Last month, while celebrating the resounding success of EA Sports College Football 25, EA Sports confirmed that the next installment in the series will be released this summer.
"We said this place would be full again – thanks to our players, athletes, and fans for filling the house with us," the publisher wrote on social media, thanking fans who helped make EA Sports College Football 25 the best-selling sports video game in U.S. history. "Let’s keep that kick off energy going ‘til College Football 26 drops this summer."
With a summer release window now set, you can bet EA is hard at work on EA Sports College Football 26. But when will the publisher be ready to officially reveal the game?
While this is purely speculation, we can look back at last year's game and assume EA will follow a similar launch cycle.
EA Sports College Football 25 was officially unveiled on May 16, 2024 with EA sharing a reveal trailer that gave us our first look at gameplay. EA also revealed the main cover art for the game, which featured Texas Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers, Colorado Buffaloes wide receiver/defensive back Travis Hunter, and Michigan Wolverines running back Donovan Edwards. The reveal also included launch details for the game, such as platforms and a release date. A gameplay deep dive was released later in May, followed by player and team rankings in June and a lengthier gameplay trailer in July.
Given the game's success, I highly doubt that EA wills tray from the course with EA Sports College Football 26. If that's the case, then it's likely that this year's game will be revealed sometime in early to mid May, followed by more information in the following weeks leading up to its summer release. We can probably also assume it will launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S sometime in July, sicne those were the platforms and release date for College Football 25.
What will really to be interesting to see is if the game is made available on the Nintendo Switch 2. Nintendo is expected to launch its new Switch console sometime within the next couple of months. Although specific hardware details have not yet been revealed, the Switch 2 is believed to be more powerful and capable of playing third-party titles that the Switch was previously unable to run. The question for EA is whether or not they think there's a big enough audience on the Switch to justify working on another version of the game.
EA Sports College Football 25 marked the long-awaited return of EA's college football video game series. 11 years after the last installment, fans were hungry for some college football, as evidenced by the 700,000-puls players in its first day of early access, and 2.2 million by the end. As of November 2024, it had become the best-selling sports video game in the United States.