EA Sports FC 26 Review (PC) – Ballon d’Or Worthy Winner

It’s that time of year again: EA SPORTS FC 26 is out (at least for Ultimate Edition owners), and I’ve been playing a lot of it. Prior to this year’s version, EA had promised many improvements in this latest entry in their long-running soccer (football) franchise. The question is, can they deliver where it matters most? On the pitch… let’s discuss that and more in The Outerhaven’s review of EA SPORTS FC 26.

Game Name: EA SPORTS FC 26
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): EA
Developer(s): EA Canada
Release Date: 26th September 2025 (or 7-days earlier for Ultimate Edition owners)

If you’re familiar with the FC (formerly FIFA) franchise, at first glance EA FC 26 may appear to be identical to its various predecessors. That’s because in many ways it is, with the same modes on offer—Ultimate Team, Clubs, and Career Mode (player or manager). Everything you expect to be here is present and accounted for.

However, when you dig a little deeper, you realise that most of these modes have seen some meaningful improvements.

Ultimate Team & Clubs

For example, Ultimate Team is still the card-collecting mode that we all love (and hate), with packs, evolutions, squad battles, rivals, and more. We also get the return of tournaments offering a variety of rewards for winning and being replayable every couple of days. These tournaments give you another way to earn coins, an in-game currency specific to Ultimate Team, which you can then use to buy players and other items from the transfer market, or perhaps you’d prefer to open a pack.

It’s particularly nice to have extra ways to earn coins, especially for those who don’t want to spend real money on FC points to unlock even more packs. Yes, pay-to-win is still an issue within Ultimate Team, but to EA’s credit, they have done a couple of things this year to limit how much spending real money can help. The main thing I’ve noticed so far is gold premium packs being limited promotions, only allowing you to open a small number of packs (usually five or ten) regardless of whether you’re using coins or FC points.

This is a welcome change which I hope continues well into the life cycle of EA FC 26. I just wish it went a little bit further to help create a more level playing field, regardless of how you want to play Ultimate Team.

In EA SPORTS FC 26, Clubs also sees a couple of changes, with the introduction of the archetype system and a revamped progression system. Archetypes replace traditional fixed positions; instead, you choose a style of play. For example, I play as a 6-foot-5-inch player with the Target archetype. This archetype allows me to play in four positions: Striker, Attacking Midfielder, or either Wing, although my particular build is suited more for the Striker role.

When choosing an archetype, keep in mind it does affect your starting attributes and also impacts which stats you may need to focus on. That’s because each role has its own key attributes, shown by a green dot next to them on the upgrade screen. In terms of improving stats, this is now done with AP, which you earn through playing the various modes within Clubs and levelling up your chosen archetype. Oh, and if you feel like you’ve chosen the wrong archetype, don’t worry, you can unlock the other archetypes through club coins or consumables that you can purchase from the store with either coins or FC points.

While FC points are part of Clubs, just like in EA FC 25, they don’t have much of a pay-to-win effect. There are a few reasons for this. First, they are mostly used on cosmetic items, and while they can be used to unlock other archetypes, you still have to level up these archetypes through actually playing the game. It’s not like you can buy AP to improve attributes (at least not that I’ve seen), and that is absolutely how things should stay.

Career Mode

Now, let’s talk about Career Mode, because if you know me, while I enjoy all the modes in the EA SPORTS FC franchise, the manager variation of Career Mode is absolutely my most played mode. It’s almost like I would have been a soccer (football) manager in another life. This year, there are a couple of big changes to manager careers that could potentially have a huge impact on your save.

Firstly, we have deeper simulation, which you can select while setting up your save. New to EA FC 26, deeper simulation allows you to have more accurate simulated matches and stats for five leagues outside of the one you’re managing in. You might wonder, why is this a big deal? Well, more accurate simulation means more accurate player growth. So, deeper simulation allows players in the leagues you’ve selected to grow more authentically than they otherwise might, something which also impacts any players you might loan out to teams within these leagues.

More importantly, deeper simulation could also have a massive impact on another big change in EA SPORTS FC 26: the manager market. When playing a manager career, other AI managers will now lose their jobs, join different teams, and more. The manager market allows you to keep an eye on clubs and managers to see what opportunities might be available for you. While I haven’t yet got far enough into a save to see the full impact of this system, the initial signs are very promising, particularly for a journeyman-style save or perhaps a Football Manager-style pentagon challenge. The one improvement I’d like to see to this system is allowing you to start a career unemployed and having to use the manager market to find the right job opportunities.

