How often does a new Riftbound set come out?

Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game gets a new main set about every three months, which adds up to four sets a year. Each set adds new Legends, champions and other cards, and none of them replaces the sets before it.

This article covers the weeks between two sets, what happens around a release and the dates Riot has given for 2027.

How many weeks are there between two Riftbound sets?

Riftbound sets come out 12 to 15 weeks apart. Origins came out in English on 31 October 2025, and Spiritforged followed 15 weeks later, a stretch that took in the end of the year. The release dates of Unleashed, Vendetta and Radiance each lie exactly 12 weeks after the set before them. The dates Riot has given for the two sets after Radiance, Legacy and The Reckoning, make the next two gaps 14 and 13 weeks.

Every English release date of a Riftbound set, from Origins to The Reckoning, falls on a Friday.

Does Riot keep to four sets a year?

Yes, Riot's dates put one main set in each quarter of the year, and its plan for 2027 does the same. The year 2026 holds four of them: Spiritforged in February, Unleashed in May, Vendetta in July and Radiance in October. On 3 August 2026, Riot set out the sets of 2027 in the same pattern. Legacy, the sixth set, is dated 29 January 2027, and The Reckoning, the seventh, 30 April 2027. An eighth set is planned for the third quarter of 2027 and a ninth for the fourth quarter, without a name or a date yet.

The Tournament Rules of 9 October 2026, which Riot publishes on its Rules Hub, fit this rhythm. They describe Standard, the main tournament format, as the most recent five to eight sets, which is two years of releases at four sets a year.

What happens in the weeks before a new set comes out?

In the weeks before a release, Riot reveals the cards of the new set a few at a time in a preview season, many of them through content creators and partners. The Radiance cards were revealed from 25 September to 10 October 2026, and the Vendetta cards from 6 to 18 July 2026. Both preview seasons ended 13 days before the release of the set.

In the last week before the release, stores hold Pre-Rift events. A Pre-Rift week runs from the Friday a week before the release to the Thursday before it: 16 to 22 October 2026 for Radiance, 22 to 28 January 2027 for Legacy and 23 to 29 April 2027 for The Reckoning. Each player gets a kit with a small ready-made deck of 15 cards, five booster packs of the new set and a promo card, and builds a Sealed deck from it at the table.

What happens between one set and the next?

A set stays the newest one for about three months, and the store events of that time are built around it. The organized play materials for stores call this stretch a set season. In the Radiance season, each store may hold up to two Summoner Skirmish tournaments, one in each of two windows: 9 November to 13 December 2026 and 14 December 2026 to 17 January 2027. The second window closes 12 days before the release of Legacy.

The weekly Nexus Nights follow the same seasons. A store receives its Nexus Night promo packs for a whole season in one shipment, and those packs are meant to last until the next set comes out.

A few products come out between two sets rather than with one. The Gift of the Rift Bundle, dated 4 December 2026, holds booster packs of the first five sets, and Proving Grounds, 2nd Edition, a starter box with four new decks, is dated 19 February 2027, three weeks after Legacy.

When can you play the cards of a new set at a tournament?

A new set becomes legal in Standard on its release date. The Tournament Rules of 9 October 2026 list Radiance as part of Standard with a release date of 23 October 2026. When a set comes out on different days in different regions, its cards are legal at an event from the official launch date in the region where the event is held.

The language editions of Riftbound have moved closer together over time. Unleashed came out in Simplified Chinese on 10 April 2026, four weeks before its English release on 8 May 2026. Vendetta came out in English and Chinese on the same day, 31 July 2026, and Radiance has one release date in English, French and Chinese, 23 October 2026, which is also the date of the French edition of Vendetta, as Riot's French roadmap sets out.

Do you have to keep up with every new set?

No. A new set adds to the card pool and leaves the older sets legal, so a deck does not stop working when the next set comes out. Every set from Origins to Radiance is part of Standard, and Riot intends to start rotation, when the oldest sets leave Standard, in 2028. In its State of the Game of 3 August 2026, Riot also said it is committed to keeping the booster packs of a set available for at least as long as the set is legal in Standard.

Sets also build on one another. Evelynn, Entrancing came out in Unleashed on 8 May 2026, and Radiance, with its release on 23 October 2026, gives Evelynn her first Legend, Agony's Embrace. Evelynn, Entrancing is a Chaos unit and Agony's Embrace is a Body and Chaos Legend, so from the release of Radiance, a deck led by the Legend can choose the Unleashed card as its chosen champion, next to the new Evelynn, Consuming and Evelynn, In Control.

Every card of every set is in the card list, with a page for each set from Origins to Radiance, and the Radiance previews page shows the newest cards in the order they were revealed. The event finder shows the Pre-Rift events near you, and the major events page lists the Pre-Rift weeks and Summoner Skirmish windows of the coming seasons.