Contemporary fantasy

Contemporary fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy set in the present day: stories set in the putative real world, in contemporary times, where magic and magical creatures exist but are not commonly seen or understood as such. Wikipedia places urban fantasy inside it as a subgenre and notes "a considerable overlap between contemporary fantasy and urban fantasy"; the city setting is the usual differentiator. Portal stories, where characters travel to another world, do not qualify.

For writers the label is a worldbuilding promise: the real present must stay recognizable, so what the mundane world knows about the hidden magic becomes canon a long serial cannot quietly change. The working contrast is laid out in the guide to urban vs contemporary fantasy, and the fixed address in the real world is what separates it from high fantasy's fully secondary worlds.