Riftbound TCG Set 4: Vendetta — Everything Revealed So Far

Riot Games is kicking off one of the biggest stretches in Riftbound: League of Legends TCG history. With Set 3, Unleashed, barely settled into shops after its May 8, 2026 English release, the spotlight is already shifting to Set 4: Vendetta. The official Vendetta preview season begins June 22, 2026, with the set hitting a simultaneous global release on July 31, 2026 — and what’s been revealed so far points to the biggest tonal shift the game has seen yet. Here’s everything confirmed about Vendetta, plus a quick recap of what Unleashed brought to the table.

Riftbound: Vendetta — Set 4 Release Timeline

Vendetta is the fourth main set in Riftbound and the first to launch with a simultaneous worldwide release — no staggered regional rollout like Unleashed had with its China-first launch. Here’s the confirmed schedule:

• Preview season begins: June 22, 2026 (first card reveals, mechanics breakdowns, and deck archetype teasers)
• Pre-Rift sealed events: July 24-30, 2026
• Global wide release: July 31, 2026

Riot has also confirmed that Set 5, Radiance, is already on deck for an October 23, 2026 release, with its own preview season running September 28 through October 9. That means Riftbound is moving to a noticeably faster cadence than most physical TCGs manage in their first year — good news if you’re worried about the game’s long-term support, less good news for your wallet.

What’s in the Box: Set Size and New Products

Vendetta is a slightly leaner set than Unleashed on paper — but it’s making up for raw card count with a much higher density of premium content. Confirmed details:

• 160+ new cards total (compared to Unleashed’s 220+)
• 50+ Showcase cards — alternate-art chase cards, a huge jump in proportion compared to Unleashed’s 30+
• Nine Champion Legends, which Riot says is now the standing format for future sets going forward (Radiance will also ship with nine)

The headline new product is the Showdown Deck — Riftbound’s first two-player preconstructed box. Each Showdown Deck box ships with two complete 56-card decks built around rival champions, two Vendetta booster packs for customizing, two paper playmats, deck boxes, and a rules/deckbuilding guide. It’s designed so two players can open the box and start playing immediately, no deckbuilding required, which is a smart onboarding tool for a game that’s still trying to convert League of Legends players into tabletop players.

The Vendetta Theme: Rivals at War

If Unleashed was about expanding the roster, Vendetta is about conflict. The set’s entire identity is built around iconic League of Legends rivalries — pairs of champions whose lore has them locked in permanent opposition. The confirmed rival pairings driving Vendetta’s theme are:

• Zed vs. Shen — the Kinkou Order rivalry, headlining the set’s Showdown Deck
• Nasus vs. Renekton — the cursed brothers of Shurima
• Vi vs. Jinx — the Zaunite sisters on opposite sides of the law
• Jayce vs. Viktor — Piltover’s “Man of Progress” against “The Machine Herald”

This rivalry framing isn’t just flavor text — it’s baked directly into the new Showcase card format.

Zed vs. Shen — The Showdown Deck

The first confirmed Showdown Deck pits Zed against Shen, the two halves of the broken Kinkou Order. According to Riot’s reveal, the Zed deck leans into aggression, speed, and shadow-based tempo plays, while the Shen deck is built around defense, balance, and calculated counterplay — a mirror of how the two champions play in League of Legends itself. Each 56-card deck is tournament-legal out of the box, and the included booster packs let players start tweaking their list immediately after their first few games.

New Domain Pairings: Enemies Sharing a Deck

Riftbound decks are built around two-color “domain” pairings, and up to now every pairing has combined domains that share some thematic harmony. Vendetta breaks that rule for the first time, introducing combinations Riot is explicitly calling “enemy” pairings:

• Fury + Calm (red/green)
• Mind + Body (blue/orange)
• Chaos + Order (purple/yellow)

Mechanically, this is a big deal for deckbuilders. Previous domain pairs were designed to synergize smoothly; these new combinations are deliberately built around tension — decks that have to reconcile two opposing philosophies of play. Expect early competitive discussion to focus heavily on which of these three pairings ends up the strongest once full card lists drop during preview season.

Champions Confirmed for Vendetta

Riot has confirmed several champions making their Riftbound debut with Vendetta. So far, the confirmed roster includes Nasus, Renekton, Akali, Mel, Ambessa, Zed, and Shen, with Akali, Zed, and Shen confirmed as three of the set’s nine Champion Legends. The remaining six Champion Legend slots haven’t been fully detailed yet, but given the rivalry theme, Vi, Jinx, Jayce, and Viktor are strong candidates to round out that list once the Showcase pairings are fully revealed.

Nasus and Renekton — The Cursed Brothers

Of all the rivalries in Vendetta, Nasus and Renekton might be the most visually striking. Both are massive, ascended champions from Shurima’s golden age, now locked in a millennia-long blood feud. In League lore, Nasus represents patience and wisdom corrupted into obsession, while Renekton embodies rage and brute force driven mad by centuries of imprisonment. Expect their Champion Legend cards to play into that contrast — slow, scaling value for Nasus against fast, punishing aggression for Renekton.

