To be a sports fan is to have hope. You have to believe. Yeah, sure, maybe the wheels fell off last year and your team was a first round playoff exit. Maybe that rookie they drafted turned out to be a bust. Maybe the coaching staff has no idea what they’re doing. But you have to believe, in your soul, that things might be different next year. You know they probably won’t be, especially in the NFL. But you believe regardless, because what else is there to do? Being a fan of annual sports games recreates that strange sense of hope. Maybe next year that thing you hated finally gets fixed, or that long-needed feature gets added. I’ve lamented the constant feeling of “maybe next year” in my past Madden reviews, and I’ve wondered if incremental improvements are the only thing possible in a series like this. But boy howdy, did EA Tiburon prove me wrong with Madden NFL 26. There may still be room for improvement, but this is easily the best Madden in a long, long time.
From welcome changes to the on-field gameplay to a completely revamped Skills Trainer, a huge update to Franchise, and less-seismic-but-still-good-improvements to Superstar and Ultimate Team, Madden 26 is EA Tiburon making good on a lot of what it’s been promising. Madden 26 feels confident, like a scrappy underdog offense squaring off against a top-flight defense and throwing the ball all over the field. It doesn’t always work, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t a lot of fun. And if you’ve been playing Madden for the last few years, you can see how so many incremental upgrades finally got us here. It’s like watching a team’s long-term draft strategy come together, and it’s kind of beautiful.
Let’s start with the on-the-field game. Like I wrote in this year’s College Football 26 review, EA has kinda solved the “make the football video game play good” part of the football video game. But this Madden makes some major on-field changes, many of which were inspired by College Football’s general feel and/or made their debut in College Football 26 this year.
When I saw Madden NFL 26 and College Football 26 side-by-side at a preview event earlier this year, developers from both teams emphasized how having two studios working on football games not only created a friendly internal competition that made both games better, but it allowed them to iterate faster, too. You can definitely see it in this year’s Madden. The biggest change is how much faster entry is on the field. This isn’t College Football speed, but it’s a nice balance between the zippy arcade feel of College Football and the slower Maddens of yesteryear, and after dumping a lot of time into both games, I think I ultimately enjoy Madden’s speed tuning more. It’s even made it hard to go back to Madden 25 to finish up the last season of my 32-man Franchise league. That’s a damn good problem to have.
Additionally, a lot of the major quality-of-life stuff from College Football 26 is also here, and it works just as well. Dynamic substitutions on the field that take place on the following play? Check. Custom zones for your defense that you can set on the field? Yessir. Wear and Tear? Yup. Stunts and twists? Yeah, buddy. Block steering? Uh huh. Defenders needing to be able to see the ball to pick it off? You better believe it, hoss. I was a fan of all of this stuff in College Football (minus parts of Wear and Tear; more on that later, I promise), and it all works well here, too. All that plus the abilities to throw back shoulder passes and pylon passes if you’ve opted into Revamped Passing (which grew on me so much over Madden 25’s life that it’s now my preferred way to play) is a godsend.
But those aren’t the only on-field upgrades. There’s also severe snow and rain, and these additions add so much to a game. When you’re in a snowstorm, you can’t see that far down the field, your players are slipping while they’re coming off the line, and an increased chance of fumbling makes even running the ball a risk. I adore this stuff, and I am so happy it’s here. I especially love the little details, like the snow getting covered with footprints as the game goes on.
And then there’s the presentation upgrades. There are broadcast packages for Sunday, Monday, and Thursday Night games, each with their own intros and commentary teams. And man, it’s cool to hear Al Roach say “EA Sports welcomes you to the following presentation of the National Football League.” I also appreciate the new runouts and the addition of team-specific traditions, like Randy Moss blowing the Gjallarhorn before Vikings games and Freddie Falcon swooping down from the rafters before Falcons games. College Football set the standard for this stuff a couple years ago, but traditions aren’t just a thing in college, and we love to see Madden showcasing each team’s personality.
