Every European league worth caring about is in the single digits for matches, which means it’s that time of the year: a totally-not-FIFA game is out, and we have that conversation about whether to get this now or later.
This has been the case for me since the Ultimate Team malaise took over my favorite sports game. Time and again, a FIFA game would come out and look somewhat promising, only to be undone by gameplay changes aimed exclusively at little sweaty gamblers whose exposure to real football is watching Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo highlight reels on YouTube.
Last year followed that woeful trend. FC 25 started out as one of the best entries to the series in years, but the gameplay was slowly eroded by UT adjustments that led to midfielders not tracking back, and headers bordering on useless, until the very last patches. I still enjoyed the game, don’t get me wrong, but I would have never given it an 8/10 rating if I’d known what was in store.
Sometime in July, amid a sweltering heatwave that made half the country burn and made me constantly sick, the kind people at EA Sports told me that starting with FC 26, the career mode gameplay would be completely independent from the online one.
That news refreshed me more than air conditioning ever could, and for the first time in over a decade, I was counting the days until I could get my hand on the game. This is uncharted territory for the franchise, and I don’t have a crystal ball to see how the game will be six months from now, but without Ultimate Team to ruin everything, we might finally be out of the woods.
The Match Day Programme
I’ve consumed enough FIFA/FC marketing material to last a lifetime, to the point that I’m desensitized to it. Every year promises some sort of ‘all-new experience’, and every year the result is too familiar to matter.
This year, the big speech was about an ‘overhauled gameplay experience’, with a Berlin Wall erected between Authentic and Competitive modes to keep everybody happy. There was also some noise about serious updates to career mode.
Itching to get a look at what this Authentic mode was all about, I jumped into a short exhibition match between Real Madrid and Liverpool. Disgusting, I know, but I wanted to get a feel for the gameplay with the big-name guys before trying a rainy away day at Monza.
To my surprise, the electoral campaign matched the reality and then some. With the Kick-Off match set to Authentic mode, the game had a slow but steady flow for the most part, punctuated by moments of explosiveness. It felt like football, which is something that had been sorely missing in the franchise.
Dare to Defend
The most noticeable change in the game is the automated tracking back, especially for midfielders. Tchouaméni adjusted his position based on the rest of his teammates, and would rush to meet attackers as they approached.
The practical implication is that there’s no longer a huge hole in front of the defensive line, so you can’t park a 10 in there and spam lobbed passes. More competent defending also means the scorelines are no longer ridiculous, so you’ll be seeing a lot more tense 1-0 matches.
In exchange for fewer lobbed passes, FC 26 brought back headers. My first goal scored and conceded in the game came that way. Mine was a deep cross from Carvajal to Mbappé, while Liverpool found the net with Konaté after a corner. Headers aren’t overpowered by any stretch, but they’re back to being a viable option.
I was also surprised by how much more natural the tackling feels. EA Sports has been tinkering with the specifics of defending since it introduced Tactical Defending in FIFA 12.
Standing tackles in FC 26 actually follow physics and common sense rather than letting defenders teleport the ball away from attackers. As a result, shielding becomes a lot more effective, and the game becomes more physical overall. Woe be unto wimpy wingers.
A Real Job
The litmus test of a good FC game is how the game holds up during a career mode season. For my first adventure, I picked Fiorentina, coming off a 6th-place finish in 2024-2025 and with a seriously imbalanced squad. They also have the sickest-looking kit in all of Serie A, which counts for something.
On the surface, career mode looks fairly similar to last year’s edition, but the devil is in the details. You can choose up to 5 other leagues to simulate in full, which is a game-changer if you’re like me and like to keep your own Chelsea Loan Army. Loanees develop better in simulated leagues if they’re getting game time, and this lets you actually track their stats instead of just hoping they come back better when going abroad.
I played my season Unexpected Events set to On, but never came across any impromptu retirements, financial drama, and the like. The manager market is a drama that plays out slowly, with next to no firings early in the season, even for teams having a nightmare start. The fact that coaches now bring in their own vision to new teams still makes it a great addition to keep long career saves fresh.
On that note, the scouting in FC 26 finally does away with the need for consulting websites to check player potentials. Your scouts now give you an estimate of a player’s potential in the same way Youth Scouts do. The accuracy depends on their quality, but it’s refreshing to have a clear indicator in-game at last.
