What are Nexus Night promo cards?

Every week, many of the stores that run organized play for Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game hold a Nexus Night, and the players who take part are meant to go home with a small pack of promo cards. Most of these promos are foil copies of cards from the sets with a PROMO banner at the foot of the card. The rest are runes with alternate art and, in most seasons, one champion unit with art that no booster pack holds.

The cards in the packs change with every set, and in a game a promo plays exactly like the regular card.

How do players get Nexus Night promo cards?

Nexus Night promo cards come in Nexus Night promo packs, which a store hands out at its weekly Nexus Night. In its dates and details document for stores, UVS Games, which manufactures the game, calls the pack a participation prize: every player who takes part should get one, while the store's supply lasts. The packs are not a product of their own, and their cards do not turn up in booster packs.

A store receives all of its packs for a season in one shipment, and those packs have to last until the next set comes out. Stores with many players are asked to spread their packs over the weeks of the season, so at a busy store not every player may get a pack every week. Players also trade and sell the cards second-hand, like any other single card, and single cards come from local game stores, from Cardmarket in Europe, from TCGplayer in the United States and from CardTrader on both sides of the ocean.

What is in a Nexus Night promo pack?

For the first season, Riot showed the whole pool in one picture in its announcement of the first English Regional Qualifier and other organized play updates: each pack held three cards out of 25, made up of one Teemo, Scout with custom art, six alternate art runes and eighteen parallel foils. The pool changes when a new set comes out.

• Origins: a new Teemo, Scout, six alternate art runes and eighteen commons and uncommons of Origins in foil, such as Pouty Poro and Stalwart Poro.
• Spiritforged: foil cards of Spiritforged, six alternate art runes with falling petals, and the sixteen Rares and Epics of the Proving Grounds starter box, which until then had only been printed in that box. The Master Yi Legend Wuju Bladesman is one of them.
• Unleashed: a new Lee Sin, Centered, eighteen commons and uncommons of Unleashed and the six alternate art runes of Spiritforged once more.
• Vendetta: a new Mel, Newly Awakened, eighteen commons and uncommons of Vendetta and six new alternate art runes.

The cards are foil. Riot's picture of the first pool called its eighteen commons and uncommons parallel foils, and since Unleashed every card in the packs carries Riot's Nexus Night foil treatment, as Riot said in its announcement of the Unleashed Nexus Night packs. Riot's overview of Radiance, the fifth set, says that the list of the Radiance packs, with their runes and their chase card, will follow on 16 October 2026, a week before the release of Radiance on 23 October 2026.

Which chase cards have the packs held?

The chase card is the one champion of a pool with new art, and it is the card most players hope to find. Riot has not said how often each card of a pool turns up in a pack.

• Teemo, Scout from the Origins packs shows Teemo, drawn by Alsie Lau, in front of a wall of the words GG EZ.
• Lee Sin, Centered from the Unleashed packs has new art and sets its name and its rules text in the middle of the card, which Riot called a pun on the name. It reprints an Origins card, so it carries the code OGN even though it came in the Unleashed season.
• Mel, Newly Awakened from the Vendetta packs has new art by Anna Nikonova, with Mel floating in a whirl of golden light.

For the Spiritforged packs, Riot announced no champion with new art. The cards it put forward that season were the sixteen Proving Grounds Rares and Epics, which players had not been able to get in foil before.

Players sell the chase cards second-hand, and today Teemo, Scout sells for $1,430.38, Lee Sin, Centered for $46.60 and Mel, Newly Awakened for $156.99.

How can you tell a promo from the regular card?

Look at the foot of the card. A Nexus Night promo carries a small banner with the word PROMO over its rarity gem, which the card from a booster pack does not have. The commons and uncommons keep the gem of their rarity under the banner, while the chase cards and the runes with new art show the gold hexagon of the Showcase gem.

The number at the foot of the card is the second clue. Riot keeps the number of the original card on its promos, so the foil Stalwart Poro reads OGN · 052/298, just like the copy from a booster pack. Chase cards and promo runes add a b to the number, such as 197b/298 for Teemo, Scout and R01b for the Spiritforged Fury Rune and the Vendetta Fury Rune. The newer promos also print a P after the number, as Mel, Newly Awakened does at VEN · 069b/166 · P · EN, while the Origins promos have none.

Can you play Nexus Night promos in a deck?

Yes. The Tournament Rules on Riot's Rules Hub allow a card in a deck when it has the same name as a card from a set that is legal in the format (rule 601.2.a), and the Core Rules identify a card by its name (rule 132.1), not by its number or its art. A promo is therefore the same card as the regular printing, and it counts toward the limit of three copies of a card in the main deck (Core Rules 103.3.b). Two regular copies of Mel, Newly Awakened and the promo make three, and a fourth copy is not allowed.

The same goes for the chosen champion and the runes. A promo Teemo, Scout can start in the Champion zone of a deck led by the Teemo Legend Swift Scout, and an alternate art Fury Rune is simply a Fury Rune in the rune deck. At a Sealed Nexus Night, though, only the cards handed out for that event may go into a deck, apart from the six basic runes (Tournament Rules 602.1.a.1 and 602.1.a.2). Apart from that, a promo follows every rule of a legal Riftbound deck exactly as the regular card does.

Where can you see every Nexus Night promo?

The Nexus Night promo cards page lists every promo season by season, with the chase cards, the runes and the foil cards of each pool. Open a card there for its text, its regular printing and its market price.

Other events hand out promo cards of their own, such as the Pre-Rift events before each set and the competitive Summoner Skirmish events, and the event finder shows the Nexus Nights near you.