WWE 2K26 Review (PS5)
WWE 2K26 (PS5 [Reviewed], PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch 2)
Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K
Released: March 13, 2026
ESRB: T – Teen

I want to get something out of the way before anything else; I wasn’t going to buy this years WWE game because I didn’t play a lot of last years. I had planned on making this a every other year thing. But I’m idiot, and so I gave in and bought it. Not just an idiot, but a complete dumb ass. I bought the $150 Monday Night War Edition, first time ever buying their premium edition despite knowing exactly how this franchise operates. And while I’m going to tell you there’s a fun game buried in here, I also need to tell you that 2K has officially crossed into territory I didn’t think was possible for a wrestling game: this is the greediest WWE title ever made. I will certainly not buy another WWE game so long as 2K has the license.

The good news is that when you’re actually playing WWE 2K26, it’s a blast. The gameplay itself is the best it’s been in the 2K era. The ragdoll physics are a huge improvement and make everything feel more impactful and chaotic in a way the series hasn’t had in any recent memory. Throwing someone into the barricade, watching them crumple differently every time, never gets old. Or stacking tables and watching them domino through them, it’s just fun. Visual Concepts has clearly put real work into making the in-ring action feel alive, and it shows. The actual developers have done a great job with the gameplay here.

The new match types are a welcome addition too. I Quit and Inferno are back and both are a ton of fun. Dumpster match is great too, but basically just another variation of ambulance and casket. Having Three Stages of Hell match is a fantastic addition. The gameplay additions extend beyond match types as well, with expanded crowd combat, stackable tables, and barricade combat and new weapons all adding new ways to cause mayhem.

Universe Mode and MyGM

Universe mode continues to not really be for me, but this year’s additions are pretty good. The new Universe Wizard makes setup a lot less daunting, you can now have the WWE Draft which is a great new feature, and the Watch Show mode is something fans of the sandbox experience have wanted for a long time. If Universe is your thing, you’re going to be happy with 2K26. It’s more customizable than ever. It’s not quite where I want it to be (I basically want Universe to be a sandbox MyGM mode; same UI just without the MyGM rules and restrictions).

MyGM is where I live, and MyGM in 2K26 is excellent. Seasons are now 50 weeks by default, which gives everything more room to breathe. The new match type support is massive, with 5, 6, and 8-way matches now bookable, plus I Quit, Inferno, Dumpster, and 3 Stages of Hell all available on a weekly basis. The PLE calendar has been significantly expanded with new events like Clash at Paris, Halloween Havoc, Great American Bash, and more, which means your 50-week seasons now have some real variety to them. And the PLE’s can now be like WarGames, which is amazing for MyGM.

The addition of intergender matches, double-booking, and custom championships gives you more creative control than ever. Invasion promos, where you send a superstar to raid the opposing brand and steal their fans, are a fun new wrinkle to help out when you’re lagging behind someone else. The mid-season push mechanic, which lets you boost six superstars’ stamina and morale at the halfway point, adds a layer of strategy that makes the back half of seasons feel more meaningful while helping with stamina. Three new GMs in Bobby Heenan, Stacy Keibler, and the Anonymous General Manager round out a roster of 20 options. MyGM is the best it has ever been in this series, and it’s the main reason I keep coming back. It’s practically the only mode I play with any frequency outside of the occassional Play Now match.

Showcase

Showcase this year focuses on CM Punk and his greatest rivalries. On paper, that’s a great choice. In practice, Showcase is still a chore to get through. The objective system remains frustrating rather than fun. You’ll play through it once to unlock what you need and probably never touch it again. That’s been the Showcase experience for years now, and 2K26 doesn’t change the formula enough to make it click. Or you if you don’t want to chore through Showcase at your own pace, you can take either Punk or AJ Lee through a 20 person gauntlet on legend difficult to unlock everything. I don’t have the patience or desire to play a two hour match though.

MyRise and MyFaction

MyRise is what it is. Two division-based storylines with decisions that matter more than before, and post-story content to extend replayability. If you enjoy the career mode style, you’ll get your money’s worth. It’s never been my priority going into these games. I miss the story modes of old games, and nothing tops WrestleMania 2000 story mode for me. These aren’t for me.

MyFaction, on the other hand, has gotten worse. Last year’s roguelite overhaul of Faction Wars actually made the mode fun for the first time. This year, Quick Swap is the big addition, turning some MyFaction bouts into a fighting-game style 1v1 team knockout mode. It’s a fine addition, as is the intergender team support. I like the mode and I hate the mode. I think Faction Wars and Weekly Towers are fun, and World Tour is still fun too. I still enjoy Live Events too. It’s the real money aspect of the mode that I despise.

