MTG Commander Banned List 2026: All 42 Cards, Explained

Commander is the most-played format in Magic: The Gathering, and it has the shortest banned list of any of them. As of 31 August 2026 there are 42 cards on the official Commander banned list — and the most recent update, on 9 February 2026, only removed cards from it.

But 42 is not the whole story. There are 83 cards you cannot legally put in a Commander deck. The other 41 are banned in every format at once, for reasons that have nothing to do with Commander’s power level, and they almost never appear in “banned list” articles. This guide covers all 83, why each group exists, and answers the question people actually search for: is this specific card banned?

The short answer

• 42 cards are on the official Commander banned list.
• 41 more are illegal in Commander because they are illegal everywhere — ante cards, draft-matters Conspiracies, and cards Wizards removed from all formats in 2020.
• 83 cards total cannot go in your deck.
• The last Commander B&R update was 9 February 2026. It banned nothing and unbanned two cards.
• The 10 August 2026 Banned and Restricted announcement hit Standard, Legacy and Vintage. It changed nothing in Commander.

The complete MTG Commander banned list (2026)

All 42 cards, alphabetically. Every entry below was verified against Scryfall’s legality data and cross-checked against the official Wizards of the Coast Banned and Restricted list — both sources return the same 42 cards with no disagreement in either direction.

A pattern worth noticing: roughly a third of the list is free mana. Black Lotus, all five Moxen, Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Fastbond, Channel, Tolarian Academy and Library of Alexandria are all cards that produce resources without costing you a card or a turn. Commander is a slow format with a 40-life buffer, and the fastest way to break it is to skip the part where you pay for things.

The 41 cards nobody counts

Ask a player how many cards are banned in Commander and you will hear “about forty.” Ask Scryfall which cards are illegal in Commander and you get 83. The gap is the source of most of the confusion around this question, and it breaks into three clean groups.

Ante cards (9)

These cards play for keeps — literally. They require wagering ownership of real cards, which is gambling, and they have been illegal in every sanctioned format for decades.

Conspiracies and draft-matters cards (25)

Conspiracy cards start the game in the “command zone” of a draft and change the rules from outside the deck. They were designed for a specific limited environment and are not legal in constructed play of any kind, Commander included.

Adriana’s Valor · Advantageous Proclamation · Assemble the Rank and Vile · Backup Plan · Brago’s Favor · Double Stroke · Echoing Boon · Emissary’s Ploy · Hired Heist · Hold the Perimeter · Hymn of the Wilds · Immediate Action · Incendiary Dissent · Iterative Analysis · Muzzio’s Preparations · Natural Unity · Power Play · Secret Summoning · Secrets of Paradise · Sentinel Dispatch · Sovereign’s Realm · Summoner’s Bond · Unexpected Potential · Weight Advantage · Worldknit

Cards removed from all formats (7)

In December 2020 Wizards of the Coast removed seven cards from all formats and from Gatherer, citing racist imagery or text. They are not a Commander power-level decision and they are not coming back.

• Cleanse
• Crusade
• Imprison
• Invoke Prejudice
• Jihad
• Pradesh Gypsies
• Stone-Throwing Devils

Checksum: 42 + 9 + 25 + 7 = 83, which matches Scryfall’s count of cards marked banned in Commander exactly.

Did the August 2026 bans change anything for Commander?

No. The Banned and Restricted announcement on 10 August 2026 made sweeping changes to Standard, Legacy and Vintage and left Commander completely untouched. This trips people up every time, because a Standard ban generates a great deal of noise and none of it applies to your EDH deck.

Every one of those cards is fully legal in Commander today. If you built around Vivi Ornitier or Badgermole Cub, nothing has changed for you. For the complete picture across every format, see our MTG banned list for every format.

Recently unbanned: cards you can play again

Commander’s banned list has been shrinking. Two announcements account for the recent movement, and both are worth knowing because a lot of players are still avoiding cards that came off the list.

22 April 2025 — five cards unbanned, none banned

9 February 2026 — two cards unbanned, none banned

The Lutri ruling is the unusual one. It is not a normal unban: Lutri was only ever a problem as a companion, where a Izzet deck got it for free from outside the game with no real deckbuilding cost. Unbanning it for the 99 while keeping the companion restriction in place solves the problem without removing the card. Wizards specifically noted that Lutri did not need to go on the Game Changers list for this reason, while Biorhythm did.

