftbound World Championship

Compete for the Title

The season concludes at Riftbound World Championship, where the year's best competitors come together to crown a World Champion.

As Riftbound’s capstone event of 2027 and the peak of the Riftbound competitive ladder, we'll be back with more information about it in the future.

There’s a lot to be excited about for those of you who want to take down the best the game has to offer.

Local Organized Play

Join your community

Competitive play isn't the only way to experience Riftbound.

Most Riftbound games aren't played on the Worlds stage or at Regional events. Many more games are played at the local game store. While most of our changes in 2027 are around our Premier competitive play, that doesn’t mean we aren’t looking at the local events and evaluating how we can continue to drive and improve for players who attend events at their LGS week after week.

Local Organized Play is how we are organizing the way you play near your home and in your town. It continues to grow through recurring in-store events designed to help communities gather, welcome new players, and celebrate every new Riftbound set together.

Pre-Rift Events

Celebrate the Set

Be among the first to experience every new set before release. By our measures for attendance, sentiment, and the way the community has adopted these events, Pre-Rifts have been an undeniable success of our first year and we see no need to mess with these.

Nexus Nights

Weekly Community Play

Following Pre-Rift, we’ve heard from you all that Nexus Nights have been a huge success. They are the heart of Local Organized Play, bringing players together every week to play, try their new decks, and build lasting friendships in the community.

Nexus Cup

Celebrate Local Legends

New in 2027, Nexus Cups will be monthly celebrations of local organized play, giving communities another reason to regularly gather, celebrate, and create memorable moments together outside of the Premier Play Ladder. As we mentioned above regarding the Summoner Skirmish, we felt that there needed to be an event at a local level which enabled local competition without driving and incentivizing players to push hard to earn their way onto the competitive ladder.

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Today’s overview is meant to introduce the community to how we’re envisioning the play programs changing. We debated whether to dive into this today or hold off until we can provide the complete picture with the events, how players will qualify and progress through the premier play events, and a calendar of actual events.

We decided we didn’t want to let perfection be the enemy of the good by holding off sharing these updates until we had a fully locked in schedule. Our community has shown themselves to be smart and passionate, and we value our community and the trust and transparency we’ve built with them.

The New PlayRiftbound.com Player Platform

Some of you may have heard news that Riot’s working on a new platform to support our Organized Play program. Carde.io has been an integral partner in the launch and growth of Riftbound, and we're deeply appreciative of their unwavering support, collaboration, and belief in the game. This new platform is part of the next generation of organized play for the game.

Your local game store has been asked to begin the process of transitioning from Carde.io to the new platform, starting Sept. 14th, to the Riftbound Gaming Network platform. We expect stores to begin using the new Riftbound Gaming Network with Radiance events.

Our roadmap of work is such that the new platform will be up and running to handle all Riftbound events by the end of the year. We want to be clear, this program is going to launch and be in active development. We are not launching it and then moving on to other projects, there will be many features and improvements which follow in the weeks, months, and years to come. But we feel strongly that this is the right time to make this change and that it will offer a dedicated experience for players, with many benefits of sitting within the Riot ecosystem.

To try and ensure players have the best experience at events, we are going to keep Showdown Series events, which are managed by third-party tournament organizers, on Carde.io for the remainder of this year. However, we expect the European and North American Regional Championships to use PlayRiftbound.com.

Our goal remains to create the best and most exciting organized play program for our players. PlayRiftbound.com is a key step on that journey as we ease friction points and continue to improve the experience for our players. PlayRiftbound.com will be the one-stop home for Riftbound Organized Play, as the place where players will be able to sign up for events, see results, and more.

We'll have more information and updates about this platform in the coming months. Stay tuned! 

Looking Ahead

Today’s article was about introducing you all to the structure and way we’re thinking about Organized Play as we head into 2027. We're still finalizing dates and locations with our partners around the world, and we'll share updates on the 2027 schedule with plenty of time for players to plan their travel.

Later this year we'll come back with a more detailed look at the new events, how players will progress through it beyond just direct qualifications, and also have some of next year’s dates so players can begin planning for 2027.