The first weekend of 2025 kicked off an exciting year for competitive Magic, with more than 1,400 players starting the 2025 season in style at the first-ever Magic Spotlight Series event. The shared mantra of "we're so back" and the champion's story was everything we could have hoped for. It was a childhood dream come true as an adult for Nick Odenheimer.

@Nick_Odenheimer is your inaugural Magic Spotlight Champion! 🏆

With an overall record of 16-2, Nick absolutely dominated Standard with Gruul Aggro featuring Leylines! 🔴🟢

Thank you for joining us for Magic Spotlight: Foundations at SCG CON Atlanta! #SpotlightFoundations… pic.twitter.com/Sm7QMSggqH

— Star City Games (@StarCityGames) January 6, 2025

So begins 2025's suite of competitive Magic events. It's going to be a wild ride, one with Universes Beyond at the Pro Tour, high-level tabletop events throughout the year, and plenty of digital events for the Magic Online- or MTG Arena-inclined among us.

This past season was a monumental year for Magic, in more ways than one. We celebrated a milestone: Magic World Championship 30. Along the way, Frank Karsten and I recounted each of the previous 29 World Championships up to that point. We saw incredible winning streaks and consecutive Top Finishes that were unheard of, from Simon Nielsen's incredible run of consecutive Top 8 appearances to Javier Dominguez's heart-tugging win over Marcio Carvalho, becoming just the second two-time World Champion in the game's illustrious history.

The last year of Magic has made anything feel possible again. The World Championship finals match featured the first and only two players to ever advance to three World Championship final tables, and it ended with the crowning of the second two-time World Championship winner. Standard's metagame, revived with a fresh rotation, has done nothing but churn out interesting and unique decks.

So, what will 2025 hold? Let's start with the obvious: what's next?

Well, Pro Tour Aetherdrift is less than a month away, and Standard will be on full display alongside the latest Magic set. The Magic Spotlight Series actually awarded the final set of invitations to the event, which will take place at MagicCon: Chicago next month from February 21 to 23. There's plenty to do there, from Dungeons & Dragons play to competitive Dandân. It'll be my birthday, and I can't imagine a better present than covering the first Pro Tour of the year, especially one that has players so excited to play the format at a high level.

"I like Standard and want to play more of it," said Todd Anderson, who will be attendance in Chicago to take his shot at the many tournament offerings and high-stakes events at MagicCon. "I spent weeks preparing for Atlanta and lost in the last round playing for Day Two there. Still, I had a lot of fun piloting my Dimir Tempo strategy."

Standard's premier Dimir deck has evolved quite a bit from the Demons list that Dominguez won the World Championship with, but it—along with the Gruul Aggro deck that won Magic Spotlight: Foundations—is still a major player.

Standard has resisted every effort thus far to solve it. Six weeks ago, no one would have guessed that the best-performing deck at Magic Spotlight: Foundations would be an Esper Pixie build.

The first lesson of 2025? Assume nothing.

That was the approach Anderson took with one of his coaching students ahead of the event in Atlanta. While many people were perfecting the dramatic flourish they'd used to cast Monstrous Rage, Anderson and Eddie Rojas were deep in the weeds, where they found Zur, Eternal Schemer waiting for them. In a format where players could legitimately deal 20 points of damage by the third turn, Rojas instead was tapping out for a 1/4 Wizard with no protection. But the pair felt good about their process, and Rojas trusted in that.

The result was better than just good. Eddie Rojas made his first-ever Day Two appearance.

Finished 6-3 and made day two at spotlight atlanta! Thanks @TandyMTG for the guidance and great choice on deck selection. Play Zur.

— Edward Rojas (@EdwardR7637549) January 5, 2025

That sets the stage for Standard, and you can be sure that the 100-plus players qualified are scouring the Aetherdrift Card Image Gallery for anything that might give them an edge. Heck, team Sanctum of All is famous for experimenting with ways to draft the set before they even have a full card list—you can find almost as many sticky notes on Magic cards at the earliest Sanctum drafts as you might on Mark Rosewater's desk.

But, of course, the Pro Tour is just one of the many offerings on tap this year. The second lesson of 2025 is that there's always a big Magic event happening. And we'll find it for you.

"Since COVID, it was a little disappointing that there were only three or four real premier events a year with the Regional Championships," Odenheimer reflected. "Now with the Spotlight Series, that's an additional four or five shots at the Pro Tour per year."

Before we even get to Chicago, in fact, we have a bit of a world tour to go on. The first Regional Championship cycle of the year gets going this weekend, with a trio of events that cross over hemispheres, the Equators, the Prime Meridian, the Mason-Dixon, the Rubicon, and probably a handful of other famous lines that we randomly have names for; no wonder it's so hard for me to find the line in my drafts when I need to.

We've got the Ultimate Guard European Magic Series headed to Prague this weekend for the Regional Championship in Europe, while the City Class Games Showdown will serve as Brazil's Regional Championship and the F2F Tour will host Canada's RC. That's three huge tournament fields that will get their hands on a Modern metagame that's fresh off some format-redefining bans (The One Ring and Amped Raptor) and reversed bans (Splinter Twin, Mox Opal, Faithless Looting, and Green Sun's Zenith). By the time those thousands of players have had their crack at Modern, we'll know exactly where Modern stands after the return of the Twin.

That's just in time for huge fields in the United States and Japan/Korea's Regional Championships. As column mate Frank Karsten wrote this week in an incredible look back at the iconic Modern reversals, Modern thrives on its history—and Modern history will be made and its future shaped by the events of the next eight weeks.

The Magic season is always building to the World Championship, and both the upcoming Pro Tour and the Regional Championships—along with a slate of online events—also award seats to Magic World Championship 31 later this year. It's the ultimate goal for any Magic player, and as such is the most difficult and prestigious tournament to qualify for. The field truly reflects the international audience that plays competitive Magic, and the event delivers high-drama moments year after year.

That's the goal, and the path is clear: perform exceptionally well at a Pro Tour or Regional Championship, and you could be the next Javier Dominguez.

That brings me to the third and final lesson of 2025: the next Javier Dominguez is already here, and you'll find them on the Regional Championship circuit. Look at Brazil and the beyond-dedicated Magic community that has deep roots there. Players like William Bossaneli Araujo have developed a reputation as absolute endgame bosses at the Regional Championship level, and it's only a matter of time before we see a recent Regional Championship winner take the Pro Tour by storm. The talent is there. Magic is becoming more connected than ever before.

The first real sprint of the season is here: twelve Regional Championships and a Pro Tour, right on the heels of Charis Kikidis winning the first MOCS of the year, all in eight weeks.

Welcome to the 2025 season. It's going to be a hell of a ride, and we'll do our best to nail the Aetherdrift.

2025's Spotlight Series is underway and the next stop is Utrecht, NL, for #SpotlightModern!

The Top 8 players will earn invites to Magic's Pro Tour! $50,000 prize pool, Modern Horizons 2 and 3 display cases, and more, are up for grabs!

Register today: https://t.co/PefklLfJPv pic.twitter.com/TpGubWEU8W

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) January 15, 2025