Both champions debuting together as part of Vendetta’s rivalry structure strongly suggests they’ll anchor the Fury/Calm “enemy” domain pairing — Renekton’s relentless aggression fits Fury, while Nasus’s grindy, attrition-based playstyle in League maps neatly onto Calm’s defensive identity. If that pairing turns out to be Nasus/Renekton’s home, it could be one of the most thematically resonant deck archetypes Riftbound has shipped so far.

Whether Riot leans into the lore symmetry or subverts it entirely is one of the more interesting open questions heading into the June 22 preview season. Either way, Shurima fans have been waiting a long time to see these two represented in a tabletop format, and Vendetta finally delivers.

Akali — Returning as a Champion Legend

Akali is one of the three champions Riot has explicitly confirmed as a Champion Legend in Vendetta (alongside Zed and Shen). As the “Rogue Assassin,” Akali’s kit in League revolves around stealth, mobility, and burst damage — traits that have translated well into aggressive archetypes in other League-adjacent card games. Her placement in a set themed around rivalries also raises an obvious question: is she here as part of the Zed/Shen Ionian storyline, or carving out her own lane? Preview season should clarify which domain pairing she calls home and how her Champion Legend ability plays into Vendetta’s broader mechanical identity.

Mel and Ambessa rounding out the confirmed debut list also points to Vendetta drawing heavily from the world of Noxus and Piltover-adjacent storylines — both characters rose to prominence in Arcane’s second season, and their inclusion suggests Riot is continuing to mine the show’s popularity for new Champion content, similar to how Unleashed leaned on Baron Nashor and the jungle/Rift theme to hook existing League players.

Showcase Cards: The “Overnumbered” Format

The single most interesting mechanical/cosmetic reveal for Vendetta so far is a new Showcase variant Riot is calling Overnumbered. Each Overnumbered pair consists of two cards — one for each rival champion — whose artwork is split across both cards. Place the two cards side by side and the artwork connects into a single continuous scene, visually depicting the rivalry as one unified composition.

The first publicly revealed Overnumbered pair is Jayce and Viktor, shown facing off across their connected artwork. Given that more than 50 Showcase cards are confirmed for the set, and Overnumbered pairs require two cards each, this format alone could account for a meaningful chunk of Vendetta’s premium chase cards — and it’s a genuinely clever way to use the rivalry theme that goes beyond just “two characters who don’t like each other are both in this set.”

Keep Reading: Riftbound Set 3: New Champions & Baron Nashor · Riftbound Unleashed: New Mechanics & Champions

Recap: What Set 3, Unleashed, Brought to Riftbound

For anyone catching up, Set 3: Unleashed officially launched in English on May 8, 2026 (following an April 10 China-first release and a March 16 preview season kickoff). It was a major step up in scale for the game, and a lot of what’s exciting about Vendetta builds directly on systems Unleashed introduced.

• 220+ cards, including 30+ alternate-art Showcase cards
• Three new mechanics: Ambush (reaction plays at a battlefield where you already have units, letting you surprise an opponent mid-Showdown), XP (a buildable resource spent for unique advantages), and Hunt (cards that earn XP when used to conquer or hold a battlefield)
• A brand-new rarity: Ultimate Rare, with a sub-0.1% pull rate. The first-ever Ultimate Rare was Baron Nashor — instantly one of the most sought-after cards in the game’s young history
• Pre-Rift sealed events began a full week before the wide release, on May 1, 2026, giving competitive players an early look at the new mechanics in a tournament setting

Unleashed proved that Riftbound could support genuinely new mechanical ideas (Ambush and XP in particular added real decision-making depth that the base set lacked) without losing the streamlined, fast-playing identity that made the original release approachable. Vendetta now has to prove the game can sustain that momentum on an even faster release cadence — Unleashed to Vendetta is less than three months, and Vendetta to Radiance is under three months again.

What We’re Still Waiting On

A few things remain unconfirmed as of this writing, and we’ll update once preview season actually starts on June 22:

• The remaining six Champion Legends beyond the confirmed Akali, Zed, and Shen
• Whether Vi/Jinx and Jayce/Viktor get their own Showdown Decks or remain Showcase-only pairings
• Specific new mechanics tied to the Fury/Calm, Mind/Body, and Chaos/Order “enemy” domain pairings
• Full pricing and exact print run details for the Showdown Deck versus standard booster boxes

Keep Reading: Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven Prerelease Guide

Final Verdict: A Bold New Direction for Riftbound

Vendetta is shaping up to be Riftbound’s most thematically cohesive set yet. Where Unleashed was about proving the game could expand without bloating, Vendetta is making a clear statement: rivalries, conflict, and tension are going to be core to how the game tells stories going forward — both in lore and in deckbuilding. The “enemy” domain pairings are a genuinely bold mechanical swing, the Overnumbered Showcase format is one of the more creative card-design ideas we’ve seen from a TCG in a while, and the Showdown Deck finally gives the game a real answer to “how do I get a friend into this hobby without either of us building a deck from scratch.”

With preview season starting June 22 and a global release just five weeks later on July 31, this is the moment to start paying attention if you’ve been on the fence about Riftbound. We’ll be tracking every card reveal as they drop — check back as Vendetta’s spoiler season ramps up.