I spent a week playing EA Sports FC 26, and I’m baffled that EA has found new ways to make me care

Developer and publisher EA’s marquee sports franchise is in a strangely privileged position. For years, FIFA fans lambasted the developer for wheeling out what seemed like the same game in a fresh lick of paint, and while the newer EA Sports FC titles haven’t exactly rewritten the FIFA rulebook, they have felt like more complete, harder-to-criticize packages overall.

Why? Because a decade’s worth of minor tweaks is bound to add up to something great. As I wrote in my EA Sports FC 25 review this time last year, “it feels like we’ve reached a point where the overall FC experience is so good that it’s hard to chastise EA for making small improvements to an already excellent foundation,” and the latest entry in this long-running series, EA Sports FC 26, is shielded by the same safety blanket.

FC 26 is not a dramatically different offering from what’s come before, but it is an objectively better game than FC 25 in a few key ways.

There’s a brand new gameplay option for slower, more realism-focused offline play, a clever real-world integration for Career Mode, and meaningful player-requested changes for Ultimate Team (FUT) and Clubs. The graphics have never been better, and, of course, there’s the customary thrill of using up-to-date players, in up-to-date kits, at up-to-date clubs.

None of these upgrades are particularly flashy; they’re more under-the-surface than something you can advertise in a TV spot. But (I promise!) they do bring new, unexpected depth to EA’s tried-and-tested modes – particularly Career Mode, which feels closer to Football Manager than it’s ever been (complimentary).

Keeping it real

If you pressed EA to tell you this year’s single biggest FC upgrade, it would probably say “the overhauled gameplay experience powered by feedback from the FC Community.” That sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo, but FC 26 genuinely does play better than FC 25 for a number of reasons.

There are fewer bounce-backs this year (read: matches feel less like a game of pinball), dribbling is more responsive, it’s easier to change direction, goalkeepers no longer parry the ball straight into your opponent’s lap (or rather, they do so less frequently), and, mercifully, headers are now scorable again.

These were the five most tangible gameplay improvements I noticed during my short time with FC 26 ahead of launch, though EA also says that tackles are cleaner, interceptions are more controlled, passes are quicker, and skills are easier to perform.

Players with high dribbling stats definitely feel more powerful in FC 26. The likes of Lamine Yamal, Cole Palmer, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia are now just as fun to play with as they are to watch in real life, and while pace freaks like Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior will undoubtedly remain the weapon of choice for FUT loyalists, it’s nice that more of the world’s best players feel genuinely threatening in-game. There’s a new Gamechanger PlayStyle for flair finishers like Yamal, too, which feels like a cheat code when paired with existing dribble-focused PlayStyles like Technical+.

EA has also rolled a bundle of realism-focused tweaks into an entirely new gameplay preset called Authentic Gameplay. An optional mode in Kick-Off and Career Mode, Authentic is tuned for higher realism and true-to-life match speed; dribbling is slower, tackles are more violent, AI defenders are smarter, and rebounds, blocks, and bounces are more unpredictable. In other words, Authentic is a slower, harder, but (in my experience) more rewarding gameplay experience than Competitive, which is the faster-paced gameplay preset locked to online modes like FUT and Clubs.

In Authentic, it’s much easier to keep hold of possession for long spells, and much harder to slip players in behind using L1. It’s also nigh-on impossible to burst away from defenders with pacey players, which – as in real life – encourages you to aim for space (I do expect EA to tweak the latter aspect in the coming weeks, though, as Mbappé should be able to leave Francesco Acerbi for dead, regardless of the game mode).

It’s true that previous FC games (and indeed previous FIFA games) featured a Simulation preset that, in theory, imposed similar realism-focused gameplay changes. But toggling this option always felt like spiking your players with horse tranquilizer. Yes, in FC 26, Authentic Gameplay feels slower than its Competitive counterpart, but it doesn’t throw the whole FC experience out of kilter. I like it a lot.

Board Expectations 2.0

Career Mode is the perfect place to give Authentic Gameplay a spin, and EA has sprinkled some great new features into its decades-old take on Football Manager.

