What Is Riftbound Radiance?
Radiance is the fifth set for Riftbound, the physical card game set in the League of Legends universe. It releases October 23, 2026 worldwide, with a preview season that ran from September 25 (kicking off at RQ Los Angeles) through October 9.
The theme is music. Every Showcase treatment, every alternate-art Rune and most of the new artwork leans into stage lights, vinyl, cassette tape and concert iconography — and the headline Champions are the ones who fit that brief. Seraphine, Evelynn and Ekko join Riftbound for the first time, alongside Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Orianna, K'Sante, Mordekaiser and Riven.
Riot lists the set at 180 cards including 66 Showcase cards. You will also see 167 collectible cards quoted on community trackers — the gap is a counting convention around Showcase variants, not a disagreement about the set. Either way, Radiance is small. That matters more than it sounds: with fewer cards competing for deck slots, individual reveals have been swinging the meta conversation far harder than they did during Vendetta preview season.
Radiance also brings three new mechanics — Deploy, Show Off and Disarm — plus two new card types, Equipment Units and Bomb tokens. We cover those in full in the Radiance new mechanics guide; this page is about the cards themselves.
The Ultimate Rare: Packed Amphitheater
Radiance contains Riftbound's second-ever Ultimate rarity card, after Baron Nashor in Unleashed. It is Packed Amphitheater — a battlefield whose text is almost comically simple:
Packed Amphitheater — Battlefield. Champion units here have +1 might.
The number that matters is the pull rate. Riot has stated the Ultimate appears in roughly 0.025% of booster packs across the print run. Run the arithmetic and that is:
- ~1 in 4,000 packs
- ~1 per 167 booster boxes (at 24 packs per box)
- ~1 per 28 sealed cases (at 6 boxes per case)
To put that in money: at roughly $120 per booster box, the expected spend to open one Packed Amphitheater is somewhere north of $20,000. This is not a card you chase. It is a card you watch sell on the secondary market and then decide whether you care.
The quietly interesting part is that the effect is genuinely playable. +1 might to Champion units is a real constructed effect in a set that is pushing Champion-heavy decks, which means the Ultimate is not purely a collector piece — unlike Baron Nashor, it has a reason to be in a deck. Expect that to support its price.
The 10 Best Cards Revealed So Far
Ranked on expected constructed impact, not collectability. This reflects the consensus forming across preview coverage in the first week of October 2026 — before anyone has actually played with these cards, so treat it as informed opinion rather than settled fact.
| # | Card | Type & Cost | What It Does | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Good Stuff | Gear · 3 energy, 1 power · Deploy | When you play this, discard 1 then draw 3. When you hold here, return it to its owner's hand. | Net +1 card, repeatable every turn you hold the battlefield. The single most-discussed card of preview season. |
| 2 | Portable Portal | Gear · 2 energy · Deploy | Play to a battlefield (even one you don't control). Pay 1 orange power to ready a unit here. Friendly units here have Ganking. | Turns any orange deck into a mobility deck. Reads mild, plays broken — reviewers expect 3-ofs, not 1-ofs. |
| 3 | Trifarian Captain | Unit · 2 energy, 1 might · Yellow | When you play me, look at the top 4; reveal a unit or gear costing ≤3 energy and ≤1 power and draw it. Recycle the rest. | A strictly deeper Stack the Deck attached to a body — in the colour that just had Stack the Deck banned. |
| 4 | Avalanche | Spell · 5 energy, 2 power · Orange | Deal 3 to all units and bases — including your own. | Riftbound's first real board wipe. Single-handedly taxes every go-wide token deck in the format. |
| 5 | Last Caress (unconfirmed wording) | Spell · Evelynn signature · Orange/Purple · Reaction | The next unit you play this turn — including from face down — can be played directly to any battlefield. When you play it, give it a buff. | Accelerate without the power cost, plus it breaks the face-down placement rule. Enables points on the opponent's turn via Ambush. |
