If you have been judging EA Sports FC 26’s popularity purely by its Steam numbers, you might be significantly underestimating just how many people are actually playing it right now. According to a prominent YouTuber in the FC community, an EA developer revealed a peak daily active user count that makes the publicly visible Steam figures look almost laughably small.
The claim is eye-opening, and the context behind it — including the FIFA World Cup timing and EA’s own massive corporate transformation — makes it worth paying close attention to.
What the Steam Numbers Actually Show
On its face, EA Sports FC 26’s Steam performance is genuinely impressive for a sports title. According to SteamCharts, the game recently hit a 24-hour peak of 122,006 concurrent users on Valve’s platform — a strong figure that most games would be thrilled to hit. Going back further, the game reached an all-time Steam peak of over 100,000 concurrent players during the Team of the Year promotional event in January 2026, around four months post-launch.
For a game on a single PC storefront, those numbers are not small. But here’s the thing: Steam is not where most EA Sports FC 26 players actually live.
The 9.8 Million Daily Active Users Claim
Football gaming YouTuber Nate Miller, better known online as TheFutAccountant, recently dropped a detail in one of his videos that sent a ripple through the FC community. While discussing the Steam figures, Miller relayed a conversation he said he had with an EA developer, recounting it directly: “That Steam number of players is so small. When I mentioned that to the EA developer, he laughed. He proceeded to tell me that 9.8 million daily active users was the peak number that was hit in this last month.”
Miller added that the 9.8 million DAU peak was hit either in late June or July 2026 — a timing that, as we’ll get to, lines up perfectly with a major in-game content event.
This figure has not been officially confirmed by EA, and it is worth being clear that Miller is relaying a secondhand claim from a developer conversation. But the reasoning behind why Steam data would represent only a sliver of the real player base is completely sound, even without any inside information.
Why Steam Numbers Only Tell Part of the Story
EA Sports FC 26 is not a Steam-exclusive game. Not even close. The game launched on September 26, 2025 across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Amazon Luna, and PC — with the PC version available both on Steam and through EA’s own dedicated EA App storefront. Players who own the game through EA’s launcher won’t show up in Steam data at all.
Miller pointed this out directly in his video, noting that consoles carry a vastly larger user base than PC in the FC ecosystem, and that even within PC, Steam is just one of two access points. Historical data backs this up — at launch, PlayStation alone accounted for 67.5% of first-week EA Sports FC 26 sales, with PS5 representing 88% of that PlayStation share. The game sold 9 million copies across all platforms in its first week.
When you stack up console players across PlayStation and Xbox, Nintendo Switch users, Amazon Luna subscribers, EA App PC users, and then finally Steam users, it becomes easy to see how the Steam concurrent figure and the actual total player base can be separated by an enormous gap.
Miller also mentioned that 800,000 live players were active in Clubs mode alone at a recent point — which on its own is already a significant number for a single game mode.
The FIFA World Cup Effect
The timing of that 9.8 million DAU peak landing in late June or July 2026 is not a coincidence. The real 2026 FIFA World Cup is currently taking place — and EA Sports FC 26 went all-in on capitalising on that moment.
EA rolled out what it called The World’s Game Update, a major free content drop that added a fully featured 48-team international tournament mode to the game, bringing 53 licensed national teams including 41 of the actual 2026 World Cup participants. Real-world venues like Gillette Stadium and BMO Field were added. The mode mirrors the actual World Cup format taking place across the US, Mexico, and Canada.
On top of the tournament mode itself, EA launched the Festival of Football event in Football Ultimate Team — a six-week content calendar running from June 5 to July 24 that tied directly into the real tournament’s progression. Five campaigns ran across that window: Path to Glory (with live player items that upgraded based on real match results), Greats of the Game (introducing new Icons in Mario Kempes and Rivellino), Glory Hunters, Phenoms, and Summer Stars. On top of all that, simply logging in and playing during the event window earned players a free 93-rated Festival of Football ICON Pelé — a massive incentive that would pull lapsed players back to the game.
