EA Sports FC 27

The moment the calendar hits September, the green pitches take the stage again, same as every year. Another football game has hit the shelves (sorry, the store pages), and all our football-mad friends are asking the same question: is there really something new this time, or is it the same old game in a fresh kit? I won't drag this out. Let's get into it.

ELECTRONIC ARTS put this game out under the FIFA name for years. When the licence went, the name became EA SPORTS FC, and the game itself stayed the same. FC 27 was made by EA Canada and EA Romania. It was announced on 23 July 2026 and went on sale worldwide on 25 September 2026. Anyone who bought the Ultimate edition could play from 18 September, so a week early. EA Play members got a 10-hour trial on the same date. Kylian Mbappé is on the cover in a Real Madrid shirt. On the Ultimate Plus cover, Jude Bellingham joins him.

Let me get the price business out of the way up front. The standard edition is $69.99 on the US PlayStation Store. On Steam Japan, standard is 9,800 yen and Ultimate is 13,900 yen. We couldn't confirm the Turkish prices for certain, so I'm not giving a number here. Check the store page yourself.

What is The Grounds?

This year's big new thing is THE GROUNDS. Picture a social football space spread over three districts. You dress up and kit out your own player, and from there you jump into street games (Kickabout), one-on-one duels and Clubs matches. Mbappé, Chloe Kelly, Paulo Dybala and Alex Hunter, the story hero of the old FIFAs, turn up as your mentors.

But here's an important warning. THE GROUNDS, along with Clubs, only runs on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Switch 2. If you own a PS4, an Xbox One or the original Switch, you will never see this mode. The most praised part of the game won't be on your machine. Don't head for the checkout without knowing that.

Critics mostly liked THE GROUNDS. The players' complaint is somewhere else. Earning the cosmetic items there by playing feels much harder to them than just buying them. Once your so-called social space turns into a shop window, the town square you walked into so eagerly starts to look a bit like a shopping mall.

Career mode finally gets an overhaul

Now let's move on to career mode, which has been neglected for years. This time EA really has done some work. The transfer market has been rewritten from scratch: player values are more realistic, clubs get into bidding wars with each other, and you can put performance and buy-back clauses into contracts. A player's overall rating (OVR) isn't fixed anymore. It goes up and down with form, morale and match fitness. There's also a new portal where you can build your own scenario online and share it with other people.

On paper, these are things people have been asking for for years. And this is the second place where the critics praised the game. It looks like people who love long single-player campaigns will see a real difference for the first time this year.

On the ULTIMATE TEAM side there's a new FUT GALLERY: you show off your card sets and level them up. Hologram cards, Hall of FUT cards, simpler SBC swaps and single-player live events have been added too. All of it is a familiar loop with a bit of fresh polish. If you love FUT, you'll keep loving it. If you don't, this gallery won't win you over.

So what's it like on the pitch?

EA's promises are clear: dynamic corners, smarter attacking runs, rebalanced AI and manual defending, more natural running animations. Most players didn't buy these promises much. On Steam, only 50 percent of 3,818 reviews are positive, and the result is "Mixed". According to one report, the PS5 user score on Metacritic dropped as low as 2.3. The complaints keep piling up in the same places: passing, manual defending, the game crashing or not starting at all. And there's one very common feeling: an expensive squad update.

The critics are gentler. On OpenCritic, the top critic average is 77 from 76 reviews, with a 64 percent recommend rate. The scores range from 3 out of 5 to 90 out of 100. The Metacritic average was around 75 in launch week. For comparison, FC 26 got 77 and FC 25 got 76. So we've been running on the spot for three years. No goals, and no offsides either.

A patch that speeds up pack openings doesn't speed up your defence.

So what did the patches do? Two small updates came on 2 and 7 October, and version 1.1.0 arrived on 27 October. This last patch doesn't touch gameplay balance at all. It fixes bugs in FUT, THE GROUNDS and career mode, remembers SBC filters between sessions, and makes pack openings shorter. It adds two new competition types to player career (Consistency and Match Limit), lets you change manager career settings on old saves too, brings a "Claim All" button for objectives, and fixes display problems on PC. All good stuff. But there's still nothing for passing and defending, which is what players are actually upset about. A patch that speeds up pack openings doesn't speed up your defence. Hmmm, the priorities are a bit odd, aren't they?

On content, I have nothing bad to say. There are more than 21,000 players, more than 800 clubs and national teams, and more than 35 leagues. The Champions League, Premier League, Bundesliga and LaLiga are licensed, and a few women's leagues have been added as well. EA's site says more than 140 stadiums, the announcement reports say more than 130. Either way, that's plenty. The soundtrack has 120 tracks too.

Verdict

Ever since Kick Off, people have looked for the same things in football games: the ball coming to your feet, the pass going where you meant it to, your defender actually listening to you. FC 27 has made everything around the edges bigger: a social square, a career mode that really is new, a huge list of licences. But on the pitch, the heart of the game, half the players are unhappy. And the big patch that came out a month later didn't touch that at all.

I'm giving it 66. Why not higher? Because in a football game sold at this price, it's unacceptable for passing and defending to be argued about this much. The complaints about crashes and the game not starting are still out there. And on top of that, the best new mode doesn't exist on the older consoles at all. Why not lower? Because the changes in career mode are more real than anything we've seen in years. THE GROUNDS is a solid idea, and nobody comes close on the amount of content.

If you ask me, career mode players on PS5, Xbox Series or PC should wait for a sale and then buy it. If you're happy with FC 26 and mostly play ULTIMATE TEAM, you can easily skip this year. And to PS4, Xbox One or original Switch owners, I wouldn't recommend paying full price at all.

What have you seen out on the pitch? Is the passing really that bad? Write to me, I'm waiting for your letters. Here's to plenty of goals.