EA Sports College Football 26 has some big shoes to fill for its sophomore campaign, and EA kicked off its marketing blitz for the July 10 release date with a reveal trailer that showcased some of the expected additions coming to this year’s game.
Among the new additions, we started things off with a Road to Glory section that highlights high school games are back in the series. We also got our first look at head coaches in the game with Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman getting a postgame handshake shot, and Ohio State head coach Ryan Day getting hyped with his players for the tunnel runout.
Beyond that, EA looks to be doubling down on pregame intros with more mascots, an augmented reality logo in the sky for each home team for the night games (at least I think that’s what they’re going for), and a renewed focus on lighting in these night games.
Some of the other cutscenes mixed into the trailer were likely related to Road to Glory as well (namely a shot focused on some college hats). I did not notice any other new cutscene flows beyond the hats as it looks like EA is happy with their pregame intro style and team celebrations after big plays and turnovers.
Returning to the lighting, again, it looks much better already for night games but we’ll need to see if dynamic lighting has made it into the game as well. The static lighting that did not change throughout a game was certainly an immersion killer last year.
The song choice is also notable. I would temper expectations just slightly as while there are plenty of signs Enter Sandman will be in the game — it’s almost too on the nose to have that blaring over a Virginia Tech pregame runout — we had Welcome to the Jungle for last year’s reveal trailer and that song did not end up in CFB 25.
All in all, a lot of what we expected to see in a reveal trailer were here, so now we’ll just be waiting for some deep dive blogs and more info on all the features in the weeks ahead. For now, EA is just giving us a taste with some high-level notes in today’s blog.