| 6 | Bedeviling Stranger | Unit · 2 energy, 2 might · Purple · can be hidden | When you play me, choose a battlefield; if there are 4+ units there, you may return an enemy unit there to its owner's hand. | A 2-drop that blows out combat maths from face down. Possibly the strongest purple card in the set. |
| 7 | Ruined Monastery | Battlefield | When you conquer here, you may discard 1 and channel a rune exhausted. | Rune-economy acceleration attached to something you were already trying to do. Compounds brutally in long games. |
| 8 | Encore | Spell · 3 energy, 1 power · Seraphine signature | Choose two: deal 2 to a unit; play two 1-might Recruit tokens; give up to two units +1 might this turn; or look at the top 2, draw 1, recycle the other. | Modal spells are hard to misbuild. The draw mode alone justifies the cost, and you get a second mode free. |
| 9 | Detonation Amplifier | Gear · 4 energy, 1 power · Deploy | When you play this, you may kill another friendly unit or gear to draw 1. Friendly Deathknell effects here trigger an additional time. | The Ziggs bomb payoff. Three Bombs at a battlefield fire six times — and more with Ziggs on board. |
| 10 | Firelight Base | Battlefield | When you conquer here, the next unit you play this turn has Accelerate; you may pay 1 and a power of its domain to have it enter ready. | Nominally Ekko's battlefield, but free Accelerate on any unit is a generically strong aggro/midrange effect. |
The Nine New Legends
Every Radiance Legend has an Overnumbered variant, and each Overnumbered also exists in an artist-signed version — so the Legend chase in this set is nine cards deep, times two treatments.
| Champion | Legend Ability (where revealed) | Early Read |
|---|---|---|
| Riven Riven, Broken Blade | Units you play to battlefields you control enter ready. | The deck-building darling of preview season. Turns every tap/exhaust ability into a same-turn effect and every move trigger into value. Hard-countered by Rockfall Path and Vex. |
| Evelynn Evelynn, Agony’s Embrace | Once per turn, when you play a card from face down, draw 1. Then, if it is not your turn, discard 1. | Three different Champion units to choose from (2-drop, 4-drop, 5-drop), each pointing at a different game plan. The most flexible build in the set. |
| Ekko Ekko, Boy Who Shattered Time | Empower, then disempower to reduce the cost of your next unit this turn by 2 and a power — and give it kill-at-end-of-turn. | Cheat big units out for one turn. Firelight Base and Accelerate effects push the archetype; whether it is tier 1 is another question. |
| Jarvan IV Jarvan IV, Exemplar of Demacia | Orange/Yellow. When you play a gear with Deploy, you may exhaust me and pay a power to move a friendly unit to that battlefield. | The most Deploy-dependent Legend in the set. Reviewers are lukewarm — the ability is cute but power-hungry. |
| Orianna Orianna, Mechanical Marvel | Lets Equipment become Units. An Equipment that becomes a Unit is automatically unequipped first. | The whole reason Equipment Units exist. Pairs viciously with Improvised Projectile — turn an 8-cost gear into an 8-might unit, then throw 8 damage at something. |
| Seraphine Seraphine, Starry-Eyed Songstress | Token/go-wide payoff; tap units to discount spells and Legend abilities. | Headlines the Showdown deck. Strong engine, but Avalanche exists specifically to punish it. |
| Mordekaiser Mordekaiser, Iron Revenant | Yellow removal-heavy shell. | Stacks another cheap kill spell onto a colour that already has Hidden Blade and Safety Inspector. Units will struggle to stick. |
| Ziggs Ziggs, Short-Fused | Bomb-token payoff — the more Bombs you play, the bigger the reward. | Detonation Amplifier doubles his Deathknell triggers. The most "build-around" Legend of the nine. |
| K'Sante two Champion units revealed | Shield-into-damage conversion; converts shields into Assault. | K'Sante, Courageous (5 energy, 4 might, Accelerate + Shield 2, no power cost) is the playable one. K'Sante, Dauntless (green, 4/4, doubles shields) is powerful but painfully power-hungry. |
Every Revealed Card by Type
Everything below has a confirmed card name. Where a card first surfaced through a Chinese-language preview rather than an English reveal, the wording is marked as unconfirmed and may change before launch.
