EA Sports College Football 26 review for PS5, Xbox Series X

Following the long awaited return of college football to video gaming last year I was wondering where EA would build off that great return to form (as I previously reviewed HERE). So it’s a year later and we now have College Football 26 and I might need to take off my reading glasses because this release looks nearly identical to last year’s College Football 25. I would recommend going back to last year’s review because this is going to be short and sweet and many of the items I hit on there still apply with College Football 26. I will save you some time though, if you purchased CF 25 and you’re not a huge college football fan/ NEED the most up to date roster, I would stick with that release and wait to see what improvements are given in CF 27.

Presentation to me has been the biggest change and that is important to the college football experience. More unique stadium lighting, music, and even drones. Returning is that home field stadium pulse and all the new presentation features build on that. The feel of the stadiums continues to grow and stands out as such a key differential to the Madden franchise. The stadiums feel so alive and playing away can give such anxiety and pressure in a close scored rivalry game. While I don’t want to see the Madden team do a one to one copy of College Football 26, I would like to see the stadium feel begin to carry over into Madden. It’s something that I feel the team has tried and never really stuck the landing. All it took the College Football team was two years to get it right. So I guess that is a bit of a tease for my upcoming Madden 26 review, we shall see how I feel when that releases in August.

All the other modes from CF 25 are back in CF 26 and they see some quality of life updates and tweaks but remain nearly identical to last year’s release. Dynasty mode is still the main draw for much of the fanbase and not to sound like a broken record, but if you liked last year’s you’re going to feel at home this year because it is largely unchanged. Ditto for Road to Glory, Ultimate Mode, etc. Do you think this year’s release is for the die hard fans by now? In my opinion, this year’s release could have been bypassed and EA could have done some sort of paid DLC for CF 25 that updated the roster and maybe added in the new presentation features, that seems way more reasonable than a brand new $70 release of a largely unchanged title.

Now at the end of the day is College Football 26 a bad release? Absolutely not; it’s a great football game and it is better than the previous release. But for all the fans that jumped in last year for the return of the college football franchise, it’s a tough sell to say here’s a new game for $70 and it’s worth your money. For fans that didn’t jump in last year, I can’t recommend College Football 26 enough, but for all the gamers who picked up CF 25 I just can’t bring myself to give this my stamp of approval as the resident football reviewer for Gaming Age. The review score was the hardest part of this review to me, so if you purchased CF 25 I would knock this down to probably a 6, the score was decided for gamers that didn’t purchase last year’s release. Hopeful that College Football 27 makes a run at the Heisman next season.

Note: EA Sports provided us with a College Football 26 PS5 code for review purposes.