Magic: The Gathering® | The Hobbit™ on Magic Online

Posted on Aug 04, 2026

By The Magic Online Team

One of the most timeless sagas in the fantasy genre brings its opening act to the Magic multiverse! Magic: The Gathering® | The Hobbit™ (set code HOB) debuts on Magic Online next Tuesday, August 11 at 10 a.m. Pacific time (17:00 UTC)! 

The downtime to add this set to Magic Online will happen this Wednesday, August 5, from 9 a.m. to approximately 12 noon Pacific time (16:00-19:00 UTC). Be sure to follow our social media outlets (Discord, BlueSky and more) to keep real-time tabs on this release.

Features of the next two months include quality-of-life improvements for combo players across Magic Online – particularly for CEDH buffs and competitive 60-card fans. Check out this article for all the details (available Wednesday)!

Collecting Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit

Play Boosters

Each HOB Play Booster will sell for $3.99 USD in the Magic Online Store starting on Tuesday at 10 a.m. PT and contains 1-4 rare/mythics.

For this set, the composition is:

• 7 regular commons
• 3 regular uncommons
• 1 regular rare or mythic
• 1 regular wildcard – that is, a non-foil of any rarity
• 1 foil wildcard – a foil in every pack!
• 1 land – tap-dual, basic, or full-art Middle-earth Journey basic land – in either regular or foil

Premium Boosters

The MTGO-exclusive Premium Booster is back! As usual, we have changed up quantities and pricing for this set.

The 11-card HOB Premium Booster will sell for $6.99 USD in the Store starting next Tuesday. Here’s the layout – each Premium booster contains at least 5 rares/mythics and at least 9 foils:

• 2 foil uncommons
• 2 foil commons
• 2 foil rare/mythic - main set (regular frame)
• 1 foil Middle-earth Journey land
• 1 foil Scene card of any rarity
  • This is from either Scenes in boosters or the tabletop Scene Boxes
• 1 Classic Artists of Middle-earth mythic
  • Borderless, either regular or foil
• 1 regular Booster Fun rare/mythic
  • Main set – Extended Art, Dragon Hoard frame, Book Cover frame, Dwarven Alt-Art
  • Battle of Five Armies Extended Art
• 1 foil Booster Fun rare/mythic
  • Same as Main Set Booster Fun

Booster Fun

We’ve got a wide variety of card styles coming your way with this set! Here’s a breakdown of where you can find each series of special treatments – “Yes" indicates both non-foil and traditional foil available:

* presented with English language text

Event Updates

HOB Limited Play

Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit is another smaller set with 190 cards. The Pick-2 draft format is on tap again for tabletop play.

Like we did with Magic: The Gathering | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles earlier this year, we are going to emphasize our traditional 8-player, Pick-1 style of drafting this time.

We will offer the regular Draft League with normal structures for the first three weeks until Wednesday, September 2. There will not be a HOB single-elimination queue.

For Sealed Leagues: Competitive Sealed will run for the first two weeks until August 25, while Friendly Sealed will run for three weeks until September 2.

HOB will not feature in Limited scheduled events (Preliminaries, Challenges, etc), but full-set prizes in Constructed high-level play will use this set as usual.

HOB Draft Bundle

Our Draft Bundle returns with Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit.

Thie general idea is “Buy 3, Pay Less” – plus get an avatar! The Draft Bundle will sell for $32.00 USD in the MTGO Store starting next Tuesday. That represents a $4 savings off buying Event Tickets to cover those events.

The Draft Bundle contains three Draft Entry Tokens which can be used to enter the HOB Draft League during its first three weeks, plus this set’s avatar – or should we say, avatars – exclusive to this product ...

Bilbo Baggins, Burglar and Gollum, Riddle Master will be provided, so you can choose your favorite one!

Neither the Bundle nor its contents are tradeable.

• Events: These Tokens are only for the Draft League, not single-elimination.
• Expiration: Draft Entry Tokens must be used in the first three weeks of League play – they expire Wednesday, September 2 at 10 a.m. PT. Unused Tokens will be removed at that time and are non-refundable!
  • The Bundle will leave the store on Tuesday, September 1.

