Magic: The Gathering is Nerd Culture Turned Cool In 2026

Athlete

One of my favorite subplots of the 2026 Winter Olympics was Team USA Gold Medal Figure Skater winner Amber Glenn's unabashed public fandom of the collectible card game, Magic: The Gathering. I couldn't stop gawking at IG story posts from her and fellow Gold Medal winner (and current America's Sweetheart) Alysa Liu ripping open packs of Magic both in the early days of the Olympics:

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(fun fact, the cool looking card Alysa pulls here is a neon ink Fire Lord Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender worth upwards of $500, but she immediately shifts her newbie attention to a 1 cent Ally token before Amber realizes what just happened and freaks out appropriately)

and also during the actual Olympics Closing Ceremonies while walking in a procession on the ice, a bold move if i do say so myself:

This blew my mind because not only are these young women in their early 20s playing a 30+ year old fantasy card game, they're also the literal best in the world athletes at their chosen sport. It's pretty much the exact 180 degree opposite of what one would consider a stereotypical Magic: The Gathering player in my youth: a scrawny/out of shape middle-aged male dork.

This got me to realize that we may be in an age where liking traditionally "nerdy" things is not only accepted, but actually kinda cool?

Nerd

I used to be very into Magic: The Gathering when I was a kid in the 90's. Something about a skill-based card game (with some luck, of course) combined with the collect-ability of trading cards really fired all the dopamine receptors in my brain. Not only could they sell cards in randomized packs of 15 (like baseball cards) to keep people buying more and chasing the good ones, they could also keep making new cards to keep the game fresh and people buying new ones multiple times a year. We're basically looking at one of the first "live service" games made and it was a physical product. It was such an insanely good idea for a product that I'm surprised it took until 1993 for something like it to be released, especially because it's still going strong today in 2026.

However, it was a pretty nerdy hobby I had to admit. The cards had the art and sensibility of high fantasy stuff like dragons, wizards, orcs, and goblins. Stuff you would definitely associate with Dungeons and Dragons and by association, fucking nerds. It was an interest that I was ashamed of having as a teenager, especially around girls and "cool friends" that I wanted to impress by presenting myself as also cool by never bringing Magic up.

I still loved the game, though. I had my parents subscribe me to the official game magazine The Duelist with the biggest draw for me being the puzzles in the back that they called "Magic: The Puzzling" where they would present a dire game state situation and tasked you with finding the right sequence of plays to win the game. The NY Times crossword puzzle could never.

During my sophomore year in college, I quietly took a bus by myself without telling anyone (partly out of shame) from Providence to Boston to compete in an all day Pro Tour Qualifier tournament (which was the Magic equivalent of an amateur trying to get on the PGA Tour or World Series of Poker). I did pretty well, getting into the top 32 (IIRC) finishers out of hundreds before I got exhausted of playing and wanted to get back to my dorm before transportation back would get annoyingly sparse. I also was pretty beat from interacting with very intense, socially awkward (and sometimes very smelly and sweaty) nerds all day. Back then, the stereotype actually reflected reality more often than not, especially at the competitive levels of the game.

That was my one and only foray into playing the game with "strangers". After that exhausting and admittedly brave experience, I retreated to the safety of either playing it casually with my college roommate (he was actually way more into it than I was) or just following the game online from afar by just reading about new cards and occasional tournament results. Eventually, I just grew out of the game, especially after graduating and moving cross-country. No one I knew played the game anymore and it wasn't something I was actively seeking out when rebuilding my social groups.

Fast forward to 2026 and I'm fittingly rediscovering the game the same way Alysa Liu discovered the game for the first time: with the Final Fantasy/MTG crossover set (where she also fittingly pulls a $100+ card the first chance she gets):

Final Fantasy is another piece of millennial nostalgia that is probably a good cultural deep dive topic for another day, but the takeaway for now is that this June 2025 released crossover set is the biggest selling product for Magic: The Gathering ever in its 33+ years of existence, making $200 million on the first day of sales. The game itself generated $1.72 billion in 2025 and accounted for 37% of parent company Hasbro's revenue. Yeah, that Hasbro toy company that owns Transformers, Nerf, Peppa Pig, Monopoly, and all of your childhood favorites. That's right, the game is still breaking sales records over three decades in and has outlasted virtually every generational childhood fad in my lifetime.

Isn't that positively wild?

