Along with today’s massive Magic Rivals League and Players Tour announcements, Wizards of the Coast also revealed that the Magic Pro League will have a partial, seven-month season to begin 2020, after which it will transition back to year-long seasons.
The 2020 Partial Season
Starting in August 2020, Magic: the Gathering’s Organized Play calendar will be moving away from seasons that follow the calendar year (the 2019 season) back to seasons that are split over multiple calendar years (the 2020-2021 season). But the 2019 season ends in December 2019, so in order to fill the gap between then and the beginning of the 2020-2021 season, the Magic Pro League will hold a shortened seven-month season.
This partial season will also see the Magic Pro League permanently shrink to 24 players from its original complement of 32. For the shortened 2020 season, those 24 players will be made up of the Top 20 members of the Magic Pro League at the end of the 2019 season and the Top 4 non-Magic Pro League Mythic Point leaders.
Meanwhile, the bottom 12 Magic Pro League members will be demoted to the new Magic Rivals League for the shortened 2020 season, where they will be joined by the Top 8 MTG Arena and tabletop players, as well as four discretionary invites. The top two Mythic and Player Points earners (so four players total) players at the end of the season in the Magic Rivals League will be promoted to the Magic Pro League for the 2020-21 season, while the third through eighth place Mythic and Player Points earners will compete in the Magic Pro League Gauntlet against the 17-20 ranked Magic Pro League players. The Top 4 of the Gauntlet will be promoted to the Magic Pro League, while the other 12 players will spend the 2020-2021 season in the Magic Rivals League.