Alternate Play Schedule

Here’s a look at the schedule of events coming up between now and Reality Fracture in late September. Each description mentions if the Draft is Phantom – cards won’t be added to players’ collections in Phantom events. All transitions take place at 10:00 a.m. PT unless otherwise noted.

• August 5-11 – Our throwback to old draft formats continues with Urza Block Draft. (Keeper)
• August 11-19 – Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit™ Limited will be front and center for this week. This will be a Pick-One draft experience.
• August 19-September 23 – Vintage Cube draft league returns for a summer run that supports the MOCS Showcase broadcast on September 20. (Phantom)
• September 23-29 – To finish off HOB season, we’re continuing our mash-up series by combining LTR and HOB – it’s The Lord of the Rings™ “Block” Sealed. (4 LTR & 2 HOB packs - Keeper)

Commander Corner

Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit does not feature any stand-alone Commander decks.

Commander Backlog

We have made additional progress against our Commander Backlog. These cards will be available via Treasure Chests when they rotate around 10 a.m. PT next Tuesday (all extended-art frame from Streets of New Capenna Commander, except New Blood).

*New Blood will be swapped back into the Blood Rites Commander Deck following downtime. Accounts that purchased the LCC Blood Rites deck at any point prior to tomorrow's downtime will be granted regular-frame copies of New Blood during downtime.

Due to long-standing rules engine limitations, New Blood's text-changing ability will not apply.

Streets of New Capenna Commander Decks Available Tomorrow

The three missing decks from the Streets of New Capenna Commander set have been completed and will be ready for purchase in the Store following tomorrow’s downtime. Each deck will sell for $29.99 USD and contains 17 cards that were new to Magic at the time (some have been reprinted since 2020). The decks are:

• Riveteer Rampage – green-red-black
• Bedecked Brokers – white-blue-green
• Obscura Operation – blue-black-white

Magic Online Players Rewards (MOPR) Update

Here’s what is on deck for MOPR.

The grant on Tuesday, September 1 covers August activity. It will feature non-foil and foil versions of Vintage Cube common and uncommon staples in a retro-frame treatment! Also included will be non-foil and foil versions of the Seasonal Plains from the tabletop Gift Bundle.

For more information on earning Player Rewards, click here.

Treasure Chest Update

Treasure Chests will update when HOB goes on sale next Tuesday – be sure to watch our Twitter/X (@MagicOnline) and our Discord channel to confirm this before opening Chests.

For full details on the changes to come, check out the information page when it updates later this week.

After next Tuesday, the next Treasure Chest update will occur on Wednesday, September 2.

Avatars

Here are the rest of the avatars for this set:

New accounts created between next Tuesday and April 21 will receive the Troop of Ponies avatar.

In addition to the Bilbo and Gollum avatars mentioned earlier for the HOB Draft Bundle, we will have another pair of avatars for the Vintage Cube Bundle later this season – Gandalf, Goblins’ Bane and Smaug, Wicked Wurm!

Then it’s time to bestow some Prestige! As usual, you get five points for each Competitive trophy you earn in Leagues and one for each Friendly trophy. At the end of the season (when Reality Fracture releases), you'll earn every avatar for which you qualify.

For earning at least five points, you get the uncommon The Great Goblin avatar with the new Liquid Silver frame.

Get up to 20 points to also score the rare Gollum, Riddle Master avatar (same as the Draft Bundle) with a Liquid Gold frame.

Earning 40 points or more rewards you with the mythic rare Smaug, Wicked Wurm avatar (same as the Vintage Cube bundle) with the new Liquid Mythic Orange frame!

Odds and Ends

• Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit © 2026 Middle-earth Enterprises. The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and the names of the characters, events, items and places therein, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Middle-earth Enterprises, LLC used under license by Wizards of the Coast LLC. All rights reserved.
• Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit will not be redeemable.
• Constructed events will rotate to HOB versions of the same event on release day, so make sure you complete any Leagues before the set launches.
• Reprints in HOB that are entering a format won’t become legal until the new Leagues kick off next Tuesday.
• The refreshed New Account Kit with HOB commons will be available next Tuesday when HOB goes on sale.
  • The Account Upgrade Kit, Collection Upgrade Kit, and Commander Workshop will not be updated with this set.

Thanks for being part of our adventure! Whether you’ve been with us along, you’re returning to the fold, or are new to our game – we’ll see you on the battlefield!