As process-oriented, inclusive, legally nonbinding frameworks deemed to promote cooperation in the pursuit of agreed objectives, the Global Compacts for Migration and Refugees adopted in December 2018 introduce modes of experimentalist governance in fields where states have hitherto opposed (new) multilateral commitments. This article retraces the introduction of experimentalist elements in the compacts' architecture and critically discusses their potential and limits in such contested policy fields. It concludes that given the depth of normative and distributive conflicts, the compacts are unlikely to generate substantive innovation, as experimentalist theory would suggest. They may, however, help to counter the erosion of existing commitments.