It is one of the strongest content updates in the FC 26 cycle, and it landed during one of the most culturally significant football moments in years. People who had stepped away from the game came back. Casual fans who hadn’t picked it up in months logged in for the free Pelé card. Football fans who were buzzing from watching real World Cup matches fired up the game to recreate them. A 9.8 million DAU spike in that environment is entirely plausible.
EA’s Moment in the Spotlight — But the Company Is About to Change Hands
The timing of these player numbers arriving is interesting for another reason: EA is in the middle of the biggest corporate transformation in its history.
EA’s $55 billion acquisition by a consortium consisting of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners is set to officially close on August 4, 2026. The deal received its final regulatory approvals on July 30, with EA filing an SEC Form 8-K confirming all outstanding hurdles had been cleared. Once it closes, EA will be delisted from Nasdaq and go private, with PIF controlling the overwhelming majority of shares at 93.4%.
Andrew Wilson remains as CEO, and EA has publicly stated it will maintain creative control under the new ownership structure. But the deal — the largest leveraged buyout in corporate history — will fundamentally change how EA operates as a business going forward.
The fact that EA Sports FC 26 is potentially hitting close to 10 million daily active users right as that transition happens isn’t just a fun factoid for the community. It directly speaks to the value EA’s new owners are getting when they formally take control of one of the most played sports games on the planet.
Should You Trust the 9.8 Million Figure?
The honest answer is: treat it as a credible but unverified data point. Miller isn’t making the claim directly — he’s reporting what he says was told to him by someone at EA, and internal DAU figures from a private developer conversation are inherently hard to corroborate. EA itself has not publicly confirmed any figure in that range.
What is verifiable is everything that makes the claim plausible: the multi-platform footprint of the game, the console-dominant player base, the massive World Cup content update, the free icon giveaway, and the fact that Steam data captures only a narrow slice of the total audience. None of those things require any inside information to confirm — they’re just easy to miss when Steam charts are what gets shared most widely online.
Whether the exact number is 9.8 million, 8 million, or something else entirely, the broader point stands: EA Sports FC 26 is significantly more popular than its Steam presence suggests, and a World Cup summer has almost certainly pushed it to some of the strongest engagement numbers of its entire lifecycle.
And with EA about to go private under its new consortium ownership, you can bet that kind of engagement data is going to be very closely watched going forward.
For more on the changing gaming landscape heading into the second half of 2026, check out what Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s internal memo reveals about her plan to get Xbox back to meaningful player and revenue growth — because the race for daily active users is very much the defining metric of the era. Also worth a read: Sony’s official response to the PlayStation disc backlash, which is shaping up to be one of the most consequential platform decisions of the decade.
FAQ
How many daily active users does EA Sports FC 26 have?
According to YouTuber TheFutAccountant, an EA developer told him the game hit a peak of 9.8 million daily active users in late June or July 2026. EA has not officially confirmed this figure.
Why is EA Sports FC 26’s Steam player count so much lower than the real total?
Steam is just one of many platforms the game runs on. EA Sports FC 26 is available on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Amazon Luna, and PC via both Steam and the EA App. Console players — who make up the majority of the player base — do not appear in Steam data at all.
What caused the EA Sports FC 26 player spike in July 2026?
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, taking place in North America, drove significant player interest. EA released The World’s Game Update, adding a 48-team international tournament mode and a six-week Festival of Football Ultimate Team event, including a free 93-rated Icon Pelé for all players who logged in during the event period.
Is EA Sports FC 26 being acquired?
EA as a whole is being acquired by a consortium consisting of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners in a $55 billion deal set to close on August 4, 2026. EA Sports FC 26 is one of EA’s flagship properties.
What is The World’s Game Update in EA Sports FC 26?
It is a major free update launched ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup that added a fully playable 48-team international tournament mode with 53 licensed national teams, World Cup-themed Ultimate Team content running from June 5 to July 24, and real World Cup venue stadiums.
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