EA Sports Madden NFL 26 review — A top 5 draft pick!

Madden’s release represents the start of the NFL season, with the Madden NFL 26 releasing in different release windows in between the Hall of Fame game and Week 1 of the Pre-season. With the launch comes all of the normal yearly discussions of what is different from last year, are there major glitches, and is it worth buying it? I’ve personally reviewed the franchise for GamingTrend since Madden NFL 22, so I’ve seen BAD and I’ve seen the upward trajectory since. It’s the Witching-Hour, friends; time to talk about Madden NFL 26.

Gameplay and Graphics

The combination of the revamped passing, physics based tackling, and now the wear & tear has added a lot of realism to Madden we’ve not had previously. If you run Derrick Henry, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, etc. every single play, there’s simply no way he’ll be as strong at the end of the game as he was a few plays in (even though I’m sure some will disagree). Now, you’ll be able to see why their throw power or hit stick is less powerful with the wear & tear.

Quarterbacks feel more individual with players like Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Kyler Murray having their iconic running style. With the addition of juking in the backfield for QB’s, you’ll have even more highlight moments… or lowlight if you make the wrong choice. 

Running behind the offensive line feels better with linemen hitting the correct blocks more frequently. I still have issues with the fullback position as I did last year. Using the McDaniel playbook the fullback has some key blocks and misses the block more frequently than not. 

The lighting and weather have been updated, taking what worked in Madden NFL 25 and updating it a bit with some lighting changes. As the game progresses —especially on the west coast—, things will get darker and the lights will come on. With the addition of the dynamic weather, things are better and more intense in-game than ever. If you get a heavy snow game in Green Bay or Buffalo, forget being able to see as everything will look like snow battles in Game of Thrones. You see nothing until a defender is on your player making the tackle. Rain also impacts rushing, catching, and passing in ways we’ve not had before. Don’t be surprised if your receivers drop multiple passes a game in the rain and snow. 

Another great addition was the themed nights for specific teams having endzones that match the uniforms. Texans and Dolphins are my favorite examples. Adds to the realism of every Sunday being different, and a nice attention to detail!

Some small glitches I found during my playthrough include sound cutting out between quarters, especially in slow sim. This usually corrects itself in the next quarter, but in the meantime, enjoy silence other than the broadcast team. If you move from halftime or into overtime too fast, the opponent will automatically start at your 40 yard line regardless of any choices made. This happens frequently if you use super sim or slow sim. There are also some smaller bugs like kneecaps disappearing in the combine (see Lead Editor David’s video) and players sometimes glitching out after touchdowns.

Gameplay feels fluid and refreshed even with the small glitches and I’m impressed by the jump from Madden NFL 25 to Madden NFL 26. 

Franchise Mode

For many Madden fans, the game lives and dies with Franchise Mode. This has been a staple of the Madden games for over a decade, with some major stumbles along the way. Since I started reviewing Madden for GamingTrend with Madden NFL 22, I’ve seen the steady progress and improvements made by the team at EA Sports. Speaking with Connor Dugan and Josh Looman two years ago made me confident that the Franchise Mode team had a plan, talking with Josh Looman this year during our preview event made me the most excited I could be. What’s different though? Why is it worth buying?

First of all, the character creator has been updated. While I still wish we could fully customize our coach the way we create our Superstar, I am happy with the increased number of heads for both male and female body types as well as the large amount of outfits you can pick from including tops, bottoms, and shoes. On top of this, if you play as a female body type, you’ll be able to make history as the first woman coach to win an NFL game. Two out of three broadcast teams will use the correct pronouns as well. Creating a coach also has you pick between Offensive Guru (Andy Reid), Defensive Guru (Todd Bowles), Development Wizard (Dan Campbell) and Real Life Coach. Each provides different boosts early on, but allows you to focus on what you like about the team you choose from the start.

Part of the reason Franchise Mode is so popular is the ability for us players to become the leader of our favorite team and lead them to greatness. The issue with this in the past has been a lack of choice, consequences, and consistency. This year aims to fix a lot of these issues in many different formats to fill in gaps and bring a higher sense of realism to the mode. 

Your choices matter every Sunday, and now every day leading to Sunday as well. Weekly Strategy has been completely revamped allowing you to choose which Coaching Abilities, Playsheets, and Training you want to use for that week as well as the chance to choose how intense your practices will be for your players. 

Coaching abilities are replacing the straightforward skill trees allowing you to focus as much or as little on hyping up your skills on different sides of the ball. You can also use your coordinators abilities if needed. Playsheets are bite-sized playbooks that bring in a new way to organize your playcalling so it’s always something different depending on your opponent. Training has actually become an active part of Weekly Strategy as you’ll have to keep track of everyone’s wear and tear to make sure people are available. In my first season I didn’t have Jaylen Waddle for the Dolphins in the last four games because I kept pushing him to practice fully all season. If your players wear and tear gets too low, he’ll sit out a week. As a Dolphins fan, this added realism as I lost multiple players like that near the middle and end of the season. 

Consequences have a bit more meaning now with everything you do. As a head coach you’ll have to navigate making ownership, fans, players, coaches, media, and the GM happy, and each choice will impact someone down the line. Call out your players for doing well but leave out thanking your coaches for helping gameplay? Their happiness with you will decrease. Lose games? Your media and fan happiness will go down. Especially in larger markets like New York, it’s so fun to see how the media reacts to what you say during the season. 