You know what else we love to see? The revamped Skills Trainer, which is something I’ve been asking for for years. Madden’s old Skills Trainer wasn’t bad, per se (it taught me the basics way back when), but it was a little long in the tooth, and there was a lot of stuff it didn’t cover. Now, it will teach you, in detail, how to do everything, as well as how player ratings interact on the field to determine an outcome. For instance, if you’re kicking a field goal or an extra point, you shouldn’t hit the red zone of the kick power part of the meter, as that’s what is called an overkick, which reduces your distance. I thought it just meant “Hey, here’s the edge of the meter.” Nope! I asked one of my friends who also regularly plays if he knew that; he didn’t. But we both do now. Madden has always been uncomfortable with explaining itself, largely opting to leave the detailed stuff to YouTubers. Now, a lot more of that detail is here. The Skills Trainer will even mark drills as “Beginner,” or “New to Madden,” so you can find the stuff you need more easily. It’s a huge improvement and something the team at EA Tiburon should be very proud of.
Skills Trainer is an appetizer; let’s talk about the main course: Franchise. I’ve said this in previous reviews, but I’m a Franchise guy. For me, that’s what Madden is. I play in a 32-man league that stretches back to the Xbox 360, usually run a solo one for practice, and maybe even run an additional one on the side if I’m really feeling what that year’s version brings. Madden 26 is – no joke, no exaggeration, no bull – the best Franchise has been since I started playing back in Madden 17.
Before I really get into why I love it so much, let me quickly talk about the changes I don’t like. First and foremost, Training Camp. EA Tiburon has doubled down on minigames this year, and reworked Training Camp to compensate, and reader, I hate it. Hate it. There are fewer minigames, and thus fewer opportunities to train more of your roster. There’s also only one minigame for DBs now, and only one for receivers – the latter is at least understandable, but when you’re going to run a ton of nickel (and you are), having one slot for five DBs ain’t great.
To compensate, a few of the minigames now give two skill points instead of one, but that brings me to the second, larger problem. The misery of playing the minigames. I did not think I could hate a passing minigame more than Madden 25’s Target Passing, but I’d never played Bucket Drop, which is both awkward to control and somehow worse than last year. It uses Madden’s Placement and Accuracy passing style regardless of your personal preference, and once you lock in where you want to throw the ball, you have to hold your analog stick in place, which is both uncomfortable and not how it previously worked. Bucket Drop is misery, reader. Misery.
But that pales in comparison to DB Battle. If DB Battle has no haters, I no longer walk this Earth. I used to love this minigame, but EA made it harder last year and doubled down again this year, making it even harder and reducing your point total on interceptions. Since it is the only DB minigame in Training Camp now, doing it is basically essential, and also something I dread at the beginning of every new season. There’s a theory that hell is just reliving your worst memories over and over again. My personal hell would very likely consist of being locked in a room and being forced to play DB Battle until I achieved a gold medal. There is no truer, nor more noble suffering. Last year, a friend of mine in my league acquired all of his DBs through trades so he could play fewer DB minigames. This year, I think I’ll follow his lead. I want to be clear, not all of the minigames are bad. But the ones that are… woof.
Okay, minigame rant over. You know what’s awesome about Franchise mode this year? Basically everything else. Madden may try to convince you that it is parkour, but this is a lie. It’s menus all the way down, and Franchise is the ultimate menu (complimentary). Coach Creation is totally revamped now, with a ton of new outfits to choose from and several new heads that… kind of look better than last year’s options? Several look like they were made out of Play-Doh or ripped straight from the “Weird and Ugly” section of the Dark Souls character creator, but a few of them are genuinely great, even if I don’t like how my favorite lady coach from last time looks as much this year. But hey, there are more heads now, and I appreciate the effort. I just wish we had more freedom here. Let me tweak the heads! Give me full-on customization!
Once you’ve made your custom coach, you’ve got a choice between one of three archetypes built around player development, offense, or defense. The skill trees of old? Gone. Now you spend Skill Points to unlock and upgrade abilities that you equip on gameday for bonuses, like improved Cover 3 defense or a better short passing game. Some, generally player abilities, last a few weeks; others, like the ones that allow you to hire better scouts, last all season. It’s more interesting than “this position gets +2 Speed, the most important stat in the game,” which was how a lot of the skill tree looked last time.
