EA Sports FC 26 review in progress – Pro Evolution Soccer lives

EA Sports FC 26 – better than last year (EA)

The football giant previously known as FIFA returns, as it attempts to redeem its reputation following fan discontent, and lower sales, for EA Sports FC 25.

This year is a particularly big one for EA Sports FC. The all-conquering football game is, of course, one of the most popular (and lucrative) franchises in the entire games industry, but last year’s FC 25 was met with what, for an FC game, counts as a wave of indifference. For FC 26, EA is insisting that it has listened to the franchise’s fans and has gone all out to make this new game exactly what they want.

We’d love to tell you unequivocally whether their efforts have been successful or not but we simply haven’t had enough time with the final version to know that yet, as it’s only just gone into early access. FC 26, like its predecessors, is essentially several games in one, with its different Career modes, the hugely popular trading card game FUT (Football Ultimate Team), and sociable online mode Clubs. When we’ve had time to progress through all of those, we’ll return with a full review as soon as possible.

The initial impressions are promising though. The first time you play a proper 11-a-side game, you can instantly feel the fundamental player movement tweaks that EA has brought to this year’s instalment. Although we do still struggle to understand the supposed appeal of offering two separate gameplay styles.

Entitled Authentic and Competitive, FC 26 tries to point you towards Authentic for Player and Manager Careers. As such, Authentic is a kind of detuned version of the game which aims to provide an experience which is more true to the sort of football played in the real-life Premier League.

That means it’s slower, more considered, and more tactical, encouraging you to build slowly from the back and manoeuvre more in midfield. But frankly, it doesn’t feel like FC should – playing in Authentic mode makes the game feel more like Pro Evolution Soccer, FC’s implacable rival game from the days when it was still called FIFA.

In Manager mode’s fantastically detailed simulation of the new Premier League season, much of the fun lies in pulling off those outrageous signings that you wish your favourite club had made, or offloading those players who you personally hate and upgrading them with better replacements. So a slavish conformity to real-life accuracy seems counter to FC 26’s ethos.

You can at least decide which of the two settings to opt for in each of FC 26’s myriad game modes. But went for Competitive mode in all of them, which also gave us the best chance to feel the effect of the changes that EA has made. And they are impressive: the players feel lighter on their feet and more manoeuvrable; they change direction more readily and shield the ball in a more intuitive manner.

General player movement feels improved in comparison with FC 25: central defenders are better at staying where they need to be when the opposition counter-attacks, and wingers and forwards also seem more inclined to make the runs you want them to when you have the ball around the centre circle. And FC 25’s horrible tendency for goalkeepers to deflect shots back to onrushing forwards, and for balls to pinball randomly around six yard box, has been mercifully eliminated.

So in terms of where it matters – in the actual football games – FC 26 gets things spot-on and that represents an instant and obvious improvement over FC 25. In the past, there have been examples of football games to which fundamental player movement tweaks have been applied, causing unforeseen and odd new behaviours to emerge as a knock-on effect. But not in the case of FC 26: all the players and the ball itself behave pretty much as you expect them to, and the matches themselves feel as slick and fluid as they ever have.

Player likenesses are better than ever (EA)

EA Sports FC 26 Player Career mode

When you launch Player Career – the mode which lets you develop a new player for your club and play seasons controlling your team without the extraneous activities of running a whole simulated football club – you can choose whether to start a new season or to jump into whatever point your favourite league has reached. With the new season just having kicked off, that’s currently of little importance, but it’s nice for overall authenticity. As before, you can pick different origin stories for your player, such as an emerging academy star or a player from a footballing dynasty with the extra baggage that brings.

Proceedings, at least initially, are logical and even more slickly presented than before, and yet reassuringly familiar for those who have previously played the franchise. One minor exception to that is the emphasis on Archetypes, the styles of play you can apply to your player. Archetypes isn’t a difficult concept to get your head around, and it basically governs your player progression, in a slightly more logical and understandable way than in previous games.