The headline addition is Manager Live, which evolves last year’s Live Start Points mechanic into a series of full-blown, inspired-by-real-life challenges. Manager Live is essentially Manager Career, but you commit to fulfilling certain objectives or storylines in a given number of seasons. The catch? Each challenge imposes a unique set of feature restrictions and operating conditions, meaning it’s harder to cheese your way to victory by buying the best players or never rotating your squad.

For instance, one Manager Live challenge – Winning With Youth – tasks you with finishing at least eighth in any European league while only playing players under the age of 24 and not signing any players under the age of 21. Another – European Royalty – challenges you to win the UEFA Super Cup twice in three years with increased referee strictness and no ability to restart matches. These feats are harder to complete than they sound, and they force you to think more like a real-life manager under similar real-life pressures.

By completing Manager Live challenges, you can earn classic kits and, for the first time, the ability to play with Icon and Hero players in regular Manager Career. I haven’t yet had enough time with FC 26 to complete one of these multi-season challenges, but luckily, my Ultimate Edition version of the game included three Career-ready Icons straight out of the box (you best believe Fernando Torres went straight into my 2025 Chelsea side).

Other neat updates for regular Career Mode include Manager Market and Unexpected Events. The former gives managers their own Manager Profile and Job Security rating, and you can track which coaches are untouchable, under pressure, or seeking new opportunities throughout the season in a dedicated Manager Market menu. Previously, you’d have to hope and pray that your next role of choice would appear in the hard-to-find Vacancies tab, but now, you can track your dream managerial job and react accordingly.

Unexpected Events are exactly what they sound like: random scenarios (positive or negative) that test your adaptability as a manager. Events like Abrupt Retirement, Urgent Family Leave, and Budget Malfunction bring new dynamism to long seasons, where previously, you’d only have the odd player injury or contract negotiation to contend with. Again, this is another small-but-welcome change.

No more rage quits?

For FUT fans, those aforementioned gameplay tweaks will prove the most meaningful change (the improvements made to goalkeeper parries, in particular, should reduce the number of rage quits considerably). But EA has also reintroduced Tournaments under a new Live Events banner in FC 26, while Gauntlets force you to rotate your FUT squad in every round, encouraging you to build two competition-ready XIs. During my pre-launch testing, I only had one live Live Event available – the Early Access Elimination tournament – but three more were listed as ‘upcoming’ post-launch.

Other changes include the removal of Rivals qualifiers, the addition of a second tier of Weekend League, and – finally! – fairer consequences if your opponent disconnects from a match by any method: yes, you’ll be awarded the win if the score is a draw.

Those Live Events now feature in Clubs, too, as does a new Archetypes system for developing your Pro, which encourages you to pick a specific style of play (Magician, Creator, Engine, and so on) and run with it. You can choose more than one Archetype (once you’ve unlocked more), but each Archetype progresses separately, so you’ll need to play multiple matches with each one to level them up.

Honestly, I’m not too sure about this new system. Previously, you were able to change your Pro build on the fly to suit the needs of any given position, or just to mix things up. In FC 26, you’ll be able to get really good at being one type of player, but then be forced back to square one if you join a squad that necessitates a position change.

I’m intrigued to see how longtime Clubs fans take to this new progression system – though any annoyances might be offset by the long-awaited ability to join multiple clubs in FC 26.

 Should I play EA Sports FC 26?

 Play it if…

 Don’t play it if…

 Accessibility

EA Sports FC 26 offers a comprehensive suite of accessibility options, including settings for subtitles, button remapping, color blindness, and increasing the size of the player indicator. It also introduces a dedicated High Contrast Mode for low-vision and cognitively disabled players. All of these accessibility options can be found in a dedicated Accessibility Settings tab. The game has six difficulty levels – Beginner, Amateur, Semi-Pro, Professional, World Class, Legendary, and Ultimate – and features support for 21 languages.

 How I tested EA Sports FC 26

I played EA Sports FC 26 for five days ahead of its official release. During that time, I had access to all modes and features and was able to compete against real-world players who also had early access to the game (before the start of EA’s Early Access promotion).

I played on PS5, using a standard DualSense controller, on a Samsung QN95A Neo QLED 4K TV. I’ve played every EA Sports football title since FIFA 13, and also reviewed FIFA 22, FIFA 23, EA Sports FC 24, and EA Sports FC 25 for TechRadar Gaming.

First reviewed September 2025.