What Is a Radiance Ultimate Rare? Riftbound's New Rarity Explained

The Radiance Ultimate Rare appears in roughly 0.025% of booster packs. That's about one pack in four thousand, and it's the rarest pull Riftbound has ever printed.

It arrives with Set 5 on 23 October 2026, sitting above the Overnumbered treatment at the top of the rarity ladder. It's only the second Ultimate card Riftbound has ever printed.

Here's the part that makes it genuinely unusual: with three weeks to release, no Ultimate Rare card image has been published. Nobody outside Riot currently knows what the rarest card in the set looks like.

Pull-rate and set details come from riftbound.gg, with reveal tracking from riftbound.zone.

What the rarity actually is

Riftbound's ladder runs Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic as functional rarities, with Foil, Alternate Art, Overnumber and Signature Overnumber as collector treatments on top.

Ultimate sits above all of it. It's a collector tier rather than a gameplay one, so its purpose is scarcity and display rather than deck power.

This is not the first Ultimate card. Unleashed introduced the tier with Ultimate Baron Nashor, which Riot quoted at roughly 0.1% of packs. Radiance is the second set to print one, and Riot has said Ultimates will not appear in every set going forward.

One important detail: the Radiance Ultimate Rare is a single card, not a tier containing dozens. What's still unannounced is which character appears on it.

For how Riftbound's existing rarities work across the four earlier sets, our rarities and pull rates guide breaks down Origins through Vendetta.

What one in four thousand actually means

Percentages hide how extreme this is, so it's worth converting.

0.025% means 25 packs in every 100,000, which reduces to 1 in 4,000.

Put that in terms of sealed product:

• At 24 packs per booster box, you'd open roughly 167 boxes to expect one
• At 36 packs per box, roughly 111 boxes

Riftbound's Radiance pack-per-box count hasn't been confirmed publicly, so both figures are worth holding. Either way the answer is the same: this is not a card you open for.

It's worth being blunt about what that implies. The overwhelming majority of people who want an Ultimate Rare will buy one on the secondary market rather than pull one, and the people who do pull one will mostly be large-volume openers and retailers.

How this compares to other chase cards

Context helps, because "rare" gets used loosely in trading cards.

Most modern chase rarities across the major games sit somewhere between one in fifty and one in several hundred packs. A top-tier special illustration card in a large Pokémon set is typically in that range.

An Ultimate Rare at one in four thousand is an order of magnitude beyond that. It's closer to the hit rates used for one-of-one or heavily serialised cards in sports trading cards than to a normal TCG chase slot.

It's also a step up from Riftbound's own precedent. Ultimate Baron Nashor sat at roughly 0.1%, or one in a thousand. The Radiance card at 0.025% is about four times scarcer than the only comparable card the game has printed.

Why nobody has seen one

This is the strangest part of the story.

Radiance has revealed 92 of its 180 cards as of 1 October 2026, including eight of its nine Legends. Preview season closes on 9 October, two weeks before release.

Yet no Ultimate Rare image has appeared in any official or community reveal. For a set this far into its preview cycle, that's unusual.

There are a few plausible explanations, and it's honest to say we don't know which applies. Riot may be holding the reveal for launch day as a marketing moment. The tier may be revealed only through player pulls after release. Or the cards may simply be scheduled for the final preview days.

What we can say is that the silence is itself a choice, and it's consistent with a tier designed to feel like a discovery rather than a checklist item. RiftCompare tracks reveals live, so it'll be among the first places an Ultimate Rare surfaces.

What this means if you're collecting Radiance

A few practical conclusions follow from the pull rate, none of which require knowing what the card is.

Don't buy packs chasing it. At one in four thousand, the expected cost of pulling one through sealed product will exceed almost any realistic secondary-market price.

Expect thin and volatile early pricing. When a card has almost no supply, the first few sales set the market, and those early numbers often move sharply once more copies surface. That's a pattern we see repeatedly on genuinely scarce cards.

Watch the Showcase tier instead. Radiance has 66 Showcase variants across 180 cards, which is a far more achievable collecting target with a real market behind it.

Be careful with early listings. A brand-new rarity that nobody has seen is exactly the environment where misdescribed and counterfeit listings appear. Our guide on where to buy Riftbound covers the retailers worth trusting.

Where the Ultimate Rare sits in the set

Radiance is a 180-card set with 66 Showcase treatments, nine new Legends, three new keywords and two new card types.

The Ultimate Rare sits at the top of that structure. Everything else in the set, including the Legends and the Showcase variants, is obtainable through normal opening. This tier is not.

As of 1 October 2026, 92 of the 180 cards are public and eight of the nine Legends have been revealed. Preview season closes 9 October, two weeks before the 23 October release.

How JK Index helps

We index the full Riftbound catalog with its own sold history, and we keep each rarity tier separate rather than blending variants of the same card into one price.

On a tier this scarce, that separation is the whole point. A handful of sales on an Ultimate Rare says something completely different from hundreds of sales on a base card, and averaging them would destroy both signals.

You can browse earlier sets including Origins, Spiritforged, Unleashed and Vendetta, track what you own in your portfolio, or check current listings on the marketplace.

The takeaway

The Radiance Ultimate Rare is a single card above the Overnumbered treatment, appearing in roughly 0.025% of packs, or one in four thousand. That's somewhere between 111 and 167 booster boxes for a single expected copy, and about four times scarcer than Unleashed's Ultimate Baron Nashor.

No image of one has been published with three weeks to release, which means the rarest card in Riftbound's fifth set is currently unknown to everyone except the people who made it.

FAQ

What is a Radiance Ultimate Rare?

A new Riftbound collector rarity introduced in Set 5, sitting above Overnumbered at the top of the rarity ladder. It appears in approximately 0.025% of booster packs.

What are the odds of pulling an Ultimate Rare?

Roughly 1 in 4,000 packs. Depending on pack count per box, that's about 111 to 167 booster boxes for one expected copy.

Which card is the Radiance Ultimate Rare?

Unknown. It's a single card rather than a group, and no image has been published as of 1 October 2026, despite 92 of the set's 180 cards already being revealed.

Is the Ultimate Rare better in gameplay?

No. It's a collector tier based on scarcity and treatment rather than a gameplay upgrade. Card effects don't improve because a card is printed at a higher rarity.

Should I buy booster boxes to chase an Ultimate Rare?

No. At one in four thousand packs, the expected cost of pulling one through sealed product will exceed almost any realistic secondary-market price for the card itself.

How does this compare to other trading card chase rates?

Most modern TCG chase rarities sit between one in fifty and one in several hundred packs. One in four thousand is an order of magnitude scarcer, closer to serialised sports card hit rates.

When will we find out what the Ultimate Rares look like?

Preview season closes 9 October 2026 and the set releases 23 October. The reveal may come in the final preview days, on launch day, or through player pulls after release.

Has Riftbound printed an Ultimate card before?

Yes. Ultimate Baron Nashor in Unleashed was the first, at roughly 0.1% of packs. Radiance is the second set to include one, and Riot has said Ultimates won't appear in every set.