Madden NFL 26 Ultimate Team Deep Dive
July 24, 2025
Hey Madden Fans!
Welcome back to Gridiron Notes, your home for Madden NFL 26 News and Updates straight from the developers. Today, we’re deep diving into Madden Ultimate Team. We are delivering a deeper, more rewarding experience, built around your feedback. Whether your focus is head-to-head or solo play, everything this year is built to reward your football IQ and creativity while keeping the experience smooth, fresh, and rewarding week after week.
There are new ways to play and more reasons to build, so let’s dive in!
More Programs. More Events. More Football.
Our goal heading into Madden NFL 26 was simple: Deliver more and deliver better.
We’re expanding both the volume of programs and the variety. Each major content drop will bring a new wave of Live Events, designed to push your strategic depth, stretch your lineup, and offer rewarding gameplay in both Solo and H2H formats. Every single major content drop will feature both a CPU and a H2H event, allowing you to choose your preferred path to play. Rewards are tailored to reinforce your team-building experience and tied to each event. With events delivered on a consistent cadence, something fresh is always available.
KICKING OFF THE YEAR
In Season 1, we’ll be kicking things off with a pair of events for our Preseason Standouts program: Long Drive. You will take on opponents in either H2H or CPU under special house rules.
Following this up will be Campus Heroes with College OT for H2H players. Solo players can look forward to Campus Chaos, a unique twist on a Solo Season where you will play through four years of college (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior), each represented by 2 games serving as the semester. This culminates in a Graduation showdown against the Campus Heroes themselves.
Our final program of Season 1, Game Time, will launch our first team building event of the year. For H2H players, you’ll take on an abbreviated 5 game H2H Season with the most lucrative rewards for those that can manage to string together multiple Super Bowl wins. For Solo gamers, you’ll take on a Game Time twist on our new Solo Champions mode, including a slugfest against the Game Time Champions.
As the year goes on, we’ll be delivering a wide variety of events, some of which are making their very first appearance in Ultimate Team. For example, while the Trick-or-Treat CPU event will be returning for Most Feared, it will be coming with a new twist: randomized House progression, each with its own house rules and attribute modifiers. Zero Chill will be bringing the heat with a new MUT team building event, where your event rewards will directly feed into your progression in the event as you bolster an event-specific lineup. You can also expect throughout the year some unique squads opportunities, a new type of battlescore-driven CPU event, as well as the return of some events that have been missing for a while now, such as the “Race” house rules event.
SEASONAL EVENT PASS
To capture all of the event goodness coming out this year, we’re introducing the Seasonal Event Pass. Building on the Showtime Showdown event from last year, Events in Madden Ultimate Team 26 will contribute to their own dedicated field pass. This will provide more flexibility in rewards and a more cohesive event experience across the entire Season. For Solo Players, you’ll be excited to hear that the Event Pass has room for you too, with our lineup of Solo Events this year also contributing to the Seasonal Event pass.
WEEKLY SPOTLIGHT PASS
In addition to the Seasonal Event Pass, another new pass will also be joining the mix – the Weekly Spotlight pass. The Weekly Spotlight pass will showcase specific programming throughout the year in a shared field pass experience to provide more freedom for rewards and progression. As part of this, all weekly programs will now share a single token, providing greater flexibility and giving you more control over your rewards. We’ll be debuting the Weekly Spotlight Pass with Legends. For its first iteration it’ll feature Legends, Team of the Week, and Collector’s Series.
Collector’s Series
Collector’s Series is a new weekly program that will have a new theme (Series) each Season, each with its own distinct style. Additionally, each Series will have a unique Collection Champion: if you can manage to get your hands on all of the Champions for that series, you’ll be able to earn a special, more powerful, version of your choice of Champion from that series. Collector’s Series will be debuting with the Signature Series for Season 1.
Solo Play Overhaul
We heard your feedback about solo play in Ultimate Team and we made it a priority to design a deeper and more rewarding experience for our solo players. This year, solo play gets the overhaul it deserves.
We’ve completely redesigned our Solo reward structure to better support progression, pacing, and meaningful rewards. Solo players can enjoy the full Ultimate Team experience - team building, progression, and challenges - without needing to play H2H against others.
SOLO CHAMPIONS
This year we're introducing Solo Champions: a 12-game weekly gauntlet of escalating difficulty. It will serve as the pinnacle experience for Solo Players, measuring where your current skills are at. To enter, you’ll be given an entry token every week, and can earn more by completing weekly objectives. Then, you’ll choose your difficulty and rack up battlescore to earn rewards. Build up your Ultimate Team, hone your skills, and work your way up to tackling the highest difficulty levels of Solo Champions.
SOLO SEASONS
This year, we’re introducing The League. It’s a more casual Solo Seasons experience set up to better emulate the NFL Season. You’ll take on a regular season comprising half games. If you can manage 10 wins, you’ll enter the Playoffs and ultimately the Super Bowl, which are full game experiences.
We also heard the feedback surrounding Ultimate Solo Seasons. We still want to make sure we’re providing the option for a more challenging, repeatable experience, so we’re replacing Ultimate Solo Seasons with The Run. The Run has four levels. Each level is five, two-quarter games. As you progress through the levels both your opponents and starting conditions get tougher. If you can manage to overcome the odds, you’ll find yourself rewarded.
Solo Seasons will also have specific weekly objectives with high-powered rewards! Complete enough weekly objectives to redeem a free BND champion!
CHALLENGES
Challenges are also getting several updates. Star ratings are being adjusted to better reflect the difficulty level of a challenge. A one-star challenge will be easier in difficulty, while beating a five-star challenge will be a true testament to your skills. While some challenges will still feature selectable difficulty, we want to make sure that for those seeking a tougher experience, the option is still there for you.