Spells
| Card | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Avalanche | 5 energy, 2 power · Orange | Deal 3 to all units and bases — yours included. |
| Cataclysm | 4 energy, 1 power · Orange | Opponents can't play spells this turn. Move a friendly unit to an occupied enemy battlefield. |
| Brawl | 3 energy, 1 power · Red · Action | Give a unit Assault this turn equal to its might. |
| For Demacia! | 3 energy · Yellow · Reaction | Choose a battlefield; friendly units there get Shield 2 this turn. |
| Encore | 3 energy, 1 power · Seraphine signature | Choose two: deal 2 to a unit; two 1-might Recruit tokens; +1 might to up to two units; or look at top 2, draw 1, recycle 1. |
| Ntofo Strikes | 2 energy, 1 power · K'Sante signature · Action | Give a friendly unit Shield 2, then deal damage equal to its shield to an enemy unit. |
| Last Caress (unconfirmed) | Evelynn signature · Orange/Purple · Reaction | Next unit you play this turn (including from face down) can go directly to any battlefield; give it a buff when played. |
| Improvised Projectile | 3 energy, 1 power · Action | Choose a friendly gear; deal damage equal to its energy cost to a unit at a battlefield. |
| Supernova | 9 energy, 1 blue power | Deal 10 damage to a unit, draw 2. Largely a sealed-format card. |
| Hold 'Em | Action · costs 2 less if you played a unit or gear to a battlefield this turn | +3 might. Trivially discounted in any deck that plays to battlefields. |
| Command: Attack | — | Deep dig (looks at five cards). Flagged as a major Nocturne enabler in green/purple. |
Units
| Card | Stats | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Trifarian Captain | 2 energy · 1 might · Yellow | Look at top 4; reveal and draw a unit or gear costing ≤3 energy, ≤1 power. Recycle the rest. |
| Bedeviling Stranger | 2 energy · 2 might · Purple · hideable | Choose a battlefield; if 4+ units are there, return an enemy unit there to hand. |
| Lulu, Whimsical | 3 energy · 3 might · Purple | When I move, another unit's base might becomes 4 this turn. Not once per turn. |
| Hunting Dog | 3 energy · 3 might · Yellow | Deathknell: play a 1-might Bird token with Deflect to your base. |
| Iridescent Avian | 3 energy · 3 might · Green | Exhaust: buff a unit. If it is already buffed, give it +2 might this turn instead. |
| Bilgewater Tracker | 3 energy · 3 might | Deal 1 to up to two units. No power cost. |
| Clanging Sentry | 3 energy · 2 might · Blue · Mech | Your Mechs have Disarm. |
| Battlefield Armorer | 3 energy · 3 might | When a friendly gear at a battlefield dies, pay 1 to return it to hand. |
| Ekko, Ingenious | 3 energy · 4 might · Blue | Additional cost: return a friendly unit to hand. Has Ganking. |
| Stalwart Goatherd | 4 energy · 2 might · Orange | Shield 2, +2 while defending. On play, you may kill a gear costing 4 energy or less. |
| Coalesced Energy | 4 energy, 2 power · 4 might · Red | End of your turn: recycle all your runes, then channel 4 runes exhausted. |
| Mournful Spirit | 4 energy · 1 might | Deathknell: you may kill a unit or gear here. |
| K'Sante, Dauntless | 4 energy, 1 green power · 4 might | Has Shield. When I attack or defend, double the shield of a unit you control here this turn. |
| K'Sante, Courageous | 5 energy · 4 might · Orange | Accelerate, Shield 2. When I hold, channel a rune. No power cost. |
| Evelynn, Consuming | 5 energy, 1 orange power · 5 might | Ambush. When you play a card from face down, ready me and give me +1 might this turn. |
| Elnuk Herd | 6 energy · 5 might · hideable | On play, give another friendly unit +3 this turn, then recycle me if played from face down. |
Gear
| Card | Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Nazuman Ntofo | 1 energy · equip 1 | Grants Shield 2. No power cost to play. |
| Runeblade Anvil | 1 energy | On play or when it leaves the board, banish the top card of your deck until your next ending phase; you may play it. |
| Concert Poster | 1 energy · Yellow · Deploy | On play or when you conquer here, pay 1 to put a 1-might Recruit token in your base. |
| Portable Portal | 2 energy · Deploy | Pay 1 orange power to ready a unit here. Friendly units here have Ganking. |
