As a follow-up to its preliminary results, Hasbro released its full Q1 financial results on Wednesday and those numbers back up a big first quarter for Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and Magic: The Gathering.
Early in the First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks shouted out Lorwyn Eclipsed and Secrets of Strixhaven as becoming the best-selling Magic premier sets back-to-back. ECL surpassed the previous highest selling Magic premier set, which Cocks refers to as “first-party sets” or non-Universes Beyond sets, by a significant margin. Cocks also mentioned that SOS quickly usurped ECL, a nice preview of the Q2 reports to come later this summer. The success of these in-universe sets could point toward increased demand for Magic IP or just demonstrate the game’s growth leading to more players buying more product altogether.
On top of ECL’s sales numbers, the set also delivered the highest engagement in Organized Play statistics since the COVID-19 pandemic. Sandwiched between ECL and SOS, Magic: The Gathering | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exceeded internal expectations, according to Cocks. The CEO used that as more proof that Hasbro’s multi-franchise strategy is expanding the Magic audience. To echo that, Cocks said that despite only one quarter in, 2026 already represents the third-largest backlist year in Magic history thanks to continuous sales of Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender and Magic: The Gathering | FINAL FANTASY.
Continuing the Universes Beyond praise, Cocks touted UB as, “probably the most successful new player adoption initiative that we’ve ever done.” He also highlighted the recent announcement that MTG Arena gained the full digital rights for the Marvel sets and noted that “it’s important to have one-to-one compatibility with tabletop and online play.”
As for MTG Arena, when asked about the declining percentage of total Magic sales for the online client, Cocks pointed out MTG Arena was designed for Standard play but much of Magic’s growth has been through collectability and more socially-oriented play like Commander. Cocks pointed to potential MTG Arena improvements and future moves toward non-MTG Arena avenues.
“In the future, what you’ll see from us as we invest in new digital iterations of Magic, both on Arena and outside of Arena, is leaning into those insights that have driven the overall ecosystem — so more Universes Beyond, more collectability, more tradability, and more social, multiplayer-oriented play,” Cocks said. “We are working on those and I think those will roll out over the course of a couple years and it will be both from the Arena team and other talented teams that we work with.”
Notably, this isn’t the first time Cocks has mentioned a non-Arena home for digital Commander play. In November of 2024, Cocks said more Hasbro was putting more resources into video games following the success of Baldur’s Gate 3.
Another interesting tidbit from the end of the conference call was Cocks calling out the rise in TCG popularity. He said trading cards is probably the hottest category in all of toy and games and the category will probably eclipse building sets either this year or next year in terms of total size.
Read the press release and view the Q1 presentation from Hasbro.
