Clash Royale Max Level in 2026: Cards, Tower and More

The max level in Clash Royale is Level 16 for cards and King Tower 16 for your tower, as of November 2026. Card Level 16 arrived with the update of November 24, 2025, and the tower cap has matched it since the May 2026 progression rework. Several other systems have their own ceilings too: Trophy Road ends at 14,000 Trophies, Ranked tops out at Ultimate Champion, and your Collection Level keeps rising every time a new card or form is added. This guide lists each cap, what it costs to reach, and what happens once you get there.

We checked this against Supercell's November 2025 progression announcement, the March and June 2026 update notes, and the Cards and Decks, Seasonal Trophy Road, Crystals and Magic Items articles in the official Clash Royale help center in November 2026.

Every Cap in the Game Right Now

Different parts of Clash Royale count progress in different ways, which is why searches for a single "max level" turn up conflicting answers. Here is where each one stands in the King vs. King season:

• Card level: 16. Every card, from Commons to Champions, can be upgraded to Level 16.
• King Tower Level: 16, reached once 14 of your cards are at Level 15 or higher.
• Tower Troops: they cannot go above your current King Tower Level, so their effective max is 16 as well.
• Trophy Road: the regular road runs through Arena 32 (13,500 Trophies) and ends at 14,000 Trophies.
• Seasonal Trophy Road: two Seasonal Arenas of 500 Trophies each, which reset every season.
• Ranked: seven leagues, the last being Ultimate Champion, where steps are replaced by a rating and a Hall of Fame leaderboard.
• Star Levels: cosmetic only, with a maximum of three for some cards and two for others.
• Collection Level: no fixed number. It is the sum of all your card levels plus five per Evolution and Hero, so the ceiling rises whenever Supercell adds content.

The old King Level, which used to go far higher than any of these, was removed in May 2026. If you want the details on that change, our explainer on what replaced King Level covers it, including the full tower requirement list.

How Level 16 Became the Cap

Before November 2025, cards topped out at Level 15, and that last level was paid for with Elite Wild Cards: 50,000 of them per card, regardless of rarity. Supercell said the system felt confusing and left players stuck once they reached the top, so the November 24, 2025 update replaced it. Elite Wild Cards were converted into Gems, Books turned into Wild Cards, Magic Coins turned into Gold, and Level 16 was added on top as a new long-term goal.

The same update lowered the cost of several middle levels. Rare cards, for instance, went from 400 to 300 copies for Level 11 and from 750 to 550 for Level 13, and Gold for Level 12 through 14 dropped from 35,000, 75,000 and 100,000 to 25,000, 40,000 and 60,000. Supercell's aim was that reaching the new top with plain cards and Gold should feel similar to reaching Level 14 used to.

Ranked was treated differently. To give players time to catch up, Supercell capped cards in Ranked at Level 15 for six months, until the May 2026 season. Supercell's own posts we found do not restate the cap after May, and third-party guides disagree on whether it has been lifted, so check the level shown on the Ranked screen before you plan upgrades around it. Our guide to how Ranked works in 2026 covers the rest of that mode.

What It Costs to Max a Card

Every upgrade needs Gold plus either copies of that card or Wild Cards of the same rarity, and Gems can cover any missing cards or Gold. The last few levels are where costs climb steeply. The table shows the copies and Gold needed for each upgrade at the top end, from Supercell's November 2025 tables.

Copies and Gold needed per upgrade, Levels 12 to 16 (Supercell, current since November 24, 2025)

Upgrade to	Common	Rare	Epic	Legendary	Champion	Gold
Level 12	1,500	400	50	6	2	25,000
Level 13	2,500	550	70	9	5	40,000
Level 14	3,500	750	100	12	8	60,000
Level 15	5,500	1,000	130	14	11	90,000
Level 16	7,500	1,400	180	20	15	120,000

Add the last two rows together and taking a single card from Level 14 to 16 costs 210,000 Gold, plus 13,000 Commons or 34 Legendaries depending on rarity. With 14 cards needed at Level 15 for King Tower 16 alone, Gold is the real bottleneck for most players. Major Gold sources since May 2026 include Mastery tasks (up to 15,000 per task in the third set), Trophy Road and Seasonal Trophy Road rewards, Clan Wars and Daily Battle Rewards.