You can mess around with changing Archetypes as your player gets older and less mobile, and the more freeform Clubs mode encourages you to collect different ones and experiment with them. Archetypes remains consistent as a concept throughout all FC 26’s modes and we were pretty happy with it as a means of improving our players, whether we were focusing on just one or a whole team. But in general, for Player Career, it’s more or less business as usual in FC 26.

EA Sports FC 26 Manager Career mode

The same could be said for Manager Career, but for one innovation which comes into play right at the start. You’re given an immediate choice of whether to adhere to the original format, as seen in FC 25, or to a Live one. The latter option adds live events and activities to the mix, but beyond those, proceeds in the same manner as before. The idea is to provide more diversity and take you out of your comfort zone, beyond what you see every week in the real-life football leagues.

Those live events only kick in once you’ve progressed in your Manager Career, so we can’t yet assess how compelling they are, but the more out-of-the-box things you have to deal with as a manager the better, in our book. Only those craving rigorous authenticity – the sort of gamers who will opt for the Authentic setting – will likely stick with the original format.

Manager Career is gloriously slick and well-presented from the kick-off – FC 26’s general production values are sky high, with virtual players looking and moving more like their real-life counterparts than ever before, and some really flash camera work throughout all the cut scenes. The act of managing your favourite club is as labyrinthine and detailed as it is possible to imagine. Although that was the case for previous incarnations of Manager Career, which hasn’t changed fundamentally for FC 26. But it does feel even more believable and accurate than before.

EA needs for this game to be a hit (EA)

EA Sports FC 26 Clubs mode

As mentioned above, Clubs offers an online, more action-focused and casual take on the game, in which you control a single player in either 11-a-side or 5-a-side games. It leans heavy on the Archetypes concept and experimenting with new ones makes sense in Clubs’ particular context, as it brings many rewards.

As before in Clubs, you get an instant sense of camaraderie and community, and it is undoubtedly one of the most accessible parts of FC 26. The 5-a-side Rush element of Clubs has also been freshened up, with a new Live system like that of the Manager Career – which promises to bring unusual objectives, which in turn could spawn some pretty odd games of football. But that’s kind of what Clubs is all about, so that should be a laudable addition.

EA Sports FC 26 FUT mode

Football Ultimate Team has also been given the Live Events treatment, but again those won’t start to kick in until you’ve spent a considerable time building up your squad from player cards, then honing it to achieve competitiveness. Of course, hardcore FUT players will speed up that process by availing themselves of the player packs that FC 26 is always keen for you to buy using real cash.

So while FUT still offers a cleverly addictive experience, it can be a fearsomely expensive one if you get sucked into its rabbit-hole – as it always has, it demonstrates the sort of principles that have made many mobile phone games such successful money-spinners.

In FC 26, FUT has a new set of tournaments called Gauntlets, in which you play a series of games but must use a whole new squad for each one, so that only kicks in when you’ve built up a vast array of player cards. But it sounds like the sort of thing that hardcore FUT-heads would get into.

EA has also made some specific tweaks which sound thoroughly sensible, such as penalising players who rage quit from online matches by awarding wins to their opponents. But at least in its early stages, FUT proceeds much like it has before. Which is unsurprising, given it’s the game’s most lucrative mode.

EA Sports FC 26 initial verdict

In terms of its structure, EA hasn’t changed things wildly for FC 26. But it has been making a lot of noise about listening to the franchise’s vast fanbase and implementing the changes they want. Even without drilling down into each of the game’s deep and involving modes, you can see evidence of that in the improved on-pitch action, and the presence of the Authentic setting to appease a subset of that fanbase.

We’ll return as soon as possible with a full review of FC 26, but we can already say with confidence that it’s an improvement on FC 25. The player movement tweaks alone might well be enough for many fans of the franchise to commit to this year’s game. We can’t yet assert whether this particular iteration of the FC franchise will go down as a classic one – but at least the early signs suggest it has a chance of doing so.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £69.99
Publisher: EA
Developer: EA Vancouver and EA Romania
Release Date: 26th September 2025
Age Rating: 3

The game’s in early access now (EA)

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