| Demacian Standard | 2 energy, 1 power · Jarvan IV signature · Deploy | When friendly units attack here, give one +2 this turn. When you hold here, return it to hand. |
| The Good Stuff | 3 energy, 1 power · Deploy | On play, discard 1 then draw 3. When you hold here, return it to hand. |
| Invigorating Bloom | 3 energy | On play, give a friendly unit +3 might this turn. Exhaust a friendly mighty unit to draw 1. |
| Detonation Amplifier | 4 energy, 1 power · Deploy | On play, kill another friendly unit or gear to draw 1. Friendly Deathknell effects here trigger an additional time. |
| Blade of the Exile | Riven signature gear | Grants Ganking. |
Battlefields
| Card | Effect |
|---|---|
| Packed Amphitheater Ultimate | Champion units here have +1 might. The 1-in-4,000 Ultimate Rare. |
| Ruined Monastery | When you conquer here, discard 1 and channel a rune exhausted. |
| Firelight Base | When you conquer here, the next unit you play this turn has Accelerate; pay 1 and a power of its domain to have it enter ready. |
| Durand Memorial | When you defend here, give a unit you control here Tank this combat. |
| Bandle Scouts' Academy | When you hide a card here, you may play a Gold gear token exhausted. |
| Rakelstake | Predict for a unit or gear. |
Runes & Promos
- Alt-art Runes — the set's Runes follow the music theme. Order is a piano keyboard pathway, Fury goes guitar-and-metal, Chaos leans DJ/EDM. A full reveal landed with the October 5 update.
- Heimerdinger, Academy Instructor — the Pre-Rift event promo, handed out at participating stores October 16–22 while supplies last.
- Ahri, Confident — included in Summoner Skirmish 2 Top Cut and Champion prizing (December 14, 2026 onward).
- Heartsteel Overnumbers — a separate Overnumbered sub-theme running alongside the nine Legend Overnumbers.
Four Ways Radiance Changes the Meta
1. Gear removal stops being a sideboard card
With Deploy printed across every colour, the honest assessment from reviewers is that there is no deck in the format that will run zero gear. That makes gear hate maindeckable for the first time. Stalwart Goatherd — a 4-energy 2-might body with Shield 2 that kills a gear costing 4 or less on entry — goes from fringe to format staple on that basis alone.
2. Go-wide decks now have to respect a board wipe
Avalanche deals 3 to all units and bases. Token decks — Seraphine, Rex'Ai, anything stacking 1-might Recruits in base — have never had to play around a sweeper in Riftbound. They do now. The nuance is that it hits your own board too, so it is likelier to show up as a 2-of sideboard card in grindy orange decks than as a maindeck staple. Note also that it is defiable at 5 energy and 2 power, which in a green-heavy format is a real tax.
3. Yellow consistency came back through the side door
Riot banned Stack the Deck because Kennen was too consistent. Radiance then prints Trifarian Captain: a 2-drop body that digs four cards instead of three for a unit or gear at ≤3 energy and ≤1 power. In Kennen it finds Nocturne, Shovel or Fizz. In other yellow shells it finds Baited Hook. Reviewers have been blunt that this makes the Stack the Deck ban look strange, and that it quietly un-bans the turn-one-Nocturne, turn-two-Nocturne pattern. Watch the banlist.
4. Mobility becomes a deckbuilding axis
Portable Portal grants Ganking to friendly units at a battlefield for 2 energy, and can be played to a battlefield you don't control. Two copies and you are playing a double-hold game your opponent structurally cannot. The strong early take is that this is not a 1-of value card — orange decks should be asking whether they can fit three, and restructuring around it if the answer is close. Combined with Cataclysm (move a friendly unit to an occupied enemy battlefield) and Firelight Base (free Accelerate on conquer), Radiance is pushing board mobility much harder than any prior set.
What to Buy, What to Wait On
Buy as singles on launch week
- The Good Stuff — if it is as good as preview consensus suggests, it will be in a majority of decks and the price will not get cheaper. Playsets early.
- Portable Portal — the three-of argument means demand is 3× per orange player, not 1×. Historically the worst kind of card to buy late.
- Trifarian Captain — cheap, uncommon-looking, and format-warping. Classic underpriced-at-launch profile.
