College Football 26 is the rare annual sports game that justifies coming back for another run at the championship

Tom's Guide

5 days ago

Platforms: PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/SPrice: $69Date: July 10, 2025Genre: Sports
After over a decade of silence, EA finally brought a college football game back last year in the form of College Football 25. With that return, the franchise reentered the realm of iterative yearly sports titles.
CFB 25 was a welcome and excellent revival, but it wasn't without its flaws, including a lackluster Road to Glory mode and a lack of a tutorial mode.
With College Football 26, EA Orlando brings a number of welcome changes including the inclusion of real life coaches, a revamped Road to Glory mode and somehow even deeper recruiting in Dynasty.
I said last year that EA delivered by 'producing one of the best pigskin games in years,' and CFB 26 just adds more on top of what was already an excellent football game.
There are some flaws including seemingly long loading times in Ultimate, a strange insistence on not including a dedicated tutorial to teach both new and returning players about changes in gameplay, and some age-old CPU AI frustrations that just won't go away (looking at you no-look interceptions).
Despite those imbroglios, CFB 26 is worth a punt. Read my full College Football 26 review to find if you should step back on the field.
College Football 26 is the second game in the revival of the franchise. After a solid debut, CFB 26 follows that up with some more welcome additions.
Compared to other sports in the United States one of the things that separates college football is the pageantry. While there was some good presentation and fidelity in CFB 25, this year's iteration loaded up with 88 new marching band songs, nearly 40 new mascots and various 'true-to-life' stadium setups and gameday traditions.
An example would be the inclusion of Virginia Tech's entrance to Metallica's 'Enter Sandman' which is always awesome both in real life and now digitally.
That being said, one flaw in CFB 25 was that you couldn't skip those introductions especially if you're running through a number of games in quick succession. CFB 26 actually lets you get right to the game if you don't want to watch the umpteenth run on the field, especially for teams that don't really have an interesting one. Still, I've found that schools with bigger introductions (VTech, for instance) remain unskipable.
As for gameplay, on one level, if you've played a football game, or CFB 25, this year's edition should feel similar. There are a number of changes but the biggest ones you'll notice right away are formation subs and dynamic subs.
Previously, to sub out players you needed to pause the game and go into your depth chart. Now you can use the D-pad to make individual substitutions without hitting the pause button. Doing so pops up a little screen with status and ratings for your players at different positions. There's also an auto-sub slider in the menus to swap players when certain wear-and-tear levels are hit.
It makes playing more fluid and responsive to what's happening on the field. Overall, games feels smoother with tackling and catching seeing the biggest improvements. Yes, there are still weird blocking fails or random no-look interceptions but that's par for the course at this point.
You can get more granular with additions like getting only your linebackers to show blitz over the entire secondary. There's a lot and EA has broken it down in their thesis-length blogs but they're worth a read to see all of the minute changes.
My favorite quality of life is the return of a Trophy Room where you can easily see all of the awards you've won across the various modes. I didn't know I missed it until it came back, but I'm happy to have it all the same.
There are five modes of play in College Football 2026. The simplest is Play Now, where you pick a team and battle it out against another team on the field. This can either be against a CPU or a head-to-head with a friend.
Below, I'll take a look at the other four modes, with the meatiest one being Dynasty, the college football classic.
I did not like Road to Glory last year, it was bare bones and very boring, not quite what you want as you try to lead your player to football glory.
The revamped version for CFB 26 is way better where you can start in high school and complete "moments" against other high school teams to get colleges to notice you. There's a lot going on, from managing the schools you want to attend to performing in games.
Once recruited, there are far more options to improve and practice especially as a backup. In CFB 25, that part felt very limiting, but now there are different mini-games to compete in. Managing the various meters like grades, training and brand feels like more of a choice with actual consequences for choosing school work over leadership.
My one complaint is that some things, like play calling, are too much in the player's hands. For more immersion, I wouldn't mind a return to a system where the coach gives you more leeway as you earn trust and playing time, especially in progressing from a 2-star to the elite levels. It might take some time to get on the field but once you're there, it should be interesting to see how long the leash really is.
If you've played an EA sports game you've seen an ultimate team mode with its player cards, and ways for EA to squeeze a few more bucks out of you via microtransactions.
This year's version includes a new Solos mode for those who prefer offline play. My biggest problem here is that this section is also where you sort of find a tutorial mode for the game.
Yes, there is a new 'training' tab in the main menu where you can play challenges like 'Pocket passer' to kind of learn how to play, but it doesn't show you what buttons to press or how to make certain moves.
As an example, there is a mid-play feature where if you're scrambling as a QB you can press L2 and flick the right stick to direct the closest receiver either closer, away, vertically, or horizontally to open up a pass. You might not know about this unless you engage with the Freshmen-level Solos section where these kinds of tips pop up as you play the game.
It is insane that EA Orlando refuses to institute any kind of tutorial mode for both new and returning players to teach some of the nuances of all of the controls you can use in the game. It's also mind-boggling that what has been made is hidden in a section of a mode that not everyone will even touch.
In the end, Ultimate Team is not my preferred mode of play, but what is there seems to work well enough, though I noticed a slower loading time in Ultimate Team. That may be related to the servers, but it felt long enough to be annoying.
Road to the Playoff is a simple player-vs-player competition where 12 wins in your "league" will get you into a playoff to vie for a chance at a national championship.
The only real update here appears to be moving from 10 wins to 12 wins. There's also a stat page you can review of your opponent including wins/losses and offensive tendencies.
If EA had made only minor updates to Dynasty mode, I wouldn't have been surprised or really unhappy. But with CFB 26 there are enough new features to make the popular mode feel different.
The most noticeable is the inclusion of real-life coaches including their career stats, tendencies and playbooks. It adds more immersion to the game, and in some cases you can bring them to your team (especially offensive and defensive coordinators).
The Build a Coach section has new ways to customize your coach's appearance, a nice update after last year's surprisingly barebones attempt that was clearly waiting for an expansion of options. Beyond just new clothing styles there's also stance and demeanor options where you can set if your coach is cool on the sideline or a headset-throwing hothead.
There's been more work on the coaching archetypes with new ways to progress and different, more achievable challenges to unlock perks and XP boosts.
As a head coach, there are now traits for your OCs and DCs that can help you retain coaching talent or find the next guy to bring you success.
On the recruiting front, which was plenty deep in CFB 25, the noticeable change is in the transfer portal which is more active due to altered dealbreakers that can be worked around instead of bluntly locking down players like before. But it also means that a dealbreaker for a player on your team might change from season to season, making it harder or easier to retain them.
There's a lot more, and again, it makes recruiting more interesting with more to track but also sensible adjustments that I believe make recruiting feel like more than just making the number go up.
College Football 2026 is the next step in the evolution of EA's college football revival, and doesn't just feel like a mere iterative upgrade. The tools and features that arrived between Dynasty, Road to Glory and regular gameplay feel substantive.
It's not a perfect game with minor flaws in gameplay that will annoy some, and the absurd lack of a true tutorial or learning mode continues to baffle.
Those things don't detract from an overall excellent experience that is an improvement over last year's iteration.
With iterative sports titles, it's not guaranteed that year to year will be worth the cost, but in its sophomore year, College Football 2026 is worth the squeeze.