Hello, everybody! Gavin Verhey here. Today, I'm talking about the Commander Format Panel.

Over a year ago, the Commander Format Panel—or CFP—was established. I'm so happy with what the group has done in a short amount of time. From working together on communication to aligning on some unbans to, perhaps trickiest of all, working on a matchmaking system together, a lot of work has been tackled with speed, poise, and unique insight. And now when I'm at game stores and events around the world, I hear people using brackets and Game Changers to describe their decks. It's really been a landmark year.

When we initially announced the CFP last October, I mentioned that there would be a built-in yearly rotation. No position was permanent, and it's important to rotate new people through the system. I'll just quote the article from last year as I think I said it well there:

Commander is always changing, and great, new community voices appear regularly, and while there is global reach on this panel, there are still many places I'd love to be able to have members join from over time. So, each year, some people will rotate off, some new people will rotate on, and a number will remain. This provides natural rotation from year to year, helping to make sure we have a mix of people keeping the vision and new voices coming in to represent the community.

[…]

To set expectations, it is likely that the total number of people will go down in the first rotation. Seventeen people, plus myself, is a huge group! For the first year, there's plenty for us to evaluate together, so I'm happy to have the extra eyes and experience, and it's really important to maintain consistency and vision during this transition.

Today is the day of that rotation. Some new people are going to be joining, and others will rotate out.

Before moving on, I just want to take a moment to say that every single person on the panel positively contributed to the decisions we made over the past year. We always knew we'd be going down in size, so while some people are leaving today, I could absolutely imagine rotating some of these players back on in a future year if they were interested.

With all of that said, here is what you can expect for the second class of the Commander Format Panel as we head into 2026!

Existing Members

The following players will remain on the panel:

Bandit
Benjamin Wheeler
Deco
Ittetu
Josh Lee Kwai
Lua Stardust
Olivia Gobert-Hicks
Rachel Weeks
Rebell Lily
Tim Willoughby
Toby Elliott 

And these six are rotating off the panel:

Attack on Cardboard
Charlotte Sable
DeQuan Watson
Greg Sablan
Kristen Gregory
Scott Larabee

Thanks again to everybody for all their great efforts over the past year. If you are interested in reading more about any of them, you can go read their bios from last year here.

New Additions

One thing I mentioned last year when this all kicked off was that I wanted to be able to rotate in some new people to bring in new ideas and backgrounds. And this year is no exception. Two people will be joining us on the Commander Format Panel. You may or may not recognize them … so let me introduce them to you!

Alex Heyer – @Highermtg

Alex—or as he's known best online, "Higher"—is a Magic creator and Commander player of all levels from the USA, but you probably know him mostly as being involved as a major voice in the cEDH community. He's one of the members of the channel Playing With Power and even helps run his own tournament series. In addition to providing lots of general insight on the format time and time again (which is what caught my eye), his additional eyes on cEDH will be helpful in the event we need to evaluate anything around that format this year.

Tomer Abramovici – @BudgetCommander

Residing in France, Tomer is a great nexus of Commander discussion. He got his start doing work on budget Commander decks, and now you can find him sharing his opinions on the format as part of the MTGGoldfish crew—and on social media. I appreciate Tomer's insight and how he digs into community issues, and I think he's going to be a great additional voice for medium-power Commander players, all while providing additional international insight on European events and trends as well.

Congratulations to both Alex and Tomer on joining the group, and I'm excited to see what they both add!

Looking Ahead to 2026

Thank you all for all the great discussion in response to our last article. It's been so great reading and watching all of your thoughts. I know that I alone have consumed countless hours of videos and podcasts talking about them! We're not talking about any of that or making any format changes today, especially since we're about to bring in some new people who I'll want the opinions of as well! I just wanted to say thank you. You can expect an update in the first quarter of next year, sometime after the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed—regardless of whether we make any changes, we want to check in with everybody.

For today, I want the focus to be on the panel. I'm so happy and grateful to be able to work with a great group of people on the format. Congratulations to the new members for joining, and thanks to everybody who has been involved in the panel for all their efforts over the past year.

Have a great holiday season, and I'll talk with you next year.

This has been Gavin, on behalf of the entire Commander Format Panel:

Alex Heyer
Bandit
Ben Wheeler
Deco
Ittetu
Josh Lee Kwai
Lua Stardust
Olivia Gobert-Hicks
Rachel Weeks
Rebell Lily
Tim Willoughby
Toby Elliott
Tomer Abramovici