EA Sports College Football 26 completed its closed beta last week, allowing a select few players to test out some of its features ahead of its launch later this year. It didn’t present a full version of College Football 26 – just a small vertical slice of its major game modes and new features. Players were able to test out Online Dynasty in a three-day beta period, providing feedback on the stability of College Football‘s servers and the overall gameplay experience as they played through Road to the College Football Playoffs.
But while this only represented a very limited version of the final product, the College Football 26 beta revealed a few new features that could make a massive difference in two of its most popular game modes. Only time will tell how they hold up when the game is actually released, but they certainly show potential for expanding the possibilities created by College Football‘s return last year.
Customize Everything
The biggest lesson that we learned from the College Football 26 beta is that there are a ton of options for customization. Besides the usual suspects – your player character’s general appearance, uniforms, et cetera – there’s a whole suite of incredibly in-depth options for customizing how all the players on your team look and move. For example, you can now alter your quarterback’s hold style, affecting the positioning of their hands and arms while running with the ball. (Jury’s still out on whether that has any actual gameplay effect or is just a cosmetic choice, but it’s still cool.)
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Moreover, you can choose your players’ running and positional stances, affecting their posture and stride as they’re dashing across the field, or how they stand at the line of scrimmage. Stances may be determined by each player’s position – in other words, certain stances may be available to wide receivers, but not linebackers. Some may even include animations and poses based on real-life iconic college football players; rumor has it that Ashton Jeanty’s “Michael Myers” stance will be among the options available (via College Sports Network).
CFB 26 Beta Revealed Customization For Players & Coaches
Coaches Are Included, Too
But don’t think the new customization options begin and end with what players can do: coaches also have a wide variety of new customization options, so they can look their best, too. Of course, since coaches aren’t in play, their customizations don’t go quite so in-depth, but there are still a lot of options here: instead of animations, though, they’ll primarily focus on clothes.
The clothes themselves, though, are incredibly detailed; College Sports Network reports, for example, that certain articles of clothing have visible stitching, meaning they were rendered down to the last detail. The result looks pretty incredible. In a series that’s always prioritized realism, CFB 26 seems to have gone above and beyond. Now no longer limited to the realism of on-the-field mechanics and player behavior, the aesthetics of college football are coming out in full force, and your options for customization are full-fledged.
Dynasty & Road To Glory Should Be Even Better In CFB 26
Customization Makes All The Difference
Now, you might think that features like these are secondary to the actual gameplay of CFB 26, and to some extent, you’d be right. Character customization is a fairly minor part of these games; most players engage with it once for an extended session at the beginning of the game, then barely touch it except to incrementally change a uniform or clothing piece here and there. But in truth, character customization is actually pretty important to the overall CFB experience, especially in two particular (but very popular) game modes.
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First, there’s Road to Glory. This is where character customization’s effects are most obvious: Road to Glory is CFB 26‘s player-focused campaign mode. In it, you’ll design your very own player, and take them from their high school football career to college recruitment to MVP. Being able to customize your player down to the last detail will inevitably make you feel closer to them, whether you design them to look like you, someone else, or just to test the limits of CFB‘s character creator. Road to Glory tells an immersive journey of your character’s journey to greatness – the more detailed they are visually, the more closely you’ll want to follow it.
Besides that, your ability to alter your character’s appearance throughout Road to Glory will help make incremental character changes feel more impactful. Imagine adding a branded piece of merchandise after your player gets a sponsorship, or a fancy piece of jewelry after signing a big deal – your player will physically change as their career advances, which will make for some fascinating visuals.
These changes will also be meaningful for Dynasty Mode, CFB‘s equivalent to what other games might call GM mode. Dynasty Mode lets you play not as an athlete, but as a college football coach. You’ll manage your team, shuffle players around, pick training exercises, and edit your playbook to strengthen your team, and increase your chances of performing well in the playoffs. Being able to edit your players in such detail will be an incredible feature of Dynasty Mode – imagine changing your QB’s holding style after putting them through extensive training, or micromanaging your players’ stances to craft an impenetrable defensive line.
In a similar vein, though, you’ll also be able to edit your coach’s appearance down to the very last detail, which will make this mode just as immersive as Road to Glory. The impact of character customization on career modes can’t be overstated, and it’s something that EA Sports College Football 26 clearly takes very seriously.
Source: College Sports Network
EA Sports College Football 26
- Released
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July 10, 2025
- ESRB
-
E
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
