WWE 2K26

It's been 12 years now since 2K took over the WWE games franchise. Essentially starting from scratch in WWE 2K15 and then once again in WWE 2K22 after the disastrous 2K20, my enjoyment of this series has been quite the ride, to say the least. I honestly wasn't a fan of the stretch of games between 2K15 and 2K20. The games focused more on simulation than fun and were really slow and tedious.

When the series returned in 2K22 it reignited my love of the series. It was exactly what I wanted. The games was faster, had more of an arcade feeling to them while still feeling like a simulation, and as each game in the series released after that, I enjoyed them more and more. I enjoyed WWE 2K25 so much that it was the first wrestling game in a long time that I played throughout the entire year.

Well, WWE 2K26 is here. After spending around 40+ hours with the game, I can confidently say that WWE 2K26 is one of the best wrestling games 2K has made so far. 

Right from the get go, in the first match I played, I instantly noticed the changes they made to gameplay this year, and noticed that on the default settings, the AI has been given a pretty big upgrade. I play these games religiously and was just playing 2K25 last week—and in my first match of 2K26 I got absolutely destroyed. The CPU reverses your attacks a lot more than they used to and are way more aggressive than ever before, which makes for quite a challenge.

Of course the sliders in the options menu are still there so you can fine tune your experience. But for someone who is a veteran of these games, just playing on hard difficulty was more difficult than ever before. The game is both faster and slower at the same time. Faster in that it seems the in-ring action has been sped up a tiny bit this year, especially with how aggressive the CPU is. Matches seem a lot more frantic at the start, but this is where we get to the game feeling slower, and that's with one of the big gameplay updates this year: the new reversal system tied to stamina.

Reversals still work the same as they did in the past. Triangle to reverse incoming attacks, and then square, X and circle to reverse light, heavy and grab attacks respectively. This year, however, reversing drains your stamina. If your stamina depletes you are now placed into a new debuff mode where your stamina meter turns purple and slowly drains. While in this debuff state, you are unable to reverse any attacks.

Performing attacks will make the meter drain faster. This is a game changer and I love how this changes the dynamic of matches because now you have to play strategically. If you just keep spamming reversals then you are going to enter this debuff state a lot. This, I found, got me into trouble a number of times.

I play these games a ton, so I know the reversal timing for a lot of the moves—but when I first started playing 2K26 it didn't go well for me. Being in that debuff state left me wide open for signatures and finishers. Something else I notice is that as the match goes on, both wrestlers will be a lot more tired than they used to be, walking slower. This leads to a lot of pinfalls where I hit a finisher on someone else, my stamina drains, and now I have to crawl over to them to get the pinfall.

One of my biggest fears was that this system would make the game too slow or too simulation-like. The games between 2K15 and 2K20 had the absolutely awful reversal stock system and I can say this isn't the case here. The reversal debuff ends rather quickly and gets you back into the action. I assume most players probably won't even notice it all that much in normal matches. My Faction on the other hand? Oh boy, considering you have very little stamina in that mode, this will make it that much harder.

There's also has a new system where you can decide how you want the match to start. You can choose to draw energy from the crowd to where you and your opponent will circle around the ring trying to get the crowd on your side, you can choose to just both rush each other in the center of the ring and start trading blows immediately, or you can stare your opponent down in the middle of the ring and offer a handshake.

For all you heels out there, you can perform a cheap shot after offering a handshake as well. This was a lot of fun and this is something I can see using in Universe mode for big title matches by having the champion and challenger starring each other down in the middle of the ring as the bell rings. Or if its a blood feud, just have the two start off trading blows with each other and skipping the slow start of the match. There are only a few options here, but I do hope this is something that is expanded upon in the future because there is a lot of potential for more actions that can be added to the start of a match. 

WWE 2K26 includes four new match types to the 2K games and a new Brawl arena, The Scrapyard. First we'll just get the Dumpster match out of the way because there is almost nothing to say about this match type. It's just a reskin of the Casket match with the same animations, same moves you can perform on the Dumpster, same button mashing mini game, and the same victory celebration.

