Do Magic: The Gathering players want another Modern Horizons set and, more importantly, does Wizards of the Coast want to make another?
Modern Horizons has been a somewhat recent bump up for Magic: the Gathering. Designed for more experienced and seasoned players, MH bypasses Standard play and brings forward high powered cards from the past. They're also more complex, banking on Magic history to really make the set flow. Outside of chaos drafts and the occasional odd set, MH has been pretty much the only place to find rarer supertypes like snow and long since unseen characters.
Modern Horizons thus came out with great fanfare in 2019, followed by Modern Horizons 2 in 2021 and Modern Horizons 3 in 2024. However, by 2024, Magic became firmly locked in the six-set year calender, not to mention continuous Secret Lair drops, special sets, and surprise releases.
The slate suddenly became really crowded. Even worse, the MH sets saw a lot of banned cards, thanks to the high umber of powerful cards. Nadu, for example, became one of the most famous bannings in Magic history in 2024, stemming directly from being in the MH3 set.
In addition, the rotations of in play cards and the price of Magic has made many balk at MH. And, as sets focus toward Standard from Modern, with many more being Universes Beyond focused....there isn't much room.
So, when Mark Rosewater noted on his blog on November 1, 2026 that a Modern Horizons 4 was far from guaranteed...players cheered.
Player question: If/when for Modern Horizons 4?
Rosewater: "If."
With MH4 now officially being up in the air, the high-power/high-complexity focus is likely to be shifted away, swinging Magic back towards a slightly more traditional experience that players have been wanting for years. And for newer players coming in, the lack of MH means that it will be a slightly easier learning curve.
In recent years, Magic has been expanding the player base, bringing in new players through fans of noted IPs (Universes Beyond), as well as newer planes that brought in harder to reach demographics (Bloomburrow, Caverns of Ixalan, the upcoming Zhalfir). MH never really fit that strategy. Plus, each new set brought diminishing returns, with players becoming increasingly frustrated with it. So no new set in that line makes total sense.
MH now likely joins the Un series as a set series that is going to go on hiatus. Magic has had a long history of never saying never, with the return to the Lorwyn plane after nearly two decades being a case in point. But for Modern Horizons, as Rosewater said, it is going to be a big "if."
