What are special cards?

Most cards of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game have a number inside their set, and some of them come again as collector printings with new artwork. Special cards are one kind of those printings. Each one shows a champion unit in the outfit of one skin line from League of Legends, and instead of a place in the set it carries a number of its own that starts with SP. Riot calls them Special Alt Art cards.

Two sets have special cards so far. Vendetta, the fourth set, has six in the Crystal Rose skins, and Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026, has five in the outfits of K/DA. The other sets have none, and only these SP printings count as special cards.

How do you recognize a special card?

The collector number at the foot of the card gives it away. Where other cards print their place in the set, a special card prints SP, its own number and the count of special cards in its set. Kai'Sa, Survivor reads VEN · SP1/006 · EN, the first of the six special cards of Vendetta, and the special Ahri, Confident reads RAD · SP1/005 · EN.

The artwork fills the whole card, behind the name and the text, and the gem at the foot is the hexagonal Showcase gem that every showcase printing carries. Riot counts special cards among its alternate art, and in its article on collectability it described alternate art as having a more intricate foil treatment than the standard card. The row below shows Seraphine, Not Alone from Radiance as the standard Epic, the alternate art card 138a/167 and the K/DA special card SP5/005, then Kai'Sa, Survivor as the standard card from Origins and as its Crystal Rose special card SP1/006.

Why are special cards numbered apart from the set?

Riot numbers them apart because the art of the first special cards came from another game. In its overview of Vendetta, Riot explained that the Crystal Rose cards celebrate art from Wild Rift, and that it keeps the overnumbered designation for art created for Riftbound. So the Crystal Rose cards did not take a number past the end of the set, as an overnumbered card does. Riot added that they are distributed more like an ordinary alternate art card and should not be treated as overnumbered cards. Radiance numbers its K/DA cards the same way.

An ordinary alternate art card keeps the number of the card it reprints and adds the letter a, as the alternate art Seraphine, Not Alone does with 138a/167. A special card stands outside the numbering of the set, in a short run of its own.

Which special cards are there?

There are eleven special cards so far, each set with a skin line of its own.

• Vendetta has six Crystal Rose cards, numbered SP1/006 to SP6/006. Crystal Rose is a skin line of the mobile game League of Legends: Wild Rift, and the six cards credit the Wild Rift Splash Team as their artist. None of the six is a Vendetta card: each one reprints a champion unit from an earlier set. Kai'Sa, Survivor, Sona, Harmonious, Ahri, Inquisitive and Sett, Brawler come from Origins, Ezreal, Prodigy comes from Spiritforged and Lux, Crownguard comes from the Proving Grounds starter box.
• Radiance has five K/DA cards, numbered SP1/005 to SP5/005. K/DA is the virtual pop group of League of Legends, and Radiance, a set with a music theme, puts all five of its members on cards: Ahri, Akali, Evelynn, Kai'Sa and Seraphine. These five reprint champion units of Radiance itself: Ahri, Confident, Akali, Brash, Evelynn, In Control, Kai'Sa, Rebel and Seraphine, Not Alone.

Ahri and Kai'Sa are the two champions with a special card in both sets, each time on a different card.

Does a special card play differently from the standard card?

No. A special card has the same name, cost, Might and abilities as the card it reprints, and the Core Rules say that the illustration of a card conveys no gameplay information (rule 139.1). The rules identify a card by its name, which for a champion unit is the short name and the subtitle together (rules 132.1 and 132.4), so the special Kai'Sa, Survivor is the same card as the standard Kai'Sa, Survivor from Origins.

A special card therefore counts toward the limit of three copies of a card with that name in a main deck (rule 103.3.b): a deck can hold one special and two standard copies of Kai'Sa, Survivor, but not four in all. Since every special card so far is a champion unit, it can also be the Chosen Champion of a deck whose Legend carries that champion's tag (rule 103.3.a.2). Special cards leave out the reminder text in parentheses, so the special Kai'Sa, Survivor shows Accelerate without the line that explains it, and the Core Rules say that reminder text has no effect on the game (rule 135.2.d.3).

At a tournament, a special card is legal wherever the card it reprints is legal: a reprint numbered outside the normal numbering of a set keeps the format legality it already had (Tournament Rules 601.2.c). Every set released so far is part of the Standard format (601.3.c), so this changes nothing for now.

How rare are special cards?

A special card turns up about as often as any other alternate art card. Riot said so of the Crystal Rose cards in Vendetta booster packs and again of the special cards in its overview of Radiance, and it has published no separate rate for them. The last figures Riot gave were for Origins: about two alternate art cards per booster display of 24 packs, against about one overnumbered card per three displays.

In a Vendetta pack, either of the two rare slots can hold a special card. Riot's overview of Radiance lists only one slot that can hold a showcase printing, and a special card shares it with the Rares, Epics, alternate art cards, overnumbered cards and the Ultimate Rare. Riot gives these rates as averages over the whole print run, not as a guarantee for any pack or display, which is why pull rates only tell what to expect over many packs. For a collector, this makes the five or six special cards of a set one of its more reachable chases, far easier to complete than its overnumbered or signed cards.

What a printing is worth is decided by collectors, and every printing of a card has a price of its own. Today the standard Ahri, Inquisitive sells for $5.81, the alternate art Ahri, Inquisitive for $12.62 and the special Ahri, Inquisitive for $66.27. Special cards are sold one by one, and single cards come from local game stores, from Cardmarket in Europe, from TCGplayer in the United States and from CardTrader on both sides.

Where can you see every special card?

The special cards page lists every special card by set, and each card's own page shows its standard printing, its text and its prices. The rarity guide sets all the showcase printings side by side, and the champion pages, such as Ahri and Kai'Sa, gather every printing of a champion.