Each week, you equip new skills based on how you’d like to gameplan for your opponent, choosing from skills provided by your head coach and coordinators. As you level up and complete in-game and season goals, you get coach points to upgrade those abilities, opening up new effects. In addition, you can level them by competing in-game objectives, but if you play poorly, you can also delevel them and even lose them completely (though you can buy them back with coaching points if that happens). It’s a nice element of risk and reward, and the weekly scouting report does a much better job of looking at the other team and breaking down key matchups to help you choose the right abilities for the job. Picking the right ones is crucial, and good planning weeks ahead of time makes a huge difference. Planning against an offensive genius like Andy Reid is very different than for a defensive cat like Mike Tomlin, and I like that you can see each coach’s personality on and off the field, and plan for it accordingly.
There are a couple downsides with abilities, though. Previously Focus Training slots (additional slots to individually train players beyond normal practice) were unlocked forever once you purchased them. Now, you have to unlock (and level) an ability, and then equip it, leaving you one less slot for game day. That’s fine, but the issue is that the ability doesn’t kick in until the following week, which is lousy. I’m a player development guy; that’s an ability I’d personally never take off, and having to wait a week for it means that once it expires and I reup it, I’m missing out on half my Focus slots for that week. That will happen a few times over a season, and it adds up. Similarly, the one that boosts Training Camp results also doesn’t seem to activate until the following week. The issue is that Training Camp is a one week deal, so I’m not entirely sure when to equip it. If I try to do it when Training Camp is happening, I’m out of luck, but since Training Camp only happens at the beginning of the Preseason and you need to be playing a game that week to equip abilities… well, you see the issue. I hope these are problems EA will work out in an update. Otherwise, it’s going to be annoying to deal with for a year.
But abilities aren’t the only new addition; you’ve also got playsheets – smaller, focused playbooks that add additional formations like 4-2-5 or concepts like the Air Raid offense to your existing playbook – that you can unlock and level up (and delevel), which is also awesome. Now, it’s easier to get what you want without using a custom playbook, and as far as I can tell, some of these formations are only available through playsheets. And keeping a base playbook gets you access to the new Coach’s Suggestions, which used machine learning to explain the play being suggested in something resembling that coach’s voice. I’m iffy on the machine learning bit and some of the suggestions (which can have a low success rate, by the suggestion’s own admission), but I do like that they explain how the play is supposed to work, which is a good way to learn to use new plays.
The addition of Wear and Tear (see, I told you we’d get here) was something I was wary of, but I think it’s been implemented well. Football is a violent sport, and taking a lot of hits on game day not only makes your players more likely to be injured, it also reduces their stats. Previously, you could feed a top receiver or feature back every down. Now, that’s a really good way to get them hurt, or at the very least, have them playing banged up when the fourth quarter rolls around. That said, it’s not gamebreaking. To manage it, Madden 26 adds a personal trainer to your coaching staff, with abilities that increase player recovery, reduce Wear and Tear over games, increase recovery week to week, reduce the odds of practice injuries, and so on. I like this system, as well as the variable injury recovery time it introduces. Previously, you always knew when a guy was coming back from injury. In Madden 26, it’s a range, and how you use your trainer’s abilities can reduce or extend that time. I love how many more choices you can make in this year’s Franchise, and how much you can infuse your style into your play. That said, I hope Career Wear and Tear stays in College Football, and never comes to Madden. That sounds like a nightmare at an NFL level.
With Wear and Tear comes some very welcome changes to player development. You can now choose practice intensity for each player, not just for starters and backups at each position, which is a godsend. I’m decent at Madden on the field, but what makes me good in a Franchise league is that I’m great at drafting and player development. For someone like me, this extra control is a huge deal, and it feels like developing backups is more viable than it has been in the past. There’s also some nice QoL changes here, like being able to see player fatigue as a number and not just a meter on the health section of their player card. Yes! Finally! I don’t know if this is stuff most players will notice, but if you’re a sicko like me, it really does make a big difference. I didn’t know how much I’d like this stuff coming into Madden 26, but having spent a while with the game, I can honestly say that I love it.
