Card type

Card type is a characteristic found on every Magic: the Gathering card. It appears in the type line, between any supertypes and subtypes that card might have.

Other objects, such as tokens and some non-traditional Magic cards, also have card types.

Card type dictates many of the general rules regarding when and how a card may be played, as well as its role during combat. Cards may have more than one card type, such as artifact land or enchantment creature, and types may be changed during gameplay. A card may possess any supertype, regardless of its card type, and can gain any subtype that corresponds to a type on that card.

Current types

Standard Magic cards typically have either:

• one or more of the permanent types Land, Creature, Artifact, Enchantment, and Planeswalker, or
• one of the non-permanent "spell types" Instant and Sorcery.

These types are evergreen, expected to be seen in every Magic set. Less commonly, standard cards may instead have the permanent type Battle, or may have the type Kindred (formerly called Tribal) which always appears in addition to another type. These infrequent types can be considered specific mechanics of the sets they appear in, similar to keywords, and like any mechanic may or may not be considered likely to return on new cards. Within premier sets, the Battle type has only been used in March of the Machine, while Tribal/Kindred cards appeared primarily in Lorwyn–Shadowmoor block with a handful in Future Sight and Rise of the Eldrazi.

Starting with Magic 2015, tokens printed on the reverse side of marketing cards are printed with a type line. This type-line appears to depict the card type "Token" for creature tokens, or the card type "Emblem" and the corresponding Planeswalker subtype for emblem tokens. However, neither tokens nor emblems are card types, and these labels are included solely to help identify the tokens. Additionally, while the creature subtype on such token cards is correct, emblems are neither cards nor permanents and have no types or subtypes.

Nontraditional cards may have other card types, which are used as additional mechanics in specific sets and formats. Their rules keep them from entering normal game zones, and cards from outside those sets and formats don't interact with them. The only such type to appear in a standard-legal set and to be legal in eternal formats is Dungeon (from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms), whereas the others are connected to casual formats (below).

Casual formats

Most of the other currently supported card types are exclusive to casual variants and the supplemental products that support those formats. Phenomenon and plane cards are exclusive to the Planechase format. Scheme cards are used by the player designated as the archenemy in the Archenemy format. Vanguard cards are used in the format of the same name. The conspiracy type has appeared only in the Conspiracy product while bounties are a self-contained format in the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander decks.

While most casual play-oriented card types have appeared only on oversized cards, cards with the conspiracy type are printed at the normal size, to allow them to fit into booster packs. Because this would allow those cards to be mixed into a normal deck, cards with the conspiracy type are explicitly banned outside of the Conspiracy format.

Obsolete types

Some older cards were printed with card types that have since been renamed or rendered obsolete by rules updates. Those cards have received errata and are still playable according to their Oracle text.

Interrupt and mana source were created for older versions of the game's timing system. Originally, most spells were played in a batch rather than the stack, but interrupts functioned similarly to how instants work with the stack now. Mana sources were a short-lived type intended to be "even faster than interrupts", similar to a mana ability of today. When the batch was replaced by the stack in Sixth Edition, those types became obsolete, and cards that had those types were given errata to be instants, one of the most significant functional changes in the history of the game.

In the same release, the word summon in the type line was renamed to creature to remove any confusion resulting from the lack of the word "creature" on cards representing that type. This update did not cause any functional changes.

With 9th Edition, the phrase "enchant [quality]" stopped being used in the type line to identify local enchantments. The normal enchantment type, until then only used for global enchantments, was paired with the the new Aura subtype and enchant keyword to preserve the previous functionality.

The Tribal type was renamed to Kindred with no functional changes with the release of Khans of Tarkir on Magic: The Gathering Arena. New printed products began using Kindred starting with Modern Horizons 3.

Type icons

The Future Sight futureshifted card frame supported type icons for each card type then in the game. These icons were a set of claw marks for creatures, a flame for sorcery, a lightning bolt for instant, a sunrise for enchantment, a chalice for artifact, and a pair of mountain peaks for land. Cards with multiple card types were indicated by a black and white cross. There was no type icon for the planeswalker type, as it did not yet exist.

• 
  Artifact "chalice".
• 
  Creature "claw mark".
• 
  Enchantment "sunrise".
• 
  Land symbol.
• 
  Instant "lightning bolt".
• 
  Sorcery "flame".
• 
  Multi-type symbol.
• 
  Unused Future Sight Planeswalker symbol.
• 
  Planeswalker symbol used in Magic Online and Magic: The Gathering Arena.
• 
  Battle symbol used in Magic: The Gathering Arena.

Rules

From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (July 25, 2025—Edge of Eternities)

Card Type

A characteristic. Except for abilities on the stack, each object has a card type, even if that object isn’t a card. Each card type has its own rules. See rule 205, “Type Line,” and section 3, “Card Types.”

From the Comprehensive Rules (July 25, 2025—Edge of Eternities)

• 205.2. Card Types
  • 205.2a The card types are artifact, battle, conspiracy, creature, dungeon, enchantment, instant, kindred, land, phenomenon, plane, planeswalker, scheme, sorcery, and vanguard. See section 3, “Card Types.”
  • 205.2b Some objects have more than one card type (for example, an artifact creature). Such objects satisfy the criteria for any effect that applies to any of their card types.
  • 205.2c Tokens have card types even though they aren’t cards. The same is true of copies of spells and copies of cards.

From the Comprehensive Rules (July 25, 2025—Edge of Eternities)

• 300. General
  • 300.1. The card types are artifact, battle, conspiracy, creature, dungeon, enchantment, instant, kindred, land, phenomenon, plane, planeswalker, scheme, sorcery, and vanguard.
  • 300.2. Some objects have more than one card type (for example, an artifact creature). Such objects combine the aspects of each of those card types, and are subject to spells and abilities that affect either or all of those card types.
    • 300.2a An object that’s both a land and another card type (for example, an artifact land) can only be played as a land. It can’t be cast as a spell.
    • 300.2b Each kindred card has another card type. Casting and resolving a kindred card follow the rules for casting and resolving a card of the other card type.

Nonstandard cards

Some cards printed for special purposes are not supported in the Comprehensive Rules and may have card types defined elsewhere.

• The Hero's Path event run during the Theros block used hero cards, which are unplayable outside of that event (e.g. The Hunter).
• Elemental was introduced as a card type on the Mystery Booster test card Trial and Error.