Unfortunately, the player version of Career Mode doesn’t receive the same level of care and attention this year. I tried it out for a couple of hours, and it appears identical to what we’ve had with player career for the last few years. It’s a shame, but let’s hope that next year is the year for player career mode improvements.

Authentic VS Competitive

Believe it or not, despite all the improvements and tweaks to modes of play, it’s actually the gameplay itself which provides the biggest improvement in EA FC 26. However, what those improvements are will somewhat depend on what gameplay type you choose, because this year there are two separate styles of gameplay.

We have Competitive, which is forced for all online play. It is faster-paced, with quick passing, more responsiveness, and less automation on defense. By contrast, Authentic gameplay is the default for offline modes (although you can use competitive gameplay in offline modes if you want). It is focused on providing the most realistic gameplay ever for your career Mode saves, with different tuning for defending, true physics, and prioritising the most realistic animations for each situation over the quickest animations that you might see in competitive play.

These two modes feel hugely different, with competitive feeling most similar to previous years. However, both gameplay types see massive improvements to passing, movement, defending, goalkeepers, and more. Although, these improvements do feel different depending on your chosen style of play.

Generally speaking, passing is more fluid and movement more responsive than ever before. Your AI teammates actually make good runs when you have possession of the ball now. Goalkeepers are much higher quality this year, and the higher-rated your keeper is, the more noticeable this improvement. With better positioning and more realistic animations than ever, goalkeepers are able to make saves that they simply couldn’t in EA FC 25. This represents a huge step in the right direction for the series. Goalkeepers have been a weak point of the franchise for a while now, but this year some players might even argue they are too good and need retuning.

Defending is also much better, particularly within authentic gameplay, where teams actually defend as a unit. They cover the space and see danger before it happens. Tackling, while harder and requiring more precise timing than ever, is also cleaner across both modes of play, with fewer dodgy deflections and better audio feedback for a good connection with the ball. The only thing I’d pick out as a potential negative is that standing tackles seem to be much less viable and useful than they should be, though that could be on account of the more precise timing needed this year.

Regardless, whichever gameplay style you choose this year, you are getting a vastly improved experience across the board. While some elements may need a small amount of tuning and balancing to get perfectly right, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the best EA SPORTS FC has ever played.

More Authentic Than Ever

Continuing that trend of being better than ever, the presentation throughout EA SPORTS FC 26 is outstanding. Shoutout to the menus that are clean and clear (while also being more responsive than ever). However, all sports games live and die on their authenticity to their real-life counterparts, and with more stadiums, player faces, and kits than I can remember in a long time, I can confidently say EA SPORTS FC 26 is more authentic than the franchise has ever been before.

The only slight blemish on the game’s presentation is the fact that we have the same cutscenes for events in career Mode. If you read this, EA, please consider adding a bit more variety to those.

I also wanted to say this year’s soundtrack has quickly become a favourite of mine, with outright bangers and hidden gems to discover.

PC Performance & Technical Issues

In terms of performance, I was very impressed with EA SPORTS FC 26, just as I was with EA FC 25 last year. Although my setup has changed significantly in the last year, on my high-end PC (specs below) I was able to hit well over 100fps on the highest available settings in both gameplay and cutscenes while playing in 4K resolution.

Another impressive win for EA FC 26 comes in the form of near technical excellence. I only encountered one soft lock when trying to access my Ultimate Team squad for the first time. I’m not the only one who’s had this issue either, as it doesn’t seem to be PC-specific, as my colleague James, who is playing on Xbox, informed me he had the same issue.

Apart from that, for me things have been flawless. Considering the technical troubles of some PC ports in recent times, EA should be proud of the port they have here.

My PC Specs: AMD 9950X3D, RTX 5090 Founders Edition, and 96GB of DDR5 6000MHz Corsair RAM

A Quick Note About Accessibility

I’m pleased to say EA SPORTS FC 26 is the most accessible game (at least in terms of additional options) the series has seen thus far. The biggest improvement in accessibility this year is the all-new, highly requested High Contrast mode, which does what it says on the tin: it allows high contrast visuals. It’s also very customisable, allowing you to change kit colours, pitch saturation, and even the referee colour.

Adding to the previous colour blind mode options, this High Contrast mode should make the game more playable and accessible than ever before for those with visual needs.

The Final Whistle

We’ve reached the end of this review, the final whistle, if you will. So, how would I sum up EA SPORTS FC 26? Through a combination of improvements to existing modes, adding tons of replay value, and massive changes to gameplay, I would say that EA SPORTS FC 26 is the first must-play game in the franchise for over a decade, and might just be the best football (yes, it’s football) game ever made.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of EA SPORTS FC 26 was provided to us for review purposes by EA. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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