I will say this, however: even though it's the exact same match, it is nice to have this in-game because the Casket match works more for spooky/gothic wrestlers like The Undertaker, Kane, or  more recently as we saw in NXT, Tatum Paxley and Wendy Choo. I always thought it was weird in the previous games playing a Casket match with Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton, for example.

We also see the return of the Three Stages of Hell match which is a two-out-of-three-falls match but each match has a stipulation attached to it. For instance, the first fall can be a normal match, the second match could be a Steel Cage match, and the third fall, if it gets to that point, could be a Falls Count Anywhere match.

You can choose just about any 1v1 match type that you want. This is a welcome return to the series as it's a match type that fans have been asking quite a while for its return. I do have one issue with the match and that's what happens between falls. After a fall is scored you will go into a makeshift loading screen before the next match starts where it will show you who won the fall and what match is coming up next. The issue I have is that when the next fall does start, everything seems to reset. Any damage or blood the wrestlers had is gone, any weapons in the ring are gone, and you get the pre-fight warm-up animations again.

Now 2K did inform me when sending review code that this is an issue that they know about and are working on getting it fixed. As it stands, though, it certainly doesn't ruin the match but it does break the immersion a bit when a new fall is starting. 

Next is another returning match type: the "I Quit" match. Most old school WWE fans will remember the infamous Rock vs. Mankind "I Quit" match from the 1999 Royal Rumble. In this match you have to beat your opponent down so much they utter the words, "I Quit," and they actually do say it in-game. The referee will pull the mic out of his back pocket and you or your opponent has voiced lines for this match. I only played a couple of these and the voice overs sound like generic voices. They do sound rather amusing with the referee asking, "You want to give up?" with the person responding with either "No!" or, "Yes, I quit!"

What makes this match fun is a new mini game where a bar will spin around a circle and there are various green markers on the circle. In the middle of a circle you will see a meter that is constantly draining. Hitting the markers will raise the meter till it fills all the way and the match continues. You can also make it harder for your opponent by placing "blockers" on the ring which make it more challenging for the opponent to hit the green areas. This new minigame is pretty fun. This is something that should have been implemented in other match types.

The best new match type introduced is the returning Inferno match. This was way more fun than I thought it was going to be. As the match goes on, a meter fills up at the bottom of the screen and the flame around the ring grows. Once the meter reaches "Inferno," that's when the final phase of the match starts where you have to get your opponent against the ropes and then throw them out of the ring for the victory—complete with a funny animation of the loser being sprayed down with a fire extinguisher.

The best part of Inferno, and what makes it a ton of fun, is that it's possible to leave the ring before it gets to the Inferno state and you can fight at ringside or bring weapons into the ring. I have played a ton of Inferno matches in 2K26 and this is probably going to be my go-to match.

Speaking of weapons, we finally got the one weapon we have been asking for for years, and that is a bag of thumbtacks. The thumbtacks can be placed anywhere in the arena and there are multiple bags of tacks you can pull from under the ring. These are a ton of fun and come complete with selling animations of wrestlers writhing in pain and picking the tacks out of their body. The tacks will get stuck to wrestlers during the course of the match as well. Combine this with the new ragdoll physics and weapons are a ton of fun this year as you can now slam wrestlers down onto weapons like ladders and steel steps.

If there is one thing I give the WWE 2K games credit for, it's how much content they are loaded with. The Showcase mode this year focuses on 2K26 cover star CM Punk. The CM Punk showcase plays like the previous Showcase modes with modern and classic matches focusing on CM Punk's career, such as his match with The Undertaker at Wrestle Mania 29, and his Hell in a Cell match against Drew McIntyre at Bad Blood 2024. Some of these matches will let you rewrite history with Punk being the victor. There are also a number of cool fantasy matches.

players and included a new way to gain all the unlockables with the Gauntlet. You can choose to play as either CM Punk or AJ Lee and have to beat all 20 Showcase mode opponents. Doing so will instantly unlock everything at once. Be prepared, however. You are gonna have to work for it as the difficulty is defaulted to the hardest setting and you cannot change it. 

