Magic: the Gathering Arena is officially coming to mobile on January 28, 2021, in the form of an early access event alongside the Kaldheim early access event. Unfortunately, it will only be available on Android for now.
The game is “almost feature complete,” Community Manager Megan O’Malley said on Weekly MTG, and will only be missing some social features like friends lists. It will be cross-platform, meaning that your entire account—collection, decks, friends, etc—will be available no matter where you play. However, small things like your avatar and pet choices will be specific to your device.
Once maintenance is complete on January 28, you will be able to search the Google Play store for MTG Arena and—if you have an eligible Android phone—you’ll be able to download it and play. Most higher-end Android phones made in the last two years should meet the eligibility requirements, which include: Android 6.0, four gigabytes of RAM, and one of three chipsets (or better)—Snapdragon 845, Kirin 970, or Exynos 9810. See the list of phones Wizards compiled in its announcement for which devices it expects to be supported.
Those specs are high, O’Malley acknowledged, but they are set where they are in order to achieve Wizards’ performances goals for the mobile client, which include 30 frames per second and the ability to play for an hour without an issue. She also indicated that Wizards will be working to lower the hardware requirements as the year progresses.
As for an iOS version—it’s is “in the works,” O’Malley said, and will be coming “later this year.” More details about the plan for MTG Arena on mobile will come later this month in the January State of the Game.
MTG Arena will arrive on mobile just under a year after Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner revealed the game’s mobile plans in an investor call in February 2020. “Magic Arena will move to mobile in 2020,” Goldner said at the time, and it’s “incredibly exciting as we give more people access to Magic Arena.”
Unfortunately, Wizards was unable to meet that timeline—which, to be fair, was set before the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the globe—and announced in October that they were delaying the mobile release until early 2021.
However, with a firm date now set for when players will be able to get their hands on MTG Arena’s mobile client, we’ll soon see how well Magic translates to small screens.