Wild Cards close the gap on card copies. The 5-Star Magic Lucky Chest became much better for this in March 2026: Supercell changed it so its Wild Card rewards are at least a full upgrade's worth for your Chest Level, which at Chest Level 16 means 7,500 Common, 1,400 Rare, 180 Epic, 20 Legendary or 15 Champion Wild Cards, matching the Level 16 row above.

With resources that tight, the order you upgrade in matters more than the speed. A plan that works for most collections:

1. Push your main Trophy Road or Ranked deck first. Those eight cards earn you wins, Mastery Gold and daily rewards every time you play.
2. Next, finish the cards that count toward your next King Tower requirement, since a higher tower strengthens your Crown Towers and raises your Tower Troop cap.
3. Keep Legendary and Champion Wild Cards for the final two levels, where those rarities need only 14 to 20 and 11 to 15 copies but take a long time to collect naturally.
4. Upgrade cards you never play only when spare copies and Gold allow. Each of those upgrades still adds one Collection Level toward the next milestone reward.

Starting Levels, Legendaries and Champions

Not every card starts at Level 1. Rarity decides where a card begins when you unlock it: Commons start at Level 1, Rares at Level 3, Epics at Level 6, Legendaries at Level 9 and Champions at Level 11. All of them end at Level 16, so a Champion has only five upgrades to go while a Common has fifteen. That is also why unlocking a high-rarity card gives a bigger one-off jump in Collection Level than unlocking a Common.

Legendary cards unlock at Arena 11 (3,400 Trophies), and from that point they start appearing in the Shop for 15,000 Gold each. Champions come later: the first one is awarded from Trophy Road at Arena 16 (5,500 Trophies), and the help center lists Golden Knight and Skeleton King at Arena 16, Archer Queen, Mighty Miner and Boss Bandit at Arena 17, and Monk, Little Prince and Goblinstein at Arena 18. A Champion goes in the Hero Slot or the Wild Slot, so you can run two in one deck.

Life After Max: Crystals, Star Levels and Duplicates

Once a card hits Level 16, extra copies stop being wasted. They turn into Crystals automatically, at 1 Crystal per Common, 6 per Rare, 60 per Epic, 600 per Legendary and 1,200 per Champion. Crystals buy cosmetics in the Shop, such as emotes, so maxed players still have something to chase.

Supercell also reduced how often you see copies of maxed cards at all. Since February 23, 2026, if you have fewer than 60 Max Level cards, Lucky Chests will not give you duplicates of your maxed cards. Above 60, the drop weight of maxed cards is cut by 90%. Cards you have enough copies to max but have not upgraded yet still count toward that 60, which is worth knowing if you like to stockpile.

Star Levels are the cosmetic layer on top. You can spend Star Points to raise a card's Star Level once it is Level 7 or above, and they change only its appearance, not its stats. Note that upgrading a card to Level 15 or 16 no longer earns Star Points, so most of your Star Points at the top end come from donations.

Modes Where Your Card Level Does Not Count

A maxed collection matters most on Trophy Road and in Ranked. Several other modes level the field on purpose:

• Global Tournaments now require cards you own but fix them at Level 11.
• C.H.A.O.S mode and its league use Level 11 cards.
• Quickplay friendly battles are capped at Level 11.
• Seasonal Arena 2 bans the eight cards you won with most in Seasonal Arena 1 and temporarily boosts any card below Level 15 up to 15.

For everyday play there is also the Card Boost Potion, which lifts one card to your King Tower Level for three hours in any mode that uses your own deck. You can hold up to eight. It is a cheap way to test whether an upgrade is worth the Gold before you commit. If Gold or card copies are what is holding you back, our page on free Gem sources shows where Gems come from, and our guide to getting Evolution Shards covers the Evolution side of a maxed deck.

Skipping the Upgrade Grind

Taking even one deck to Level 16 costs more than a million Gold in total, so some players look for an account that has already done it. The store's Clash Royale hub lists accounts from marketplace sellers with their King Tower level, card count, trophies and Evolutions spelled out in each listing. Supercell's Terms of Service state that you shall not purchase, sell, rent or give away your account, so read them before making that choice.

Frequently Asked Questions