For the first time in nearly 30 years, EA Sports won’t be the one putting the World Cup on your screen. What fills that gap is stranger — and more interesting — than anyone expected.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off across the United States, Canada, and Mexico this summer, and billions of fans worldwide are gearing up to watch. But there’s a quieter, equally seismic competition happening in parallel: a full-blown war over who gets to be the go-to soccer video game — and the answer, for the first time since 1997, is genuinely up for grabs.
EA Sports and FIFA parted ways after FIFA 23. The brand that had defined football gaming for three decades walked off in different directions: EA kept the engine and rebranded as EA Sports FC, while FIFA kept the name and went looking for new partners. What they each built for this World Cup tells you a lot about where gaming is heading — and how much the industry has changed.
FIFA’s new home: Netflix and your phone
The most surprising development is also the most consequential. FIFA, working with LA-based studio Delphi Interactive, released FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition on June 11 — the same day the tournament kicked off — exclusively on Netflix.
This is not the glossy, controller-heavy simulation fans grew up with. The premise is deliberately different: your phone is the controller, your TV is the stadium. Scan a QR code, invite up to three friends, and you’re playing. No console required. No $70 purchase. Just a Netflix subscription.
The game features all 48 tournament teams, all 1,248 players, and all 16 real-world venues across the host nations. Daily challenges and in-game content update to mirror what’s actually happening in the real tournament — a win for France unlocks something; an upset reshuffles the leaderboard.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino called it “the beginning of a new era of digital football.” That’s the kind of language executives use for announcements that don’t always live up to the billing. But the underlying strategy is hard to argue with: FIFA’s old games were played by a few hundred million people who owned gaming consoles. Netflix has around 300 million subscribers. The addressable audience isn’t bigger — it’s different. Casual fans, families, people who would never boot up EA FC but would absolutely play a few rounds at a World Cup watch party. That’s the bet.
Delphi Interactive, the studio behind the game, is quietly becoming one of the more interesting developers in the industry. Their fingerprints are also on 007: First Light, the recently released Bond game developed with IO Interactive. Niche origins, high-profile mandates.
EA’s answer: The World’s Game update
EA Sports FC 26 doesn’t have the FIFA license anymore, but it does have something FIFA’s new game doesn’t — years of refined simulation, an enormous player base, and the instincts of a franchise that’s been doing this for three decades.
EA’s response to the World Cup moment was The World’s Game, a free update that dropped on June 4 with 53 fully licensed national teams — 41 of which are actual World Cup participants. The tournament structure inside the game mirrors the expanded 48-team format exactly: 12 groups of four, a round of 32, five knockout rounds, and a final. It won’t be called the FIFA World Cup inside the game — EA doesn’t have that license — but it plays like one.
The update is free for all EA FC 26 players across every platform, from PS5 to Nintendo Switch 2. It also includes a free 93-rated Pelé card, new international Icons and Heroes for the career mode, and a fresh tokens system tied to the tournament. For existing players, it’s a significant content drop timed perfectly to the summer’s biggest sporting event.
The irony isn’t lost on anyone: EA doesn’t own the FIFA name, but EA FC 26 is still probably the most technically accomplished way to simulate the World Cup this year.
The rest of the field
It’s not just EA and Netflix. The World Cup moment has pulled in a crowd.
Konami’s eFootball — long the runner-up in soccer gaming — features an International Cup 2026 mode with strong gameplay, though licensing gaps remain a problem. The US men’s national team, for example, is not officially licensed, meaning American players face the awkward situation of representing their country with generic kits and no names on the back. For some, that’s a dealbreaker.
UFL, the free-to-play challenger from Strikerz Inc., quietly partnered with Adidas earlier this year to add World Cup balls, kits, and a stadium inspired by the official match ball — the Trionda — to its game. It doesn’t have official FIFA World Cup licensing, but it’s building presence.
FIFA itself has also launched FIFA Rivals, a mobile game with a World Cup Legacy Mode already live, and the upcoming arcade title FIFA Heroes featuring the tournament’s official mascots. The governing body is building what it describes as a “multi-partner digital football ecosystem” — a portfolio approach rather than betting everything on a single franchise.
What this all adds up to
For most of the last 30 years, the answer to “what’s the World Cup video game?” was simple: whatever EA put out. That clarity is gone, and what replaces it is messier, more fragmented — and arguably more interesting.
Different players want different things. The serious sim audience still reaches for EA FC 26. The casual fan who hasn’t bought a game console in years now has something built exactly for them on Netflix. Mobile-first players have FIFA Rivals. And everyone, to some degree, is benefiting from the competition that EA’s monopoly had quietly suppressed.
The World Cup only comes around every four years. The next time it does, FIFA will have learned what worked on Netflix, Delphi will have a sequel to develop, EA will have had time to rebuild its national team roster, and whoever else is in the market will have had two more years to catch up.
The real game — the one about who owns football gaming — is just getting started.
Sources: CBS Sports, Sportico, Variety, Netflix Tudum, Insider Gaming, Games.gg, Games Hub, This Week in Video Games
