The newest edition of the EA Sports FC franchise is finally, officially here. The game released for all on Friday, September 26, and hundreds of thousands of livestreaming viewers tuned in to welcome it. Although it still ranked highly on Twitch, the 2026 edition marked a significant downturn in viewership compared to last year.
As we reported on in our early access coverage for the football game, EA Sports FC 26 has seen viewership shift, with a larger portion of its watch time coming from Kick, with YouTube Live and Twitch on a downwards trend. While last year’s edition saw a majority of livestreaming attention come from Twitch, Kick was hugely important for the game’s release viewership this year: EA Sports FC 26 reached its highest Peak Viewers on Kick, a first-ever for the franchise.
In total, EA Sports FC 26 received just shy of 6,000,000 Hours Watched (HW) for its official release weekend. Most of this came from a combination of Twitch and Kick, with YouTube Gaming adding a minor amount of viewership, and SOOP Korea and Naver’s CHZZK bringing in statistically negligible viewership.
While Kick managed to host the highest concurrent viewership for the release, 176,873 Peak Viewers (PV), more watch time and Average Viewers were recorded over on Twitch. Although the purple platform lost its dominant position this year, it still stands ahead of Kick as the forefront streaming platform for the EA Sports FC franchise.
Compared to last year, viewership fell rather significantly for EA Sport FC’s release weekend. Compared to last year’s title, EA Sports FC 26 saw viewership fall by 18.1%. Attention for the franchise appears to be waning slightly, especially among western audiences hosted on Twitch.
During the release weekend, EA Sports FC 26 ranked as the seventh-most-watched category on Twitch, or the fifth-most-watched video game. While viewership may have fallen compared to last year, the franchise remains a staple for gamers and football fans around the globe, attracting a significant audience.