Now, there is one mode in the game that has been desperate for an overhaul for a while. That is Universe mode. Thankfully I can say that Universe mode has finally got a big update and it's one that I couldn't be more happy with. One of the most intimidating things about Universe mode in the past was simply setting it up. You would have to spend hours going through and selecting your rosters, placing the hundreds of wrestlers on what shows you want them on. You would have to go through each month updating the calendar with all the PLE's you want while also selecting the host shows and updating the match charts—and that's if you decide to do a Universe mode based on current-day WWE. Thankfully we now have the Universe setup wizard where, as soon as you start the mode, you can quickly choose your rosters and decide what shows you want on the calendar and what months they will be held in. You can quickly add or delete shows here as well.

The other amazing addition to Universe mode is that we finally have the Draft added. This was another tedious process. Fans have even created Universe mode draft apps and other apps for being able to swap up rosters. Thankfully we now have an actual draft in Universe mode.

The draft takes place over an entire week. The general managers for both Raw and Smackdown will take turns picking wrestlers for their rosters, complete with Nick Aldis and Adam Pearce in picture-in-picture windows, announcing their picks and then rejoicing as their picks are announced. There are also a ton of options to customize the draft as well. One option you can turn on is "reserve picks," which allows a brand to select wrestlers they want to prevent being drafted along with the option to allow champions to be drafted, entire tag teams and stables to be drafted, and even the option to allow for free agents and legends able to be drafted.

This is my opinion is one of the best additions to the WWE 2K series in years. This makes playing Universe mode so much more fun because now the full time job of swapping wrestlers around ourselves has been removed. This makes Universe mode feel fresh and new every year, especially now that you can use a brand like NXT as the minor leagues and "call up" NXT stars to the main roster every year. 

One of my favorite parts of the 2K games is the single player campaign "My Rise." I love how 2K has essentially created its own alternate WWE universe with its own lore and characters. One of which is Moreno, the former Ava Moreno who hilariously had to drop her first name because WWE didn't want two Ava's in the company. Well, that joke aged like milk since Ava isn't with the actual WWE anymore. So hey, maybe next year Ava Moreno can get her name back.

This year's story focuses on "The Architect" who will be your created wrestler and returns to WWE after a two-year hiatus. After getting absolutely demolished by either Bron Breakker or Jordynne Grace, depending on which division you chose, you now have to make your way back to the WWE. You can choose either a heel or babyface path to do so, and each of these paths get you rewards for completing story chapters.

There are also new Rise matches which are house show matches which take place during the story. These matches are needed both to progress the story but also to unlock hidden wrestlers to add to your roster. I like being able to just play matches where a win or a loss isn't required and can focus on putting together a great match, as how many stars each of your matches gets added to your star total and you unlock wrestlers the more stars you have.

The story itself is your typical My Rise wackiness. Personally I love it. Though I can understand this isn't for everyone. I would like to see the mode get some updates in terms of the whole social media system, which is basically the central HUB of the game. This year you can continue playing My Rise after it ends to earn more stars to keep unlocking wrestlers. I love it.

Creation Suite also gets some much needed updates. Body morphing has finally returned to the series. You can warp the body parts of your created wrestlers allowing you to give them really skinny legs and giant Hulk Hogan-like arms if you want. What's great about this is that it makes our created wrestlers more unique. In the previous games you just had a bunch of stock body types. You also have a new two-toned hair feature which allows you to blend two colors together on your created wrestler. This is a godsend because I would painstakingly have to use the hair dye feature on previous games to get their hair colors the way I wanted, but this year it took no more than a few seconds.

The biggest addition to the creation suite is something I have waited for—and I'm not exaggerating—for over 25 years. This is a feature in WWE games I have wanted since I started playing this series with the first Smackdown game when I was only 13 years old. We now finally have the ability to create entrances for factions. Not only that, we can fully edit those entrances.

