World Championship

The Magic: The Gathering World Championship (commonly referred to as Worlds) is a yearly tournament to crown the best Magic player in the world. It has been held annually since 1994, and is considered the most prestigeous Magic tournament.

Description

History

The first Magic World Championship was held at the Gen Con in Milwaukee, USA on 19–21 August 1994. Unlike later World Championship events, anyone could register for the event, which was a 512-player single elimination tournament held across three days. Among the competitors was later head designer for Magic, Mark Rosewater. After two days of single elimination, the final four consisted of three Europeans – the top European players were considered to be ahead of the top American players at this time – and one American, Zak Dolan. Dolan defeated Belgium's Dominic Symens 2–0 in one semifinal; the other was between two French players, Bertrand Lestrée and Cyrille DeFoucand, with Lestrée winning 2–0. Lestrée had been the pre-tournament favorite, but was defeated 2–1 in the final, making Zak Dolan the first Magic World Champion.

Since 1995, Worlds has been an invitation-only tournament. From 1996 to 2011, it was the event that concluded the current Pro Tour season, with invitations being awarded to high-level Pro players, players with a sufficiently high DCI rating, as well as the top finishers in each country's National Championship. The event featured an individual competition, with the winner being crowned the Magic: The Gathering World Champion, as well as a national team competition, where the winning team became the Team World Champion.

After the 2011 season, the World Championships was split in two. The individual competition was replaced by the Players Championship, a highly exclusive event featuring just 16 top pro players. In 2013, this event was renamed to the 'World Championship' once again, and since 2014, 24 players have been invited to compete. The team competition was replaced by the World Magic Cup, a national team competition that ran from 2014-2018, and featured teams from 72 to 74 countries.

The World Championship is typically a three-day event taking place at different times and locations every year. The 2015 World Championship was held in August, at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. In 2013 and 2014, the World Championship was held concurrently with the World Magic Cup, and it was initially announced that the 2015's World Championship and World Magic Cup would also share the same venue, but be held on separate weeks. However, it was later announced that these would be held at different locations and at different times.

From 2014 to 2019, the World Championship has been a 24-player event featuring 14 rounds of Swiss play (seven each on the first two days) before a cut to the top four players, where they on the last day of competition play best-of-five semifinals and final matches. The World Championship currently features Standard and Booster draft, though prior to the 2017 World Championship, it featured Modern as well. In the 2019 World Championship, all play was done through MTG Arena - draft pools were uploaded onto profiles and played.

With the introduction of Magic: The Gathering Arena as a professional level medium in 2019, the system was revamped to a much more streamlined system; there would only be 16 players, much like the 2012 and 2013 Championships, and had the eight title winners over the previous season and eight at-large players, four from the Magic Pro League and four from outside it.

The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in the partial 2020 Players Tour Season not holding a World Championship. That said, a small-field, split-format tournament was held under the name of the 2020 Season Grand Finals in the closing months of the 2020 season.

The 2021 World Championship included the Rivals League and used League Gauntlets as the qualifying tournaments. It took place on MTG Arena at the culmination of the 2020–2021 Pro season in October of 2021. When the League system was disbanded, the 2022 World Championship used a simplified qualification model, using Championship Top 6 places for immediate invites and two leaderboards using match points.

In 2022, post-COVID-19 pandemic and post-Magic esports, there was yet another restructuring as the World Championship returned to tabletop and the Premier Play program was installed. The most notable aspect of the restructuring was that the invitation list is expected to go into the triple digits, after a decade of 32 or fewer participants. It is also unusual in that it has a variable size, with an expected total of 121 players broken down into 45 Regional champions, 32 Pro Tour and Worlds Top 8 players, 12 Online finalists, and 32 Leaderboard players. This number could go up with extra 12-4s at the Pro Tour or multiple players at 32nd in AMPs or go down with redundant invites.

Winners

Magic: The Gathering World Champions
Year	Winner	Held in
1994	Zak Dolan	Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
1995	Alexander Blumke	Seattle, Washington, USA
1996	Tom Chanpheng	Seattle, Washington, USA
1997	Jakub Slemr	Seattle, Washington, USA
1998	Brian Selden	Seattle, Washington, USA
1999	Kai Budde	Yokohama, Japan
2000	Jon Finkel	Brussels, Belgium
2001	Tom van de Logt	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2002	Carlos Romão	Sydney, Australia
2003	Daniel Zink	Berlin, Germany
2004	Julien Nuijten	San Francisco, California, USA
2005	Katsuhiro Mori	Yokohama, Japan
2006	Makihito Mihara	Paris, France
2007	Uri Peleg	New York City, New York, USA
2008	Antti Malin	Memphis, Tennessee, USA
2009	André Coimbra	Rome, Italy
2010	Guillaume Matignon	Chiba, Japan
2011	Jun'ya Iyanaga	San Francisco, California, USA
2012	Yuuya Watanabe	Seattle, Washington, USA
2013	Shahar Shenhar	Amsterdam, Netherlands
2014	Shahar Shenhar	Nice, France
2015	Seth Manfield	Seattle, Washington, USA
2016	Brian Braun-Duin	Seattle, Washington, USA
2017	William Jensen	Boston, Massachusetts, USA
2018	Javier Dominguez	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
2019	Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa	Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA
2020	-	Not played
2021	Yuta Takahashi	Online (MTG Arena)
2022	Nathan Steuer	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
2023	Jean-Emmanuel Depraz	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

^† in the form of the Players Championship

Team World Champions

The team world championship was held from 1995 until 2011, when it was replaced by the World Magic Cup.

Year	Country	Players
1995	United States	Mark Justice, Henry Stern, Peter Leiher, Mike Long
1996	United States	Dennis Bentley, George Baxter, Mike Long, Matt Place
1997	Canada	Gary Krakower, Michael Donais, Ed Ito, Gabriel Tsang
1998	United States	Matt Linde, Mike Long, Bryce Currence, Jon Finkel
1999	United States	Kyle Rose, John Hunka, Zvi Mowshowitz, Charles Kornblith
2000	United States	Jon Finkel, Chris Benafel, Frank Hernandez, Aaron Forsythe
2001	United States	Trevor Blackwell, Brian Hegstad, Eugene Harvey,
2002	Germany	Mark Ziegner, Kai Budde, Felix Schneiders
2003	United States	Justin Gary, Gabe Walls, Joshua Wagner
2004	Germany	Sebastian Zink, Torben Twiefel, Roland Bode
2005	Japan	Ichiro Shimura, Takuma Morofuji, Masashi Oiso
2006	Netherlands	Julien Nuijten, Kamiel Cornelissen, Robert van Medevoort
2007	Switzerland	Nico Bohny, Manuel Bucher, Raphael Genari, Christoph Huber
2008	United States	Michael Jacob, Paul Cheon, Sam Black
2009	China	Wu Tong, Bo Li, Zhiyang Zhang
2010	Slovakia	Ivan Floch, Robert Jurkovic, Patrik Surab
2011	Japan	Ryuuichirou Ishida, Tomoya Fujimoto, Makihito Mihara

Worlds promos

The Worlds cards are prizes for Standard tournament World Championship Viewing Parties at WPN Premium stores. The first was released in 2020. They are foil and alternate art.

• 2020 — Crucible of Worlds

Player spotlight

As of the 2018 World Championship the World Champion is eligible to be featured on a player spotlight card. While they won't design it, they will consult with R&D on its selection and will appear pictured in the art.

External links

• Monty Ashley (December 07, 2010). "Magic on ESPN2 (Years Ago)". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.