Music

Emboldened by my rediscovery for the game, I dove into a rabbit hole of Magic content and discovered that Mega-Popstar Post Malone is a gigantic fan of the game. So much so that he paid $2 million for a 1 of 1 Lord of the Rings crossover card in 2023:

Again, this is someone that is at or near the top of his field that is considered "cool" (music). This is a dude who's sold out stadium tours, 150+ million records, and has successfully transitioned from rap to pop to country music while topping each chart along the way. Not only that, he's just turned 30, completing the bridge from our early 20 year old Figure Skating Queens to the 40 year old nerds (me) that were the first generation fans of the game.

And similar to Amber, Posty isn't just paying lip service to liking a geeky activity. There's a cornucopia of video evidence over years of him playing the game and playing the game well with some of the game's most prominent YouTubers.

As a sidenote, one of my favorite new genres of YouTube video is celebrities playing a game of Magic: The Gathering Commander (a 4 player variant of the game) with content creators, but produced like it's a reality show complete with spliced in contestant interviews and reactions to each play. I would have never guessed someone would have made the act of spectating other people playing a Magic game even remotely entertaining, but here we are. These guys have cracked the code on making an incredibly complicated game not only palatable, but mesmerizing to follow along (I quickly lost an hour to watching an entire game).

Fashion

The final stop on our road from nerdy to cool naturally lies in the fashion world, with Kyle Ng, founder of Brain Dead.

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Brain Dead is a streetwear/art collective brand based in Southern California that I discovered around 2017 or so when I had a menswear awakening while being caught up in Peak Sneaker Hype. Their reasonable prices (for streetwear) and California origins were compelling, but I was most drawn in by their bold, colorful art prints and their unique take on clothes that brought in influences from animation to skate culture to pulp horror and more.

Kyle's had multiple profiles in GQ (as well as this really interesting Interview Magazine feature) as a designer/founder of the collective and has collaborated with any number of "cool" celebrities, ranging from Faye Webster to Seth Rogan to Jeff Goldblum (who was wearing Brain Dead clothes on his Disney+ show, naturally). He's done it very shrewdly, business-wise (collaborations with big brands like Adidas) while authentically through bringing in his own cultural interests to inspire pieces and design, like horror movies or (you guessed it) Magic: The Gathering.

Like myself, Kyle played the game as a kid in the 90's, but stopped for awhile and then rediscovered it in the 2020s when he saw other people in his artistic/fashion circles playing the game. In 2020, Brain Dead released a co-branded Magic: The Gathering clothing capsule collection of some graphic t-shirts, tote bags, button up shirting, and more. Stuff that had original artwork and designs next to familiar Magic logos and elements on high quality textiles. It worked out so well that they've continued to partner with Wizards of the Coast to launch multiple seasons of clothing as well as custom playmats and even designing their own Brain Dead-styled Magic cards through the Secret Lair program with custom artwork and treatments.

To truly appreciate the unprecedented nature of this collaboration, you gotta understand that gaming/nerd culture had rarely (if ever) gotten proper fashion craftsmanship support over the years. Most licensed clothing has been shoddily printed with cheap materials and produced with sweatshop labor overseas. The kinda stuff you would feel gross about overpaying for as a fan, but reluctantly do because you have no other choice.

Brain Dead's latest capsule of clothing and cards dropped a couple of weeks ago in February 2026 and had many clothing pieces sell out in a matter of days, with the cards being removed from the webstore on the same day.

(I managed to snag a set of the foil cards because I wholeheartedly support this collaboration and melding of culture)

It's a testament to what a truly simpatico collaboration of disciplines can do to elevate tasteless IP "merch" to clothing that you would feel proud to wear as a proper outfit to go out in social settings. I'm excited for gamers to find their entry point into fashion with Brain Dead. Even though the notion of "streetwear" might be losing its luster a bit in the sartorial world, the brand is already a step ahead, collaborating with classic brands like Brooks Brothers.

Athletics. Music. Fashion.

These are all objectively "cool" disciplines that I never would have imagined to embrace Magic: The Gathering nerd culture the way luminaries like Amber Glenn & Alysa Liu, Post Malone, and Kyle Ng have. The world may be going up in flames right now, but the one silver lining is that we seem to be in a place where people can feel less ashamed to be proud of their nerdy hobbies in public.

PS: Wizards of the Coast got the Jim Henson company to create new Muppets to promote their latest Magic: The Gathering set and already used them to cheer on Amber and the Team USA Women's Figure Skating team:

You definitely know you've made it in the zeitgeist if you've got Muppets.