- Signature spells for the Legend you actually want to play — Encore, Ntofo Strikes, Last Caress. These sit at Epic and do not get cheaper during the first season.
Wait on
- Packed Amphitheater — at 1 in 4,000 packs there is no sane acquisition route except the secondary market, and launch-week asks on Ultimate rarity are always inflated. Let it settle.
- Overnumbered Legends — nine Legends × two treatments means the supply is thinner but the demand is also split nine ways. Vendetta Overnumbers softened a few weeks post-launch; expect the same.
- Anything Riven or Evelynn — both are the community's favourite deckbuilding toys right now, which means both are at peak hype before anyone has played a tournament. Riven in particular is hard-countered by Rockfall Path and Vex, and that has not been priced in.
- Sealed product, if you want specific cards — Radiance is a 180-card set with 66 Showcase variants. We will publish the measured box odds the week it launches.
The honest bottom line: Radiance is a small set that punches above its size because almost every revealed card is at least baseline playable — that was the most repeated observation across preview coverage. The headline cards (The Good Stuff, Portable Portal, Trifarian Captain) are cheap commons and uncommons rather than Epics, which is good news for players and bad news for anyone hoping to open value. If you are buying for play, buy singles in week one. If you are buying for collection, the Overnumbered Legends and the music-themed Runes are the interesting objects — and Packed Amphitheater is a lottery ticket, not a plan.
Pull rates: we will publish measured Radiance box odds from community openings in launch week. In the meantime, the Vendetta pull rate data is the closest comparison — same 24-pack box, same three-foils-per-pack structure.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best card revealed in Riftbound Radiance so far?
The Good Stuff is the consensus pick — a 3-energy, 1-power Deploy gear that reads "discard 1, draw 3" and returns to your hand when you hold the battlefield. A repeatable net-two-card draw at that cost is unusual for Riftbound, and it is colour-flexible enough that most decks can run it. Portable Portal and Trifarian Captain are the other two drawing the loudest reactions.
What is the Radiance Ultimate Rare card?
Packed Amphitheater, a battlefield giving Champion units there +1 might. It is Riftbound's second Ultimate rarity card after Baron Nashor in Unleashed, and it appears in roughly 0.025% of booster packs — about 1 in 4,000 packs, or one per 167 booster boxes.
How many cards are in Riftbound Radiance?
Riot lists 180 cards including 66 Showcase cards. Community trackers often quote 167 collectible cards instead; the difference is whether Showcase variants count as separate entries. Either way Radiance is smaller than Vendetta, which is part of why individual reveals are moving the meta conversation so much.
Which Legends are in Riftbound Radiance?
Nine: Seraphine, Evelynn, Ekko, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Orianna, K'Sante, Mordekaiser and Riven. Seraphine, Evelynn and Ekko are joining Riftbound for the first time. All nine have Overnumbered variants, and each of those also exists with an artist signature.
Is Trifarian Captain better than the banned Stack the Deck?
In several decks, yes. Trifarian Captain digs four cards where Stack the Deck dug three, and it comes attached to a 2-energy body rather than being a pure spell. It is restricted to units and gear at ≤3 energy and ≤1 power, so it cannot find spells — but in Kennen that still means Nocturne, Shovel and Fizz. Several reviewers have noted this makes the Stack the Deck ban look inconsistent, and it is a live banlist question.
When does Riftbound Radiance release?
October 23, 2026 worldwide. Preview season ran September 25 to October 9, and Pre-Rift sealed events run October 16–22, the week before launch. Full product and event details are in our Radiance release date and products guide.
Are these card details confirmed?
Card names on this page have been checked against public set trackers and Riot's own preview materials. A small number of cards — notably Evelynn's signature spell Last Caress — surfaced first through Chinese-language previews, so the English wording may be adjusted before release. Those are marked unconfirmed in the tables above. Costs and effects for the remaining cards come from preview-season coverage and may be errata'd at launch.
Disclaimer: Radiance is unreleased at the time of writing. Card names have been verified against public set trackers, but costs, effects and wording are from preview-season coverage and may change before the October 23, 2026 launch. Rankings are opinion, formed before anyone has played the format. This is not financial advice.