Why Magic: The Gathering’s writers changed the name of a fan-favorite plane

Wizards of the Coast has announced a major change to one of Magic: The Gathering’s most iconic planes of the last decade. In a statement published Tuesday, the company said that the plane formerly named Kaladesh — an India-inspired setting known for innovation and cultural progress — would be renamed to Avishkar. In two posts, the company explained both in-universe and real-world reasons for this change, which are the result of community feedback following the set’s original release in 2016.

According to Wizards’ post “Avishkar: Why We Changed the Name of a Plane,” the creative team had initially chosen the name Kaladesh as a combination of the Hindi words kala (which can mean “tomorrow” or “art”) and desh (meaning “home” or “country”). In the years since the set’s debut, community feedback informed the team that the term kala can also mean “black” with a different pronunciation, a usage that has racist and colorist implications when applied to an individual.

When returning to the plane for the upcoming Aetherdrift line, the Wizards team worked with a group of cultural consultants with expertise in Indian culture and Hindi to “find a way to honor the spirit of the plane and its real-world inspiration.” Wizards has previously used cultural consultants to check the sensitivity of its products, most notably in the wake of the previous Spelljammer release.

With the aid of the subject-matter experts, Wizards compiled a list of potential names. After discussing and vetting the candidates, they collectively landed on Avishkar, from the Hindi word aavishkar, meaning “invention.” Once the name was chosen, Wizards decided not to retcon the lore so the plane always had the new name. Instead, the company decided to provide narrative reasons for the change. Here’s the explanation from “Planeswalker’s Guide to Aetherdrift, Part 1”:

Unlike other instances where cards have been removed from circulation due to harmful or potentially racially offensive content, materials that use the plane’s previous name, such as Kaladesh Remastered or Invasion of Kaladesh, will not have their language altered. However, Wizards said that it will “not use the term ‘Kaladesh’ anymore going forward except to refer to past products or the time in the storyline when Avishkar bore its previous name.”

The newly renamed plane will be a part of the upcoming Aetherdrift line, the first Standard-legal set of 2025, in which 10 teams of racers take part in the Ghirapur Grand Prix across three planes. Pre-orders for Aetherdrift are available now, for its release on Feb. 14, 2025.