2025–26 Fleer Ultra Hockey: Makar’s Flowers, Matthews’ Angulars and Rookie Ink

Cale Makar surrounded by blue-and-white flowers is a pretty good reason to stop scrolling. His Mise-en-Scene card puts Colorado’s blue sweater against a mint-green field of winding stems and oversized blossoms. The photograph stays sharp and physical: gloves, stick, helmet and that concentrated expression. Around him, the rink has been replaced by something closer to patterned wallpaper from a particularly adventurous hockey fan’s house.

That willingness to change the whole setting is the best part of 2025–26 Fleer Ultra Hockey. The regular cards keep their rink photography; the inserts can head somewhere entirely different. Makar’s floral design, Auston Matthews’ faceted portrait and Ivan Demidov’s wall of red foil feel like three separate collecting projects inside one release.

Makar is MS-1 on Upper Deck’s complete checklist. Mise-en-Scene has 20 subjects and stated odds of 1:225 Hobby packs. Demidov and Gabe Perreault bring rookie options to the same family. Those odds apply to pulling a Mise-en-Scene card from the set, rather than Makar specifically; the cards are not serial-numbered on the checklist.

The product’s Hobby release date was February 18, 2026. The images here are Upper Deck’s promotional design previews, paired with the final checklist’s card identities, numbering and odds.

Matthews’ Angulars turns the player into the artwork

Auston Matthews’ Angulars, ANG-1, goes further than changing the background. His helmet, face, jersey, gloves and skates are rebuilt from hard-edged blocks of color. Royal blue holds the figure together while lime, yellow, orange and red break across it. Even with the familiar photographic detail removed, the hockey stance and stick make the pose immediately readable.

Makar’s floral card keeps a photograph at its center. Matthews’ Angulars makes the portrait itself the experiment. That is a meaningful design difference between two of the release’s toughest unsigned inserts, and a better reason to choose a favorite than simply taking whichever has the longer odds.

Angulars also has 20 subjects, including Makar and Leon Draisaitl. Its 1:450 Hobby-pack rate is half as frequent as Mise-en-Scene’s 1:225 rate. Neither figure establishes a total print run. For a Matthews collection, the attraction is a player card that looks substantially different from another rink photograph or a different-colored border.

Demidov’s Ruby Red Medallions doubles down on Montreal

Demidov’s Ruby Red Medallions /50, No. M-7, takes an uncomplicated idea and commits to it. Red sweater, red socks, red background. His blue helmet, gloves and shorts keep him from disappearing into the repeated Fleer Ultra logos, while a black name strip cuts diagonally across the bottom.

This is the strongest color match among these previews. The foil pattern supplies the decoration; Demidov’s full skating figure supplies the movement. It also leaves the Canadiens uniform plainly visible instead of replacing it with a close-up portrait.

The regular 50-card Medallions set falls at 1:5 Hobby packs. Its numbered versions run Gold /200, Platinum /100, Ruby Red /50, Sapphire Blue /25, Emerald Green /10 and Black 1/1. Demidov appears across that ladder. Ruby Red has a particularly persuasive visual relationship with his Montreal photograph, regardless of the existence of scarcer colors.

Parekh’s red autograph and Buium’s gold frame

Zayne Parekh’s Red Rainbow Foil Auto /10, rookie No. 153, keeps the main set’s large action photograph. Red lettering picks up Calgary’s sweater, and the pale signing area stretches across the lower portion. His face and the Flames crest remain clear above the blue autograph. The large 89 in the design is his jersey number; 153 is the checklist number.

Zeev Buium’s Ultra Team Gold Auto, UT 3 of 20, changes the mood. Black and gold scrollwork frames his Minnesota green jersey; the lower nameplate is more formal, and a broad pale area gives the signature its own space. Parekh’s card feels like an autographed action card. Buium’s feels closer to a framed player portrait.

The word Gold does different work here. Buium’s Ultra Team Gold Auto is unnumbered on the final checklist, and its set-level odds are 1:1,500 Hobby packs. Parekh’s red autograph is explicitly /10. A color name alone will not tell you the edition size across these families.

The regular Rainbow Foil rookie autographs include Parekh, Buium, Demidov and Perreault. That rookie autograph family falls at 1:75 Hobby packs; the standard veteran and SP autograph families have separate 1:135 and 1:330 rates. These are family-level odds, not promises of a particular player or an autograph in each box.

Perreault’s Rising Stars makes the lettering part of the picture

Gabe Perreault’s Blue Rising Stars /35, RS-5, uses enormous blue lettering behind his Rangers photograph. The letters almost become another layer of the rink boards. His stick crosses the composition, the red trousers break up the blue, and the narrow white nameplate keeps the identification readable.

It is a good counterpart to Demidov’s Medallions: both match a strong insert color to the uniform, but Perreault’s card retains the rink and uses typography for its extra energy. The 50-card Rising Stars set has the same 1:5 Hobby-pack rate as regular Medallions, with its own parallel numbering. Blue is /35 here, whereas Medallions’ Sapphire Blue is /25.

The base cards give the photographs room

Tim Stützle’s base card, No. 96, shows what all that insert decoration is departing from. His Ottawa teammates remain visible on the bench behind him. The slanted silver-gray name treatment stays down near the ice, leaving the player and his surroundings to carry the card.

The 200-card base set divides into 100 regular cards, 50 SPs and 50 rookies. Draisaitl is SP No. 107. His Gold Spectrum 1/1 preview keeps the spectators and boards in the photograph, changing the logo and lower lettering to gold. It is a much quieter visual treatment than the rarity might suggest.

The numbered base ladder is Gold /250, Ice /100, Platinum /25 and Gold Spectrum 1/1. Gold /250 and Gold Spectrum 1/1 are distinct versions. Draisaitl’s preview is the latter. That distinction matters more than the gold lettering alone.

What the Hobby box is built to deliver

Upper Deck’s manufacturer sell sheet specifies 15 packs of eight cards. Its average box breakdown emphasizes variety: nine Rainbow Foil base parallels, four numbered base parallels, six Medallions and/or Rising Stars, two numbered cards from those insert families, seven Outlining, Ultra Power, Ultra Team and/or Ultrastructures cards, and one Ultra Stars and/or Rink Producers card.

That makes the regular and numbered inserts the main texture of a Hobby box. The rarer Makar and Matthews designs and the autograph families sit beyond that everyday mix. A box can deliver the stated variety without producing an autograph.

Upper Deck also offers Fleer Ultra through e-Pack. The box breakdown above is for physical Hobby; the e-Pack product has its own base-card and collecting rules. The final checklist labels Hobby and e-Pack odds separately, including matching rates for the insert and autograph families discussed here.

For me, Makar’s Mise-en-Scene and Matthews’ Angulars are the two designs that make this release most interesting. One drops a recognizable hockey photograph into a gloriously unlikely setting; the other rebuilds the player in color and shape. Demidov’s Ruby Red Medallions is the more direct pleasure: a Montreal rookie, a bold foil background and a color pairing that needs very little explanation.