EA Sports FC 26 reveal coming later this week, as Zlatan confirmed as cover star
Watch the full EA Sports FC 26 reveal this Wednesday
EA has announced that it will reveal EA Sports FC 26 later this week, and has confirmed one of the game’s cover stars.
The reveal of the yearly football game will take place on Wednesday, July 16.
EA has also announced that retired Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic will be the cover star of the game’s Ultimate Edition. Zlatan will be added to the game as an icon item, celebrating his career, which included stints at Barcelona, PSG, Inter Milan, and Ajax.
It’s also been confirmed that the game will launch on Nintendo Switch 2, alongside Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One, and PC later this year.
Last year’s game, EA FC 25, was met with positive reviews and fan sentiment at launch, but community consensus around the game quickly soured due to recurring gameplay issues, some of which the community has complained about for a decade.
These issues contributed to the game failing to meet its financial expectations. EA boss Andrew Wilson attempted to explain the issues in February.
According to Wilson, EA FC 25 started strong with a “high quality and stable launch”, and with “pre-orders, engagement and player monetisation” all up compared to the previous year, but failed to continue this momentum.
Wilson says the two main contributing factors to this were “soft ‘top-of-funnel’ acquisition” – a lower number of newcomers joining the series for the first time – and “a lapsed engagement later in the quarter”, with players losing interest in the game sooner than usual.
He also explained that more players than expected continued to play EA FC 24 instead of moving over to FC 25, leading to slower growth in the newer game.
“While early acquisitions started out strong, post-launch acquisition cohorts waited longer in the cycle to apply the new title, as many stayed in prior iterations,” he said.
“Combined players in our full HD experiences were flat year-over-year. This mix-shift and slower new player acquisition account for about half of the title’s underperformance versus expectations. Softer than expected engagement made up most of the rest.”