These aren’t all of the changes we have in store for our solo players this year! We’re expecting a more regular update cadence for solo modes with and a robust suite of solo friendly events, all landing with each new major content release. MUT26 rings in a new era for solo players!
GAUNTLET
Gauntlet is seeing a qualification update. Instead of needing to get a certain number of MUT Champs wins to qualify for the Gauntlet, you’ll now earn an entry token from a weekly objective to get Ranked wins. No need to put a win streak together.
SICK SIX
Sick Six is losing its limited availability, gather your squad and tackle your three runs per week whenever you want!
Team Building Events
Ultimate Team is and always has been a celebration of building your perfect squad. In MUT26, lineup construction was at the forefront of our upgrades.
Team Building Events introduce new ways to test your roster-building skills. Some events will require a theme team to enter, while others might require your team to be within a specific OVR; others still might require a specific player in your lineup. To support these experiences, we’re giving you powerful lineup tools to make building easier than ever. You’ll have the ability to view any eligible event and its requirements, auto-generate a baseline lineup to meet those requirements and edit your lineup for optimization all from the lineup screen with real-time lineup compliance alerts.
Tighter requirements will equate to better rewards. We want to make sure we’re giving you the tools you need to be able to participate in team building events with little friction. Our goal with team building is to reward creative, thoughtful team building, not punish your binder size.
Our philosophy around team building events is to make them reward your football strategy IQ and creatively solving the team building requirements in front of you. Team building events are about providing you opportunities for unique challenges and roster building opportunities.
Competitive Campaigns
This year we’re introducing Leaderboard Campaigns. They’re smaller, limited-time, focused competitions designed to make every game matter.
Each campaign puts you on a leaderboard with a small subset of players. Whether you're a H2H or Solo Player, your performance on key objectives (points scored, wins, etc.) determines your placement. Every tier unlocks bonus rewards and every player has a real chance to finish at the top.
LTDs, Sets & Rewards
With the massive amounts of content coming in Ultimate Team, we wanted to make sure it all feels worth playing and have made adjustments to rewards. In addition to the flexibility offered by the new Event Pass and Weekly Spotlight Pass, we’ve also re-evaluated our overall rewards. Welcome Pack players are seeing an improvement across the board: you’ll generally see them able to be upgraded all the way to Champion-level OVR.
Non-fantasy reward packs will now have a chance to include an LTD. LTDs are now also available for a full week instead of just three days.
For Sets, we have a couple of quality-of-life changes we’re launching aimed at giving you more choice when it comes to rewards. Firstly, program champions will no longer have bespoke sets for each Champion. Instead, it will be a single fantasy pack giving you a choice of program champion. Secondly, we’re tackling the frustration around our filter organization: they will be sorted alphabetically this year.
We also have heard the feedback around alternate uniforms and have planned opportunities to earn alternate uniforms throughout the year. You’ll see them start to roll in with the Season 2 Field Pass.
You’ll also earn progress on your NFL Team Pass throughout Ultimate Team, unlocking rewards that celebrate your achievements with your favorite squad.
Pack Helper
We know it can be tedious flipping between your binder, auction house, or lineup when opening packs to determine the best decisions for your squad. This year, we’re introducing a new feature called Pack Helper. With Pack Helper, you’ll instantly see if a new player is better than your current starter, whether they help complete a set, how they’re trending on the Auction House, or if they boost your Chemistry tiers, all directly from the pack opening screen. All these actions can be done with just two clicks. Every insight is optional, and if you want to take action, it’s quick and seamless.
The Evolution of the Item
We’ve redesigned the core of Ultimate Team: the player item itself.
Key info like OVR, position, and name now stays locked in a standard location. Everything else can change based on the program. Our player items will reflect the identity of each drop, giving an even more distinctive visual feel to items throughout the year.
We’re also bringing back player item flipping, with multiple back pages that allow you to explore key attributes, X-Factors, abilities and chemistries. You’ll be able to directly compare players on the same screen without needing to leave your lineup, making decision-making clearer than ever.
Quality of Life Upgrades
Every aspect of MUT should be intuitive and frictionless. We’ve made key upgrades to ensure that playing and progressing never gets in your way.
CHALLENGE OBJECTIVES
Challenge Objective Tracking is now available directly from the play call and presnap screens, no need to pause to check your progress or remind yourself of the goal!
EVENTS UI
House Rules visibility has been improved with a complete list of modifiers available on the event select screen itself, allowing you to easily preview how your gameplay will be impacted. Additionally, they’ve also been integrated right into your play experience, so you’re never surprised by a modifier.
To help keep players in the flow of events, we’re making UI improvements to the event screens. All of your rewards will now be viewable from the event screen, even when an event features multiple levels. No more needing to be in the Playoffs to see the Playoffs rewards! House Rules also now have their own dedicated display space both on the event screen and in-game, no pause required. For those events that feature special end conditions for the game, those too are now available in-game.
Always Fresh. Always Football.
From all of us on the Madden Ultimate Team dev team, thank you! We’ve worked this offseason to build on your feedback and elevate every part of the Ultimate Team experience with more content, smarter tools, and deeper ways to play. We know we have the most passionate fans and are excited to see you at launch!
For a reveal of the first season of Madden NFL 26 and Madden Ultimate Team, tune into our first Good Morning Madden stream of the year on August 6th at 10:30 A.M. Eastern, on twitch.tv/EAmaddennfl!
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Madden NFL 26 launches worldwide on August 14, 2025. Pre-order the Madden NFL 26 Deluxe Edition and play early. Conditions and restrictions apply. See disclaimers for details. Stay in the conversation by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Answers HQ.