From buying the $150 edition, I had over 132000 VC. I look at the Live Events, and four another 11 days at least, there’s a Boss Battled called Me vs. Me where you can get a sapphire Jean-Paul Levesque persona card. But you need a sapphire Triple H ’99 Legends persona card to be able to do it. You can get that Triple H card from the Legends pack. I spent all of my VC buying the Deluxe 10 pack of Legends and like one or two basic ones. I got Legends Stone Cold, Chyna, The Rock, and Yokozuna. I spent my MFP on more packs, nothing. Two packs from the Ringside Pass plus a free one the game gave and two earned from Live Events, and still nothing. There’s 11 days left in the Live Event now, and screw it. I won’t be getting the Triple H ’99 card, so won’t be getting the Jean-Paul Levesque card.

If this mode existed as is, and served as a fun way to unlock some stuff and earn packs of cards as you play it, I’d play it as much as I do MyGM. But this mode exists to get even bigger dumbasses than I am to spend even more money to buy VC so they can buy more packs of cards. Screw MyFaction, screw 2K. The monetization of MyFaction is a giant middle finger to everyone who buys the game. It would be fine if this were a free-to-play title, but it’s not. I paid $150 for this trash to have a bunch of personas that I won’t have because I’m not gambling with their crappy packs of cards and tossing more money at the screen.

Also, for some reason, half the matches in MyFaction seem to be blurry on PS5 at least.

The Island

The Island is back. I didn’t like it last year. I don’t like it this year. The Island needs to go. The concept of a live-service open world mode in a wrestling game has never appealed to me, and while 2K26 has clearly put more work into it with three rival Orders, a proper story, the new Scrapyard brawl environment, and seasonal ranked play, it’s still fundamentally a mode I don’t want in this game. The development resources spent on keeping The Island alive every year are resources that could be going toward modes the core wrestling game audience actually wants. It’s not that The Island is broken. It’s that it doesn’t belong here. Yes, I know I can ignore it. I will, but I will also acknowledge that its yet another BS mode that is ruining this series.

The Ringside Pass

Here’s where we need to have a real conversation. The Ringside Pass is how 2K is handling post-launch content this year, and it is terrible. In previous years, if you bought a premium edition of the game, you got the DLC content and it unlocked when it came out. Simple. That’s not what’s happening here. Now you have to grind a battle pass to unlock the DLC characters you already paid for along with some other stuff. You’re not just buying the content. You’re buying the right to earn the content, if you put in enough time. There are 40 tiers, with a free and premium track. Same BS system that is ruining most games. It works for free-to-play GAAS; it doesn’t belong in full priced games and especially ones that will be replaced in a year with a new paid edition and where the servers will be turned off within five years.

I don’t want to grind a battle pass in this game to unlock anything. This isn’t the game for it. But if you don’t want to grind, 2K provides you the opportunity to give even more money buy purchasing tier skips for the low price of $2 a tier. And it’s sad that as greedy, money hungry as this bullshit is, I still have less of a problem with the Ringside Pass as I do the monetization of MyFaction.

I might not even mind the grind, since it doesn’t go away when a new pass comes out, if you got more XP for certain things. Playing matches is the quick way to earn the RXP to level it up, but I play mostly MyGM, which takes a way more time to get through a show than it does to complete a match but doesn’t give as much XP.

Final Thoughts

WWE 2K26 is, when you get past all the greed and bullshit that plagues it, a fun wrestling game. The gameplay is the best it’s been, the new match types are great, MyGM and Universe alone would be worth the $70 price of admission. But 2K keeps finding ways to chip away at the goodwill they’ve built with the in-game quality by treating their paying customers like a revenue stream to be optimized and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed some more. The Island continues to exist when it shouldn’t. MyFaction is the worst its been. And the Ringside Pass is an embarrassment for the series. I feel bad for the developers, I know its the suits over them that push for this nonsense.

I wish someone else had the WWE video game license. I mean that sincerely. Visual Concepts clearly has talented people who can make a good wrestling game. But 2K as a publisher is making decisions that hurt the product and the people who buy it. Until that changes, or until someone else gets a shot at this license, we’re stuck here. Who could take over though? Certainly EA would be equally as bad, but I don’t think worse.

I would give the gameplay a 4 here, but everything else drags it down to a 1 or 2. For the final score, I’m going to balance it out and award it a low 3 stars. It’s fun, but never again with 2K get a dime from me.

WWE 2K26 gets a three out of five: SATISFACTORY.

* The author of this review is a moron and paid $150 for this. If you must, just get the $70 version or wait for a sale. Hell in a few months it’ll probably be free on PS Plus.