A good QB and backup QB is also something much more important with the Wear & Tear system being added. As the season goes on, your QB takes hits, we know that, but now those hits matter each and every time. By the end of my first season, Tua had a -8 to throw power because his left arm kept getting hit. He had -4 speed due to his legs being in the yellow. This, once again, adds to the realism. Sometimes you need to keep your QB practicing less to keep them protected long term. XP will be less, but they’ll be better off in the playoffs. 

For most Franchise Mode fans, we play a lot of seasons back to back. With that comes the repetitive consistency of older Franchise Modes. Last year took a step in the right direction by adding new commentary teams to the mix and adding little bite-size story lines with players that usually had to do with the same players over and over. This has changed a lot this year with everything seeming more cinematic and less basic and repetitive.

First, we have completely different broadcast packages for Sunday, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football, and Thursday night football. Each with their own graphics, lighting, intros, and more. Second, the soundtrack is the best it’s been since Madden 11. The mixture of genres really adds a lot and the ability to turn songs off and on from the mix is a great way to cater the soundtrack to each player’s likes and dislikes. They also play instrumental versions of some of the songs when a game ends, lending itself to a Friday Night Lights style of drama as everyone is either celebrating or disappointed. Third is the inclusion of Rich Eisen and Scott Hanson throughout the game. Rich is utilized as the narrator for Franchise Mode, discussing the importance of each meeting you go to and simply bringing a lot of realism to the scenes outside of the gridiron itself. Meanwhile, Scott is bringing his Redzone flair to the halftime show and weekly recap which uses either NPC created highlights or the highlights of the user players for Online Franchise. For any football fan who watches every Sunday, these two bring a lot of fun and enthusiasm to Franchise Mode and keeps it feeling real and fresh.

Speaking to Josh Looman last year, a few things we talked about in our meetings have actually changed this year, and I want to take this opportunity to discuss the ways the team at Madden has heard our comments and made active steps to make them better. 

Coordinators matter a lot more in M26 with the ability to hire fired coaches more consistently and know where they will add to your team while they bring their abilities and Playsheets to your team (think if you added a Mike Tomlin or Pete Carroll to your staff and how that would impact your team). 

You now don’t get fired for one specific choice. In Madden NFL 25 you can get fired if you make the goal a Super Bowl and don’t make the Super Bowl. Simple as that. This wasn’t realistic since everyone’s goal is the Super Bowl and even if you made the playoffs, you’d still get fired for not making the Super Bowl. Now we have the approval system I discussed earlier. This is much more realistic and it made me change teams much less often. 

While there are still some bugs (like being prompted to talk the same talk to your first round pick every week after drafting them) this is clearly a huge step from last year. Some graphics need to update after the first year to second year and such, but these are small complaints, but some worth mentioning.

Madden NFL 26’s Franchise Mode has the most updates in over a decade and is the most cinematic the mode has ever felt!

Superstar Mode 

We also have a new facelift and refresh to Superstar Mode, with the highlight being the sphere of influence.

Sphere of influence starts with your agent and follows everyone from players on your team to tattoo artists and fans. This will change and grow as you do, and some choices are locked behind having influence. If you want to be released to go to a new team, you’ll need to have influence with your agent. Need new celebrations or tattoos? Get influence with those individuals. On top of the out of game stuff, if you have influence with your WR or TE they’ll get boosts to their game while around you. 

While not everything has been refreshed yet, this is a promising start to the refresh of the mode and makes me excited for this to become a mode I play more frequently, especially as College Football continues to grow Dynasty Mode and we transfer characters over. 

Madden Ultimate Team

I’m never shocked this mode is as popular as it is every year. It’s competitive, and it brings some fun events and legendary players into the modern NFL. You’ll once again have solos to play and online games to win. This is where my complaint every year comes into play. The ability to purchase your team really puts a damper on early-on players. Some people are good enough to win with a 68 overall team vs an 80+ overall team someone got packs for, but not all of us. 

My suggestion to every new player of MUT, in order to not get upset early, is to play every solo and tutorial you can and if you got the Deluxe Edition, use every pack you get quickly. Once you get your team as good as you can, start looking at those abilities to see if any players stand out and work well together. Just because you have a good player doesn’t mean they have synergy with your entire team. 

While I wish the pay to win method wasn’t included, I understand it is and won’t be going away, so just be ready to either grind solos every week or pay some extra money. 

Overall

This iteration of Madden has some of the best updates in years alongside some easily fixable bugs that are small yet frustrating and removes the immersion. With the highlight of Madden NFL 26 being Madden Franchise Mode, which includes the most updates to the mode in a single Madden in over a decade. Superstar is moving in the right direction and is a fun time when joining your journey from College Football 26 Dynasty Mode. I believe that if given the time, this team at EA Sports has one of the best simulation games out there. The lack of time in between games means they’re having to play the long game with some of their updates. If you think something needs to change, it’s a high probability they already know that and are working on it, it just wasn’t ready for this release. If you’ve not played a Madden game in 5-10 years, this would be a great jumping off point to get back into the fun

EA Sports Madden NFL 26 is available on XBOX Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

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