Welcome to the latest Regional Championship season. It's going to be a fast one—and that's not just because of the Charbelcher Combo decks ending games in one big belch.

As many of us look ahead to Magic World Championship 31 on December 5–7, the current Regional Championship cycle is already underway. It kicked off with Vinicio Sánchez-Delgado winning the Central America Magic Series in Guadalajara earlier this month before two events on opposite sides of the world yielded us Regional Champions Vinnie Fino in the United States and Khó͘ Se̍k-un at the MIT Championship. These Regional Championships are qualifying players for Magic World Championship 32, scheduled for 2026. It's a quirk of the schedule that may shape the path of Magic players in 2026 and beyond.

In fact, the first Magic World Championship 32 competitors qualified two weeks ago at the Magic Online Championship Series won by Guglielmo Lupi. There, Lupi and fellow finalist Tom White earned seats at next year's World Championship.

There's a long way to go before then, of course, but that's where the Regional Championship road that players are walking will take them. As I often say, all roads lead to the World Championship. In 2026, there will be more roads than ever: in addition to the planned Regional Championship and Pro Tour circuit, there's also an expanded series of Magic Spotlight events and the recently announced 2027 Magic Limited Championship that will bring in players from across the Magic community.

Fans of the old "Limited Masters" portion of the Pro Tour can look forward to the 2027 Limited Championship, as old-school Pro Tour Hall of Fame members can use their annual invite for the special event—something many of them were excitedly committing to in the hours following the announcement, which came from their fellow Hall of Famer-turned-organized play leader William "Huey" Jensen. Huey described how the Limited Championship resonated with him as a player. And he isn't alone. Many a Pro Tour player has enthusiastically looked forward to the show and prepared to test their Limited skills.

The Magic Spotlight Series is expanding as well. In addition to more open-entry events offering players a direct path to the Pro Tour, the Spotlight Series schedule for 2026 features several Limited events, including the much-anticipated return of Team Limited events, coming next June at Magic Spotlight: Marvel Super Heroes in Las Vegas, Nevada, followed by a second event in Brussels, Belgium, in July.

Chasing the Magic Pro Tour dream? Here’s a clear look at 2025–26 season's competitive pathway—from RCQs all the way to the World Championship! pic.twitter.com/lE2xdp0ews

— Frank Karsten (@karsten_frank) October 21, 2025

But all of that is left for a very exciting 2026. There's still plenty left to sort out before then, including an Arena Championship, the 2025 Magic World Championship, and the final Regional Championship cycle of the year.

That brings us back to Guadalajara, where Vinicio Sánchez-Delgado emerged victorious from the 130 players who registered for the Central American Magic Series that serves as the area's Regional Championship. It was the first Regional Championship of the cycle and came right on the heels of Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, where Michael DeBenedetto-Plummer and Goblin Charbelcher defeated Francisco Sánchez's Azorius Control. Even though much of the Magic world may not have been closely following the results of the tournament, it was the best litmus test of the post-Pro Tour Modern format, where Tameshi and Charbelcher aren't just known commodities but the deck to beat.

And that litmus test turned out to be quite telling.

The finals of the Central America Magic Series featured Sánchez-Delgado on Amulet Titan squaring off against Pedro Molina, also on Amulet Titan. Noticing a theme?

By the time things wrapped up at Houston's Regional Championship, attendees could see what was going on. Vinnie Fino's Esper Blink deck, utilizing the core of Solitude alongside Ephemerate, was one of the few true breakout decks of the weekend. This deck came to be after Team Scrapheap united for yet another Regional Championship of excellence—with a pair of Scrapheap teammates (Fino and John Puglisi-Clark) meeting in the finals of that event—but Esper Blink was not the only "breakout" deck of the tournament. In fact, if you can classify such a classic Modern archetype as Amulet Titan having a "breakout" event, it would have to look something like this.

Collins Mullen took Amulet Titan into the Top 8 of the Regional Championship in Houston. At the same time, a pair of players at the MIT Championship advanced to the elimination rounds with a Primeval Titan deck. The key addition to the deck that Amulet enthusiasts have been testing is Icetill Explorer, which opened up a whole new angle of play for the deck; I watched skilled Amulet players at the Pro Tour loop Otawara, Soaring City multiple times in a turn to bounce all of an opponent's problematic permanents.

Namely, Fino's Jeskai Blink archetype was the only deck that outperformed Amulet Titan across combined matches from both Regional Championships, posting a 58.9% win rate to Amulet Titan's 55.9%. No other deck reached 55%, with the popular choice of Goryo's Vengeance wildly underperforming and struggling to achieve a 47% win rate. That means, despite all the developments of the past month, Modern is far from solved—though you can find everything you need to get to work in Frank Karsten's article.

Primeval Titan
Solitude
Ephemerate

We've also seen the Regional Championship for Australia and New Zealand, and now things are set for a final mad sprint through November to put a bow on the 2025 Regional Championship season, whichhas seen everything from the rise (and fall) of Cori-Steel Cutter, Quinn Tonole and the Magebane Lizards, and the recent resurgence of Titan in Modern.

That means players readying themselves for Regional Championships in South America and Southeast Asia—those events begin on November 1—are no longer locked on Goblin Charbelcher as the deck to beat. After the first month of Regional Championships, it's Amulet Titan and/or Ephemerate that's risen to the top of that list.

One of those players prepping is Matias Leveratto. The champion's name may have faded from the spotlight some since his days of beating Brad Nelson in a finals match on MTG Arena, but since that victory, he has made Magic playing, content, and coaching his full-time career, achieving five Regional Championship Top 8s in that time. That translated into four Pro Tour invitations, providing a blueprint for anyone in the region hoping to follow his path.

Leveratto has a few core pieces of advice for them, or anyone else trying to get ahead of the ever-changing Modern metagame. In other words, thousands of Magic players across the globe are trying to puzzle out what they should play at their upcoming Regional Championship.

Since winning a Pro Tour in 2019, Matias Leveratto has continued to pursue Magic and now offers regular content and coaching as he continues to make regular Pro Tour appearances.

Matias Leveratto had plenty of exciting tales to tell from the Pro Tour. "A fun story is that we were very high on a Song of Creation deck, but it was really hard to assemble and test against everything without making it public," Leveratto explained. "Since Modern is so big, and while we tuned the deck to address the issues it was having, we had to reevaluate everything all the time, so it was very hard. But one of the team members (Baku) was so in love with the deck that he would lock in on it, then drop it, and then the next day be back trying again."

It's a funny story, but the lesson is one that's familiar to longtime Modern gamers: knowing how your deck interacts with the rest of the field is key to success. There's almost never a decklist so good in Modern that it runs roughshod over everything. Instead, matches are often decided on the margins by players who have practiced enough to squeeze every last percentage chance out of their deck.

For Leveratto, that means Magic Online. It's not just the platform that has helped him launch a content and coaching career, it's also the best tool for keeping his own game at its best.

"I play a bunch online and very few events a year in person—the Regionl Championships and Pro Tours mainly. I'm so much more used to playing online that sometimes it's hard for me to process everything in paper at the same speed," Leveratto admitted. "I think online platforms are great, especially for people who either don't own cards or live in places where there may not be a local game store. You can find top-level competition 24/7, which is great."

Looking Ahead

Once events wrap this weekend in South America and Southeast Asia, the sprint continues through the end of the month. After all, what better way is there to celebrate a year of Regional Championship action than with a series of Modern tournaments?

• November 1–2: South America and Southeast Asia
• November 8–9: China
• November 22–23: United States (Las Vegas), Canada, Japan/South Korea, and Europe/Middle East/Africa