Best EA Sports FC 26 settings for optimized PC performance

Finding the best FC 26 settings for PC isn't too difficult, provided you've purchased or upgraded your gaming PC within the last five years. You still won't need anywhere near the best graphics card from our buying guide to get great performance, with our test Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU even managing to generate a fast frame rate while playing at 4K on the ultra graphics preset.

The FC 26 system requirements are very low, as is expected when no major engine changes have been implemented since last year's instalment. However, without upscaling tech such as Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR, some owners of older, low-spec gaming PCs may need to drop a few settings to make FC 26 run smoothly. For those looking to play FC 26 on Steam Deck, you're going to have a much harder time, unfortunately.

• Rendering Quality: Ultra
• Stand Based Hair: On
• Grass Quality: High
• Crowd Quality: High
• Cloth Quality: High
• Ambient Occlusion Quality: High
• Motion Blur: On
• Frame Rate Limit: Unlimited
• VSync: On
• Cutscene Performance: Full Frame Rate
• Render Scale: 100
• Dynamic Resolution Scaling: Off

Using the above settings on our RTX 4070 test rig (full specs in the How We Test section), we achieved an average frame rate of 153fps with 1% lows of 94fps at 1,920 x 1,080. At 2,560 x 1,440, the average frame rate was 132fps with 1% lows of 90fps. Finally, at 4K, the average frame rate was 92fps with 1% lows of 64fps.

These figures are great across all resolutions, and while the graphics may not be completely maxed out, the game looks great, and for the sake of being able to run FC 26 at 4K on an RTX 4070, I'm happy to sacrifice some additional grass and crowd quality, especially when they're hardly a major focus during gameplay.

EA Sports FC 26 graphics presets

There are four graphics presets from which to choose in EA Sports FC 26.

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

The main differences between the low and ultra presets are hard to discern during gameplay, even when you're using a zoomed-in camera setting.

The most noticeable quality differences between the two become visible in the lighting when night games are being played, the realistic movement of the cloth fabrics (player shirts, shorts, and so on), and the general level of detail in player textures.

Ultimately, as a game typically played with a distant camera angle, so long as you're getting good performance from your gaming PC, lowering a few graphics settings isn't much of a compromise. For us, the above settings provided the best balance of performance and visuals.

EA Sports FC 26 accessibility settings

In a change from previous years, you're now greeted with an accessibility menu when you first boot EA Sports FC 26. It only offers subtitle and colorblind settings, but a full accessibility menu is available from the main menu as usual.

The full accessibility menu contains additional settings such as controller remapping, simplified in-game actions, the ability to enlarge some UI elements, a high contrast mode, and much more.

How we tested EA Sports FC 26

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play EA Sports FC 26 includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in dual-channel configuration, and an MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. Finally, we also test in 4K. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does EA Sports FC 26 need an SSD?

EA Sports FC 26 does not require an SSD, as specified in the system requirements. At just shy of 70GB, the download file isn't huge, but you may want to make sure you've got enough space if you're only working with a single drive.

If you are still using an old-school mechanical drive and need to upgrade, or perhaps you just need some extra storage space, you can find our current SSD recommendations in our best gaming SSD guide.

How to monitor performance in EA Sports FC 26

If you want to keep an eye on performance in EA Sports FC 26, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit Alt + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

You can discuss FC 26 and how it runs on your system in our community Discord server, where you can chat with members of the team and fellow PCGamesN readers.