EA Sports FC 27 review: come for The Grounds, stay for Career

I’ll say one thing for EA Sports FC 27 : it’s not the same game as EA Sports FC 26 .

That reads like a compliment — and in some respects, it is — but where previous entries in EA’s long-running football simulator series shipped with minor improvements and equally minor frustrations, FC 27 takes bigger swings that flip between successful, insignificant, and occasionally experience-worsening in their execution.

Review info Platform reviewed: PS5 Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC Release date: Early Access: September 18, 2026 | Full release: September 25, 2026 I wish I could package that sentiment into a neat metaphor (‘a mixed bag’ is too hackneyed), but I can’t — so here’s the Cliffs Notes version of my review: EA’s shiny new mode, The Grounds, is a hollow imitation of NBA 2K 's The City.

Ultimate Team is objectively better than it was in FC 26 , but is still geared towards card-collecting youngsters and time-rich YouTubers.

Career mode is the best it’s ever been, but is oddly prone to breakage by the same new features that make it better.

And the overall FC gameplay experience is more challenging than before, but more rewarding as a result.

Still with me? I’ll run through each of those mini-verdicts as you read on, but you get the idea: EA Sports FC 27 is immense fun in parts, dull in others, and a generally quite confusing entry in a series that rarely changes so much from one year to the next.

But hey, change is good... right? Around The Grounds (and out again) Yes, you can emote in The Grounds (Image credit: Future) This year’s big new addition to the FC franchise is The Grounds — an ‘open-world’ reimagining of the series’ Clubs mode in which you can compete with friends or randoms in both stadium- and street-based challenges.

I put ‘open-world’ in quotation marks because The Grounds is not so much a free-roam experience as a third-person menu-hopping one.

The idea of exploring three “cultural hubs of football” sounds cool, but in reality, these hubs are little more than poorly rendered maps populated by lifeless NPCs (non-player characters), Riddler Trophy-style Drop Kick Targets, and PvP waiting areas.

Each of The Grounds' three districts are connected by a central hub (Image credit: Future) The game modes available within The Grounds are fun enough — there are traditional 11v11 matches, FIFA Street -style cage matches, and more casual mini-games like the basketball-inspired Bucket Ball — but the ‘open-world’ aspect of the experience adds little beyond longer wait times (because you now have to travel from A to B on foot) and the ability to customize your pro’s wardrobe with licensed clothing.

At a price, of course.