Embrace the Tactician
I had a rocky preseason with the standard Fiorentina 3-5-2, so I figured to fashion the team into a wide 4-4-1-1 instead. Team tactics in FC 26 are fairly similar to those of FC 25, a fundamentally better way to build your team than the older drag-and-drop method.
I’ll say it louder for those in the back: your basic formation shapes how your team plays without the ball. That’s how football works. However, the game lets you visualise in both fixed and animated graphics the positioning of your team with the ball, so you understand the player roles better.
The game doesn’t do much to stop you from doing something stupid, which I learned as I tried to place a Target Man up top with a Shadow Striker CAM behind him. They stuck to the same spaces, got in each other’s way, and made attacking a miserable affair until I changed things up.
My Fiorentina clicked after I moved my striker to the Poacher role, which is far less involved in the build-up but makes more incisive runs. This opened up room for the attacking midfielder to operate more freely, alternating between anchoring the attack on the final third and pushing up to functionally make it a 4-4-2 when the rest of the midfield advanced.
Now, FC 26 isn’t and will never be a substitute for Football Manager if you crave more depth, but I’m happy with it borrowing some tricks from there while actually being fun to play.
A Seasonal Re-Run
Exactly 19 years have passed since my first FIFA experience with the 2006 World Cup game. FC 26’s presentation is an insane upgrade on that, but it looks and sounds functionally the same as last year’s game. Some of the player faces got new scans, but for the most part, you’re rolling with the same old, in keeping with FIFA traditions.
They were even kind enough to keep some bad design decisions from FC 25, like having white text in negotiations and interviews, even when these are overlaid on a white background.
The licensing situation has also stagnated from last year, which was a fairly disappointing entry. Sure, it’s great to have Argentina back, but all the exciting prospects there don’t come close to the huge gap left by not having Liga MX and Brasileirão once more.
I get that these licenses are expensive and are a royal pain in the rear to get, but EA Sports is not a frugal little indie dev. There’s no good excuse for not leveraging some of that financial muscle to secure a league as important as Brazil’s top tier, which has been the source of Europe’s best players for decades.
There’s also a lack of depth among the licensed leagues. Besides England and Germany, the big UEFA leagues only go down to the second tier, with everything else stuck with a single one. If you’re the type to chase trophies, you might not notice it, but the lack of relegation threat cheapens the whole experience.
The VAR Check
After reading all that, you’re back to that initial question: should I buy FC 26 now, or later? If you like playing career mode and want a game that feels like real football, for the first time in a while, this is a ‘get it now’ edition. The separation between Authentic and Competitive gameplay would have been enough to sway me, especially with how lifelike Authentic is compared to the UT-oriented pinball.
Beyond that, there’s enough meat in the career to justify the purchase, with the new challenge mode being a big one if you’re the type to try different things. As for me, I’m sticking with my usual 6-8 season runs before starting over, and the game gives me everything I need for that.
If you’re one of those Ultimate Team people, this is the same game as last year. Depending on how much you like to spend on packs, the $69.99 price tag might not be a big deal, but you’d be hard-pressed to call that a good investment.
The gameplay and career teams carry this title on their backs, with very little improvement to audiovisual presentation and licensing. If you’re a PC player, you can get around this by modding the living soul out of the game until it has everything you need. For the rest of us, well, maybe next year.
The yearly nature of EA Sports FC typically gets in the way of selling new copies because of just how similar the versions are. FC 26 bucks that trend by giving the single-player side of things the love it had been badly craving for years. Without the shadow of multiplayer balancing looming over things, you have gameplay that is likely to stay the same until FC 27 inevitably comes along. I’ve been having a blast with the current implementation, and was quick to uninstall FC 25 after a single match. If you like to play it slow, pass around, and fist-pump after tight wins, this is the football game for you.
- Released
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September 26, 2025
- ESRB
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E For Everyone
- Developer(s)
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EA Vancouver, EA Romania
- Engine
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Frostbite
- Authentic mode feels like real football
- Better defending leads to sane score lines
- Career mode finally gets new features
- Single-player is immune to UT patches
- No major new leagues
- Rehashed audiovisual experience
- Minor visual bugs carry over from last year
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