Banned is no longer the only limit

Since the introduction of the Commander Brackets system, the banned list is only one of two levers. The other is the Game Changers list: cards that are perfectly legal but signal a higher power level, and whose presence pushes a deck into a higher bracket. Cards coming off the banned list now move straight onto the Game Changers list rather than back into the general pool.

This matters for how you read the 42. A card being legal does not mean it is welcome in every pod — Necropotence and Seedborn Muse are both entirely legal and both are Game Changers. If you are building for a casual table, the banned list is your floor, not your ceiling. Our Commander staples guide is a better starting point for what actually belongs in a deck than the list of what is forbidden.

Is that card banned in Commander? Quick answers

These are the cards players ask about most often. Every legality below was pulled from Scryfall on 31 August 2026.

If you want to check a card yourself rather than trust a list, our card price and legality lookup pulls live data straight from Scryfall, and you can see how legal cards are actually being used across thousands of public Commander decks.

How the Commander banned list actually works

Commander’s list is maintained separately from the rest of Magic, on its own schedule, by the group responsible for the format rather than by the Standard-facing B&R process. That is why a Standard ban can land with enormous noise and produce no Commander change at all, as happened on 10 August 2026.

The criteria are also different. Standard bans target decks that dominate a metagame. Commander bans target cards that make games less fun to play — cards that end games out of nowhere, lock other players out of participating, or take so long to resolve that the table stops enjoying itself. Nadu, Winged Wisdom is the clearest recent example: it was not banned for winning too often, it was banned because its loops made games unbearably slow.

That is also why the list has been shrinking. As the format has grown and the bracket system has given players a way to communicate power level directly, several cards that were banned for being too strong for a casual table turned out to be manageable once tables could set expectations up front.

Frequently asked questions

How many cards are banned in Commander?

42 cards are on the official Commander banned list. A further 41 are illegal in Commander because they are illegal in every format, bringing the total number of cards you cannot play to 83.

When is the next Commander banned list update?

Commander updates do not follow a fixed public calendar the way Standard does. The most recent was 9 February 2026. The next general Banned and Restricted announcement is scheduled for 12 October 2026, though general announcements frequently leave Commander unchanged — as the 10 August 2026 announcement did.

Is Sol Ring banned in Commander?

No. Sol Ring is legal and is the single most-played card in the format. It is a common source of confusion because Mana Crypt, which does something very similar, is banned.

Why is Mana Crypt banned but Sol Ring legal?

Mana Crypt costs nothing to cast and produces two colourless mana every turn thereafter, with only a coin flip attached. Sol Ring costs one mana. That single mana is the difference between a card you cast and a card you simply have.

Are the Power Nine banned in Commander?

Most of them. Black Lotus, all five Moxen, Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are banned. Timetwister is legal.

Can I play banned cards in a casual game?

Yes, if everyone at the table agrees before the game starts. The banned list governs sanctioned play; a kitchen-table pod can house-rule whatever it likes. Agreeing in advance is the important part.

What is the difference between the banned list and the Game Changers list?

Banned cards cannot be played at all. Game Changers are fully legal cards that indicate a higher power level and restrict which brackets a deck can sit in. Cards that come off the banned list now generally move onto the Game Changers list.

Is Lutri, the Spellchaser legal now?

Partly. Since 9 February 2026 Lutri can go in your deck or be your commander, but it remains banned as a companion — the only card with that specific designation.

Does the Commander banned list apply to cEDH?

Yes. Competitive EDH uses the same banned list as regular Commander. What differs is deck construction and expectations, not legality.

Building around the list

The practical takeaway is smaller than the list suggests. Of the 42 banned cards, most are Reserved List staples or twenty-year-old rares that almost nobody was going to run anyway. The handful that genuinely affect modern deckbuilding — Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, Dockside Extortionist, Nadu — all came off the same shelf: free or nearly free acceleration and unbounded loops.

If you are starting a new deck and want to stay well clear of the line, build toward interaction and a curve rather than toward free mana. Our step-by-step Commander deckbuilding guide walks through the ratios, and if you want something legal on a budget, the best budget commanders list is built entirely from cards on the right side of this page. For a recent example of a focused tribal build, see our breakdown of the best Dwarf commanders.