EA Sports announced that there will be no dedicated F1 video game next year, as the 2026 season will be covered via a paid expansion to the existing F1 25. Essentially, the F1 game is skipping its annual release.
In the same announcement, EA reaffirms that F1 will be back with a new standalone title for 2027 which “will see the series return and mark the start of a new and more expansive F1 experience,” the press release says.
This “strategic reset” should allow developer Codemasters to deliver more in the next full-packaged game.
On one hand, it’s an interesting and bold move. Sports games have been beholden to annual releases for the sake of having them, and with that quick of a development time improvements to these games are not as substantial as video game sequels that has the usual 3-5 years of development time.
On the other, EA picked a weird time to do a paid expansion, as 2026 is the year of the new regulation for the motorsport, featuring entirely new cars. It’s not just a minor aero change either—the 2026 regs F1 cars have 50-50 split deployment of electric and internal combustion engine power, active aero and slightly less weighty and smaller which should significantly change its driving physics. To saddle what is a game-changing event into a paid expansion seems like wrong timing.
It’s good to see annual sports game (the F1 game series are racing games but are stuck to the cadence of sports game development—it’s under the EA Sports banner even) shaking things up is cool to see, but there’s not much good track record out there. When PES did paid expansions for yearly roster updates, it was so that it could transition into a free-to-play game called eFootball instead of directly competing with FIFA/EA FC every year. When Football Manager cancelled Football Manager 25 as they add more development time to the new game which transitioned into a new game engine, among other literal game-changing additions, Football Manager 26 ended up with bad impressions as its mired full of technical issues. EA also did a paid expansion to EA WRC for one year, only to can the series. Hence, the announcement insists a new F1 game will return—this isn’t an EA WRC situation again.
The current F1 video game license under Codemasters/EA is set to expire later this year, but this announcement more or less confirms that the contract has since been extended to two more years, despite EA retracting a statement saying this recently.
If you skipped F1 25 for F1 26, well you need to get F1 25 regardless if you fancy having a go at the new cars set to debut next year.
F1 25 is out now on PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA Play) and Xbox Series X|S. Check out our review of the game here.