Following a week of anxiety for every blue player on earth, Wizards of the Coast and the Commander Format Panel released a long-awaited Commander format update. Last October, the Panel added the beloved yet controversial Rhystic Study to the suspect list for a full ban and floated the idea of changing yet another rule regarding deck construction. But what does the Commander ban update look like now?
These are big topics, which makes it all the more relieving that far less is actually changing.
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That isn’t to say there isn’t anything worth talking about, both with what is changing and what isn’t. First, the topic on nearly all Commander players’ minds: the blue cards that didn’t get banned.
Rhystic Study | 2 Colorless, 1 Blue Mana
Enchantment
Whenever an opponent casts a spell, you may draw a card unless that player pays 1 mana of any color.
Rhystic Study is the quintessential Commander card. Effectively unplayable in any other format, the context of Commander grants it an incredible strength. In no uncertain terms, it’s a poster child for what makes the format special. At the same time, it’s an occasionally frustrating card to engage with. It adds another decision to make at every action and puts pressure on the politics of the format. This dichotomy gives Rhystic Study both its prestige and meme status.
For now, the prestige wins out. Senior Designer Gavin Verhey, on behalf of the Panel, writes “We would have to see some pretty serious signs and public opinions change before touching that card.” The card’s place on the Game Changer list looks to be holding the current opinions in place, which blue players and cEDH grinders alike should celebrate.
Thassa’s Oracle | 2 Blue Mana
Creature – Merfolk Wizard
When this creature enters, look at the top X cards of your library, where X is your devotion to blue. Put up to one of them on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. If X is greater than or equal to the number of cards in your library, you win the game. (Each blue mana symbol in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to blue.)
While Rhystic Study remains contentious both at casual and competitive tables, the time has passed for “Thoracle.” The cEDH community looks to have absorbed this powerful finisher and innovated around it entirely.
As for anything below the fifth bracket of Commander play, Thassa’s Oracle is really a non-starter. It rarely shows up at a table and if it does, it’s not doing more than similar decking out to win cards like Laboratory Maniac or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries.
Commander Ban Update – February 2026
The Panel expresses this as well, once again quoting Verhey directly: ”The case seems mostly closed on that one, though things could change.” That last point is worth keeping in mind for all Commander players. While the format moves slowly, the game has continued to evolve in recent years. There could come a day when both these cards come back up for discussion.
The bar for banning cards in Commander remains very high, but the bar for unbanning continues to get lower and lower. Two more cards are free with this update, and one brings some very special exceptions with it.
Unbanned Commander Cards – February 2026
Lutri, the Spellchaser | 1 Colorless, 2 Hybrid Blue/Red Mana
Legendary Creature – Elemental Otter
Companion — Each nonland card in your starting deck has a different name. (If this card is your chosen companion, you may put it into your hand from outside the game for 3 mana of any color as a sorcery.)
Flash
When Lutri enters, if you cast it, copy target instant or sorcery spell you control. You may choose new targets for the copy.
Lutri is one of the most unique ban situations in the history of the format. The adorable otter has the distinction of being the first card to eat a ban prior to its release. That comes down not to Lutri’s relatively simple spell copying, but the extremely controversial Companion mechanic.
There’s almost no format Companion didn’t mess with to some degree, and in Commander the impact was denying players access to this card because any Izzet (blue/red) deck would automatically fulfill the Companion requirement and get a bonus card.
Companion’s catastrophic impact on Magic as a game is also now the needle that Lutri could thread through to freedom. The chances of returning to the mechanic seem astronomical, even to WOTC, so the Panel has created “banned as Companion” to prevent Lutri from being an auto include while also finally letting players add to their Otter decks.
Where other “banned as” lists could potentially create confusion, the likelihood is extremely low of another Companion being printed at all, much less printed in a way that forces an addition. So, just ignore the Companion text!
Biorhythm | 6 Colorless Mana, 2 Green Mana
Sorcery
Each player’s life total becomes the number of creatures they control.
Over the past year, the Panel has been loosening the leash on high mana value cards that either serve as combo pieces or have game-ending impacts implicit in them. These cards go to the Game Changer list to test them without necessarily letting cards run wild across the entire format. Each of these so far has yet to destroy the entire balance of the game, and now it’s time to add Biorhythm to the mix.
Of these unbans, Biorhythm is easily the most risky yet. Even so, Commander is a very different beast than when Biorhythm was first banned. While there is a chance of lining up all the pieces to successfully win an entire game, decks and board states are far more resilient to mass removal. It seems more likely Biorhythm will be a way to deal with a lot of life loss, not win the game.
Another card also joins Biorhythm as a new Game Changer member.
New Gamechanger Added in Commander Format Update February 2026
Farewell | 4 Colorless Mana, 2 White Mana
Sorcery
Choose one or more —
- Exile all artifacts.
- Exile all creatures.
- Exile all enchantments.
- Exile all graveyards.
From its original printing in Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, Farewell has been the bane of many a long Commander game. The format can absolutely sustain such a broad sweep effect, the reality of being able to choose as many modes as desired sets the game back in ways only Cyclonic Rift players can dream of. It can wash out players, add an extra 5 turns of set up to the clock, or even just end the game out of frustration. Simply, it changes the game. This addition to the list makes sense.
Format Update: Hybrid mana rules are staying the same
Finally, about that rule change. Last October, Magic R&D floated the idea of changing how Commander interacts with hybrid mana costs. Hybrid mana cards can be cast with any combination of the two mana symbols of the card (for example, Lutri above could be cast with either two blue, two red, or one blue and one red mana.) This is how it works in Commander as well, but Commander also has color identity rules for deck building. That means Lutri couldn’t be in a mono-blue deck, because he has red in his casting cost.
The proposal would be to change this to allow, for deck building purposes only, to call a hybrid card only one color. This is a discourse the community has gone back and forth on for ages, but the call coming from inside of WOTC adds another layer of consideration.
Before, the community could only think about cards as they exist right now. With Wizards in control of the format, their intentions to continue to print more and more hybrid cards – and what those future cards look like – are far more impactful. Those with concerns didn’t get them assuaged with the recent Lorwyn Eclipsed set, bringing cards like Sanar, Innovative First-Year.
Sanar, Innovative First-Year
Legendary Creature – Goblin Sorcerer
Vivid — At the beginning of your first main phase, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal X nonland cards, where X is the number of colors among permanents you control. For each of those colors, you may exile a card of that color from among the revealed cards. Then shuffle. You may cast the exiled cards this turn.
As Gavin outlines in the update, the opinions on this change are very split. Even when using Wizards’ market research arm, the data didn’t trend one way or the other in a way that could make a declaration. Even the Panel ebbed and flowed on how they felt, switching from majority for to majority against the change.
Because of this, the decision is not to make the rule change, at least for now. It’s a surprising move, given that Wizards of the Coast now controls the format just as they do every other sanctioned format. They could simply snap their fingers and make it so, the community be damned. It’s certain this is being raised again – Gavin all but promises as much – but itis welcome to see that the community’s concerns remain a priority.
2026 offers a year of stability for Commander
That’s the largest takeaway from this first update of the year for Commander: community concerns. The weekly pods at game stores may not radically shift, but the format has been in some state of flux since 2024, with the community at large having a big hand in why. Things could stand to slow down a bit.
These updates seem to echo that sentiment, choosing to make more surgical adjustments instead of revolution. It is heartening to see Wizards of the Coast take the advice of the Format Panel so seriously, even with the ability to fix what they think is broken. What could have been an explosion of discourse with this update is instead a massive sigh of relief.
