Following up on last week’s Career mode overview, EA revealed a deep dive highlighting many of the Ultimate Team changes set to debut with EA FC 26.
But to the surprise of many, most, if not all, of the reveals were either welcome additions or long-awaited quality of life updates. So you can stay on par with everything, here’s a quick overview of the biggest Ultimate Team changes coming with EA FC 26.
Table Of Contents
Introducing Live Events
One of EA FC 26‘s biggest Ultimate Team shake-ups comes via the addition of the Live Events hub, set to be the home of themed competitions focused on, in the world of the developers, bringing “more variety in what you play, and the squads you use throughout each season.”
Among the Live Events, EA then confirmed that players will be able to once again take part in knockout-style Tournaments, now set to take place during specific dates and offer exclusive rewards. Various Gauntlets are also set to be available. As part of them, those daring enough will be tasked with winning consecutive matches in a tower-like fashion. There’s a catch, though, as unlike the Online and Offline Drafts, each match demands an entirely new squad. At release, only the Ultimate Gauntlet has been confirmed to be available, with more set to arrive down the line.
All Division Rivals Changes
While its core experience is set to remain the same in EA FC 26, the game promises to bring a new layer to Rivals via Bounties, a series of randomly generated match challenges you can complete for extra rewards while climbing. To help players who often find themselves stranded in higher divisions, developers also revealed a checkpoint rework that limits their use.
But What About Champions?
Regarding Champions, the biggest change comes with the exclusion of Playoffs in favor of the simple but effective point qualification system. For more casual players, a variant of the mode, called Challengers, was also announced to debut. The mode is set to bring forward a lower level of competition at the cost of offering less valuable rewards. To put it simply, think of it as FC 26‘s Europa League.
A Fix To Ragequits?
In response to one of the franchise’s biggest issues, it was revealed that, while playing Live Events, Rivals, and Champions matches in EA FC 26, players on the receiving end of ragequits will be rewarded with wins if certain conditions are met. More details regarding the conditions are set to be revealed in the future. When in Rush, players who consistently disconnect are set to instead be hit with matchmaking delay penalties.
Repeatable Evolutions And More
Eclipsing the long-awaited arrival of the GK ones, evolutions on EA FC 26 have been confirmed to be repeatable. Keep in mind, though, that most of them will have caps, so you won’t be able to use them indefinitely. You can check out a quick overview of a few more quality of life changes arriving with EA FC 26‘s Ultimate Team below, as revealed by the official EA FC 26 FUT Deep Dive Pitch Notes.
- All FUT matches in FC 26 will be played while in Competitive Mode. You can check more about the mode in our Gameplay Deep Dive overview
- You will be able to keep the design of your cards after performing evolutions that do not alter their rarities. Cosmetic updates will also stack.
- Making one of the best features of FC 25‘s PC version the norm, EA FC 26 will restrict the use of the FUT Transfer Market to new accounts across all platforms upon their first log-in
- As part of the mode’s menu overhaul, players will be able to keep track of all objectives related to certain modes while on their main screens, thus eliminating the need to go back and forth
Now that you know what to expect from the game’s Ultimate Team, we also highly recommend that you check out the new features set to debut as part of EA FC 26‘s Player and Manager Career modes.
