FC Pro World Championship 2026 raises its prize pool to US$1.5 million

The FC Pro World Championship, the event that crowns the world champion of EA Sports FC, will be played for US$1.5 million in 2026. The Esports World Cup announced the figure on its official account on Friday, February 6, and Esports Insider reported it the same day: US$500,000 more than the edition played in Riyadh last summer.

The championship runs from July 22 to 26, 2026, as part of the Esports World Cup, the multi-game festival that also hosted it in 2025. The announcement gives no split by placing: how the US$1.5 million will be shared between first place, the finalists and the 36 players in the field has not been published.

Esports World Cup announcement of February 6, 2026, as reported by Esports Insider; the 2025 pool from the organizer's 2025 event guide.

What was announced on February 6

EA Sports FC is the soccer video game that Electronic Arts publishes every year, and FC Pro is the name EA gives to its official competitive circuit, in which professionals play one against one. The World Championship is the end point of that circuit: the event every qualifying route of the season leads to.

The new figure came from the Esports World Cup rather than from EA. Esports Insider, which reported it on February 6, presented the increase as part of the existing collaboration between the Esports World Cup Foundation, the body that runs the festival, and Electronic Arts. Neither the outlet nor the announcement it relays gives a split by placing, a venue inside the festival or a breakdown of who funds the extra money.

What the announcement does fix is the place of the event in the calendar. Five days, Wednesday, July 22, to Sunday, July 26, will decide the champion of EA Sports FC 26, the edition of the game the 2025-26 season is played on.

From US$1 million to US$1.5 million

Two earlier figures sit under the new one, and they are the same. The first is the pool of the 2025 World Championship. In its guide to that event, published in August 2025, the Esports World Cup gave US$1,000,000 for the tournament, with US$250,000 reserved for the winner.

The second is the figure EA itself printed when it laid out the 2025-26 season. Its FC Pro 26 deep dive, posted on August 9, 2025, described the season's path to the World Championship stage by stage and gave the World Championship a prize pool of US$1,000,000. At the time EA gave no date or location for the event and said that details on how to compete and watch would follow in the coming months.

The difference between EA's season plan and the February figure is therefore the same US$500,000 that Esports Insider measures against the 2025 event. EA's page set the pool when the season opened; the Esports World Cup, which hosts the event, has now put a larger total on it. The deep dive remains the only document that sets out the season as a whole, and it was published before the increase.

The 2025 pool also gives the only published reference for the top of the table. A champion's share of US$250,000 was a quarter of the US$1 million pool. Whether the 2026 winner's share rises in the same proportion, or whether the extra money goes further down the field, is not stated.

A bigger field and a new format

The 2026 event is larger than the 2025 one. In Riyadh last August, 32 players were drawn into eight groups of four. Each group was a double-elimination bracket in the GSL style, a format in which a player needs two wins to go through and is out after two losses. The 16 survivors played a single-elimination knockout stage that ended with the final and a third-place match on Sunday, August 10, 2025.

The 2026 format described by Esports Insider replaces the groups with a single table. The 36 players each play six rounds of best-of-one, meaning a single match decides each round. After six rounds the bottom 12 are eliminated, and the top 24 enter a single-elimination bracket, still in best-of-one, until a champion is left.

Four more players and a format in which everyone plays six matches before any elimination are the two structural changes. The extra US$500,000 is spread over a field that is 12.5% larger, from 32 players to 36.

How 36 players reach the World Championship

According to Esports Insider, the 36 places are filled through three routes: the FC Pro Open, EA's season-long competition for the circuit's best players; the FC Pro Partner Leagues, the domestic and regional competitions EA works with; and the World Championship Play-Ins, a last qualifying stage.

The FC Pro Open is the most direct of them. EA's deep dive explains that it brings together 24 players in four groups of six, each pair meeting twice, before the top 12 go to a single-elimination Championship. Group winners are seeded into the top eight of that Championship, and its top eight players all earn direct World Championship seats. Esports Insider likewise counts eight players qualified through the FC Pro Open circuit.

One of them is Vejrgang. Esports Insider reported that he won the FC Pro Open and became the first EA Sports FC player to pass US$1 million in career prize money, and that he is already sure of his place in July. The FC Pro Open peaked at 219,666 viewers, according to figures from Esports Charts cited by the outlet, which makes it the sixth most-watched EA Sports FC esports event.

The partner leagues are the second door. Under the deep dive, selected league partners each receive two direct World Championship seats, while the others send their players to the Play-Ins. Their finals run from February to May. South America's CONMEBOL eLibertadores, announced by CONMEBOL and EA on February 5, is one of them: its Finals in Sao Paulo on May 2 and 3 carry two direct seats.

The Play-Ins are filled through the FC Pro Open Cups, monthly competitions played in November, December and January. Their top finishers receive 28 Play-In invitations across ten regions: six each for Europe West and Europe East, and two each for Africa, Asia North, Asia South, LATAM North, LATAM South, the Middle East, North America and Oceania.

What the rest of the FC Pro season pays

The World Championship is the largest pool of the season, but it is not the only one. EA's deep dive lists the prize money of the competitions that come before it, under a total of US$1,000,000 across its Open competitions. The FC Pro Open alone is paid down to its 24th player.

The money reaches far down the field. A player knocked out in the last places of the FC Pro Open still leaves with US$8,000, and the Global Qualifier at DreamHack Atlanta, played from October 31 to November 2, 2025, paid from US$5,000 for 17th to 24th down to US$2,500 for 33rd to 64th.

The monthly Open Cups were paid by region. In Europe East and Europe West the winner of a Cup received US$8,500; in LATAM North, LATAM South, the Middle East and North America, US$5,000; and in Africa, Asia North, Asia South and Oceania, US$3,000. Against those figures, the 2025 World Championship winner's US$250,000 was two and a half times the US$100,000 for first place in the FC Pro Open.

Inside a US$75 million Esports World Cup

The World Championship is one of 25 tournaments the Esports World Cup Foundation announced on January 20 for its 2026 edition, across 24 games, in Riyadh from July 6 to August 23. EA Sports FC 26 is on that list. The foundation put the festival's total at US$75 million, and the January release gave the game championships more than US$39 million combined, without listing the FC Pro World Championship's own figure.

Two other parts of that total touch every EA Sports FC player who enters. Each tournament carries an MVP award, and the Jafonso Award goes to a player or a club that wins a game championship after coming through a Last Chance Qualifier, the final open qualifying stage. According to the organizer's 2025 guide, jafonsogv, the defending champion at that year's FC Pro World Championship, had won the 2024 tournament after coming all the way through such a qualifier.

Part of the festival's money is set aside for clubs rather than players. The Club Championship, a ranking that rewards organizations for results across all the games, pays US$30 million to its top 24 clubs, US$3 million more than in 2025, with US$7 million for the winner.

What comes next

The calendar to July is set by the qualifying routes. The FC Pro Partner League finals take place from February to May, with CONMEBOL eLibertadores among them: its online qualifier is played on February 21 and 22 and its Finals in Sao Paulo on May 2 and 3. The World Championship Play-Ins follow, and the event itself opens on Wednesday, July 22.

Several points remain unpublished. The share of the US$1.5 million for each placing, the venue inside the Esports World Cup, and how many of the 36 places each route finally supplies are still to come from the organizer and from EA.

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