The Radiance Overview
Radiance arrives October 23. Learn how Deploy, Show Off and Disarm change play, compare the products, and inspect the key cards in Riftarc.
Radiance releases on October 23, 2026, in English, French and Chinese, with Pre-Rift events running October 16–22. Its most useful starting point is not the chase-card list: it is how battlefield gear, reveal-based bonuses and attack debuffs change your decisions.
Updated October 5. This replaces the earlier link-only overview with a player guide; previews are not evidence of a settled competitive metagame.
Deploy: battlefield control now protects gear
Deploy gear belongs at a battlefield. The important timing distinction is that it is killed when an opponent holds that battlefield—not simply when the opponent conquers it.
Dockside Lock-Up makes that distinction concrete. Playing it banishes a unit at its battlefield. When you hold that battlefield, its own ability kills it and lets you play the banished card without paying its cost. If an opponent holds instead, Deploy kills the gear; that is not the same trigger and does not grant you that payoff.
For planning purposes, ask two questions before committing this sort of gear: what does it remove now, and can you hold the battlefield to gain the card? Winning one fight is not the same as securing that later payoff.
Show Off: a hand can enable a bonus
Show Off checks for a qualifying card in your hand or on your side of the board. A large card does not necessarily have to be played before it matters.
Rousing Display illustrates the payoff. Its Show Off condition is an energy cost of at least seven. It normally produces two Recruit tokens at your base; meeting the condition increases that to four. That gives a deck-building question a concrete shape: do you have enough qualifying cards to enable the stronger version reliably, without filling the deck with expensive cards you cannot use?
This is a synergy to test, not a reason to declare every high-cost card an automatic inclusion.
Disarm: choose the combat that benefits
Disarm reduces an enemy unit's Might by one for the turn when the Disarm unit attacks. The target must be at that battlefield, and multiple instances can stack.
Kai'Sa – Rebel combines Disarm with a separate ability that gives your spells Reaction while Kai'Sa herself is in a showdown. The two effects ask you to consider both the combat numbers and what interaction you can hold available. Do not read the Might reduction as permanent, or assume it affects a unit at a different battlefield.
Orianna turns a resource into a fighter
Lady of Clockwork lets you pay one at the start of your Main Phase to turn a friendly gear into a unit gear. Its Might equals its energy cost, and it stays that way until you choose another gear.
Equipment transformed this way becomes unequipped. That is a meaningful trade-off: the chosen object is now a unit, but you have not also kept its previous attachment intact. Start testing with the question “which gear is worth turning into a unit this turn?” rather than treating every gear as a free extra attacker.
Which Radiance product fits your plan?
- Evelynn vs. Seraphine Showdown: two preconstructed decks for players who want a ready-made head-to-head starting point. Riot has scheduled the full decklists for October 16; this overview does not guess their contents.
- Booster Display: 24 packs of 14 cards. Choose it for opening packs, not as a guaranteed route to a particular card or treatment.
- Vault: a storage-focused package with six boosters, foil tokens and 36 runes.
- Pre-Rift kit: five boosters plus a seeded pack associated with one of nine legends, for the prerelease experience.
Keep product contents separate from local availability. This guide does not establish that any particular store has stock.
Collecting: attractive treatments, very different odds
Radiance includes K/DA and Heartsteel treatments, special versions of its nine new legends, alternate-art runes and an ultimate-rare treatment. Riot lists the ultimate-rare rate at an average 0.025% per pack—equivalent to one in 4,000 packs as a rate, not a promise that a box or case contains one.
The practical takeaway is to separate three plans: learning the mechanics, obtaining cards for a deck, and collecting a treatment. They have different success criteria. Use the linked Riftarc artwork below to read the actual cards before deciding which interactions deserve testing.
The drawing's signup window has already closed. For purchase-link timing and product prices, see our Radiance Drawing FAQ.
Official reference: Riot's Radiance overview.
Read the Radiance cards in Riftarc
Preferred English standard printings. Open a card for its catalogue page.