In all previous games of this series you could fully customize your normal non-title entrance for a wrestler, mixing and matching different parts of entrances together. When it came to championship entrances, you were limited to selecting a preexisting entrance. Not anymore. Those entrances are now fully customizable and it's fantastic. In terms of stables, we were limited to entrances of up to only three people. Not anymore. Now we can create four or even five-person entrances which are all fully customizable.

This almost made me cry because of how happy I was that this is finally here. Now I can finally create full entrances for factions that I come up with. Other creation modes, like Create an Arena, unfortunately are still lacking in significant updates. This year, however, they did add a data bank of a gigantic number of ring aprons for previous WWE shows and PLE's of the last 30 years. This is something I will get a lot of use out of so I don't have to keep uploading or downloading and applying custom ring aprons when I simply want to create new Royal Rumble or Wrestle Mania arenas. 

Finally we have both My Faction and The Island—probably the most controversial modes, mainly due to their use of microtransactions and virtual currency. My Faction is like Madden Ultimate Team or My Team where you open different card packs and get cards of various rarities that you can use in different game modes. Now I will say this: I enjoy this mode and I like collecting cards, but the grinding here is brutal. I have a feeling it's going to be even harder this year to beat some of these matches. With the new changes to stamina and the CPU AI getting an upgrade, I was losing matches against Bronze cards because of how much they would reverse and how much stamina I would quickly lose.

There is also a new "Chemistry" system where you will get boosts or penalties depending on which cards are part of your team. One cool feature that I love here is the new "Quick Swap" match. It actually plays out like a fighting game where its a 4v4 match but only two wrestlers are in the ring at a time. At the press of a button you get a wacky teleporting animation and another person on your team tags in. The catch is that the rules are KO-only and you cannot regain health. It immediately makes me think of a tag fighting game. This is something I know I will be playing lots of as the year goes on. 

Once again My Faction has live events. Some, I can already tell, are going to be brutally difficult to finish. This is because some of them have hard requirements, so you may have to beat a higher rarity card, like a 99-rated Roman Reigns that starts with a signature and three finishers, while you can only use a Sapphire or Ruby card that's rated in the 80s.

I am already fearing the inevitable Three Stages of Hell match that's going to have a Casket match, Ambulance match, and a Dumpster match. With that said, I really enjoy this mode even with how frustrating it is. I will be spending a lot of time in this mode again this year. The fact that the mode is now fully intergender is great, because that opens up a lot a lot of freedom to be able to use whatever cards you want for certain events.

With this mode, though, I don't spend a penny on VC for card packs because the value here is awful. Especially when the odds of getting certain cards is so low when opening these packs. So I'll say this. With 2K25 I didn't spend anything on VC and still had a lot of fun in this mode. But I also didn't care about 100% completion and getting every single card in the game. I don't blame people who don't want to touch this mode with a 10-foot pole.

Then we get to The Island—which is WWE 2K's version of The City from NBA 2K. I was not a fan of this mode last year at all. I found it incredibly boring and the story mode in it was barebones. It gave me horrible flashbacks to WWE 2K20 and their "2K Originals" story mode where you just got static pictures on a flat background with text boxes at the bottom of the screen.

Thankfully that has changed this year. In the short amount of time that I have spent on the Island, I think I'll be playing this mode a lot more this year. This year the Island is all about factions. right from the start there are three factions you can choose from. The Order of Tradition led by Cody Rhodes, The Order of Shadows led by Rhea Ripley, and the Order of Anarchy led by CM Punk.

After Roman Reigns's defeat last year, The Island is now in a faction war to see who can take over the Island. Thankfully we have actual cutscenes with voice over for the wrestlers. This feels like another My Rise story. There are also a number of rewards you can earn on the Island rather easily for leveling up your character, which you can do by winning matches and through the Towers mode, which is the same roguelike mode they use for Faction Wars in My Faction.