Other major improvements in Franchise come in the form of presentation. The biggest (and coolest) are the weekly recaps and the halftime shows, presented by Scott Hanson.These pull highlights from your games (and the games of user and CPU-controlled teams) across your Franchise, and Hanson provides commentary on them in real time. It’s absurdly impressive. But there’s smaller stuff, too. Previously, Madden added sideline interviews with press and press conferences, but they were often numbers-focused and awkward at best. It was weird to ask your team how to gameplan for an opponent as a head coach and have the entire team turn to face you in unison like some kind of insanely jacked football version of the Stepford Wives, and weirder still when reporters would ask you about a player’s stats and chastise you for being wrong. Now, you gameplan with coordinators before going to your team (who behave much more realistically), and you may have press conferences with a player after a particularly good or bad game. I also like that you have to manage relationships with your GM, fans, coordinators, media, and players. Blow off your coordinator’s suggestion for how to gameplan for an opponent, and he won’t be happy about it, but if you’re right and notch a big win, you’ll rise in their esteem. If a player wins an award and you praise the coordinator for helping accomplish that, they’ll remember it. These conversations are much more natural, and add a lot.
EA Tiburon has even fixed some of the bugs that plagued Franchise for a while; Madden 26 no longer calculates player regression and progression at the end of year twice, and regression seems more in line with how players performed, not just their age. All of this stuff is really, really good, even if there are still some kinks to iron out – the community has reportedly found the legendary 5th down that Tom Brady was looking for several years ago, though it remains the stuff of myth for me.
It’s not all sunshine and roses in Menuland, though. Player cards now take more than five seconds to load, which is both substantially worse than in Madden 25 and absolutely infuriating when you really want to dig into your team’s stats. Updates are supposed to be coming, and to its credit, EA did fix menu and loading issues in previous Maddens – but man, five seconds to do something as simple as open a player card, which was snappy in Madden 25, when there are 53 players on a team? Please end me.
Superstar is better, too, but not quite as much. This year, my steadfast custom character Joe Throw makes his debut as the backup for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and… it’s fine, I guess. The big thing this iteration is managing your relationships with your coaches, fellow players, and other guys in your Sphere of Influence, like a Sports Psychologist or Tattoo Artist. This is cool in theory and less so in practice. Like Franchise, there are nicely produced cutscenes here that establish the characters, but it often plays out off the field by having you make a binary choice that isn’t really a choice. Like, sorry Jaxon Steele, I’m not gonna blow off a meeting with my coach to get a tattoo. You’re gonna have to hold that one, buddy.
Otherwise, you play minigames to train, level up your character, and then play games. It’s fine, but it didn’t hook me for the long haul. There’s also some weird presentation choices, like having your agent’s photo be of an obvious character model sitting next to a photo of a real coach or player, which itself is sitting next to what looks like an AI generated image of your Sports Psychologist. Joe Throw remains almighty, but the high point for Madden single-player remains Longshot. We miss you, Colt. Oh, and there’s Superstar Showdown, where you can take your players online and compete against other players, and buy really tacky player customization items, but when Franchise is as good as it is, I found it hard to care.
Finally, there’s Ultimate Team. It has many of the quality-of-life changes from College Football 26 this year, like Pack Helper, which will immediately tell you if a player is better than someone in your current lineup and let you equip them on the spot (or put that card up for auction) without entering another menu. Bafflingly, the “view the challenge from the play call screen and on the field” update that hit this year’s College Football isn’t here [Update: This actually was included, but a UI bug would make it not appear sometimes, and the bug was fixed in an update shortly after we published this review!], but otherwise MUT is the same as it’s always been. It’s fine as a solo experience, but its goal is to get you to spend money, especially if you enter the pay-to-win online arena. Here I quote my College Football 26 review: “I functionally believe, deep in my soul, that these modes are predatory, more than a little evil, and designed to trigger the dopamine-producing parts of our brain that gambling stimulates in the hopes that you will continue to spend money for a chance at a good outcome, which is what gambling is, and I cannot endorse anything about them.” It is what it is, and what it is is hilariously, stupidly popular. It’s going to make EA an absurd amount of money, but I don’t have to like it.