Unfortunately—and this was to be expected—but the prices for things in the stores on the Island are absolutely outrageous. You only earn 150 VC per match and there are some items that cost tens of thousands of VC to purchase. I don't even bother with this nonsense. I'm fine just using the default created wrestler and not worrying about buying a bunch of clothing for them. 

Now we get to the elephant in the room: the inclusion of the Ringside Pass.

This has been a heavily debated topic ever since it was announced. In previous WWE 2K games, they simply had a Season Pass where each season you got a batch of DLC wrestlers automatically added to the roster when they were released. WWE 2K26 changes this by adding the Ringside Pass.

Simply put: this is a battle pass.

There are 40 tiers to the pass with both free and premium tracks which earn you rewards as you level it up. The big one here, however, is all the DLC wrestlers are in the Ringside Pass. You get one wrestler instantly at level 1. The rest are spread out between levels 2 through 20. It takes 800 RXP per level and I noticed that you earned about 80-100 RXP per match, provided you win. It also seems like the RXP you earn is a flat rate, meaning you won't get any more or less depending on your performance during matches. RXP can be earned in pretty much every game mode where you actually play matches, including Play Now, Universe Mode, My Faction, My Rise, My GM and the Island. I did notice that My Rise, My Faction, and The Island did have rewards where you can earn an extra 100RXP. Also, the Island has a weekly challenge that will earn you 500RXP for completing it. 

There are pros and cons to this. On the one hand, getting a lot more rewards, including My Faction cards packs, in game currency, Persona cards, arenas and such is awesome. This is something a lot of fans have wanted for a while when it comes to the DLC content.

On the other, if you are someone that plays this game casually, this is really going to upset you. Especially if the DLC wrestler they want is at that level 20 tier. Putting all the wrestlers between levels 1 and 20 is way too much and is going to take players way too long to get the wrestlers that they paid for. Now granted, as mentioned before, I am someone that loves all aspects of the WWE games. I play all the modes, some more than others. But I was ranking up my Ringside Pass pretty quickly.

If you are someone that plays this game nonstop, then you probably won't have much of an issue with this. At the time of writing this review, I am at level 25. I probably would have been at this level a lot quicker if I wasn't losing so many matches. Of course, just like with grinding in My Faction and grinding in The Island, you get the option to spend real money in order to buy tier skips. I have no idea how much they cost as the in-game store to buy these and VC wasn't turned on yet and just gave me an error message every time I tried to click on the store button.

But sadly, once again, it seems like we have another mode in this game that makes the grind for casual players as miserable as possible so they buy tier skips to avoid the grind. It's a shame as well because there are so many positives in this game. But this Ringside Pass really needs to be adjusted.

With My Faction and the Island it's entirely possible to play those modes and not spend a single penny on VC. Or for some people, they just don't care about those modes at all. This Ringside Pass, however, will effect everyone that plays. Honestly I think the DLC wrestlers in these passes need to be between levels 1 and 10 at the most, and really it should be levels 1 through 5 because people shouldn't have to grind as long to level 20 to get content that they paid for. 

Even with my numerous criticisms, WWE 2K26 is a huge step forward for the series in both content and gameplay. I had a ton of fun in the 40+ hours I have put into the game so far. I can already tell this is the WWE that I will be playing for a majority of the year—mainly thanks to those Universe mode changes and the new stamina reversal system which makes matches have a lot more back and forth than they used to. Even modes which I have heavily criticized in the past, like the creation suite, got some much needed love. Create an Arena still needs some help but that huge databank of aprons will go a long way for a lot of people.

My only real negative this year is the Ringside Pass. I don't hate the idea of the Ringside Pass itself. I like the idea of having numerous rewards to earn throughout the year. But I really do feel like for further seasons it needs to be changed so that the DLC wrestlers can be earned quicker. Locking them to upwards of level 20 is really excessive. If you are someone that plays the game a lot then you won't have any issue getting to level 20. But for those who only play casually or only play certain modes, then yeah, this is going to be an issue.