FC Mobile anniversary date: September 24, 2026, and how it compares with 2024 and 2025

FC Mobile anniversary dates by year

The table uses only EA’s own press releases, patch notes and posts, not fan countdowns. Lined up, the years show the same shape: each anniversary arrived inside that year’s season update, and each year EA said before the update that clubs would not be reset.

The 2025 row is the one to read carefully. EA’s player-vote page that summer said “Year 2 of the Anniversary Event is coming to EA SPORTS FC™ Mobile this September.” The FC Mobile 26 patch notes are timestamped 21:00 on September 24, 2025 at UTC−4, which is September 25 in UTC, and EA’s press release of September 26, 2025, the day EA SPORTS FC 26 launched worldwide, said that launch “coincides with the feature-packed EA SPORTS FC™ Mobile 26 Update and Anniversary Event.” Those posts put the second anniversary in the last week of September, but none of them gives the day or hour the event opened, so this guide does not supply one.

How the September 24, 2026 date was set

EA made the 2026 date public well ahead of time. In mid-August, the official FC Mobile account on X listed “No Season Reset for 27” and “3rd Anniversary” among its upcoming news. On August 28, EA’s announcement fixed the date: the third anniversary celebrations would “kick off alongside the new EA SPORTS FC™ Mobile 27 Season Update on 24 September,” 27 days later. The fan votes ran on their own dates.

Two details from EA’s vote pages are worth keeping for next year. The player vote ran for less than three days, and its terms say “the final Anniversary selection will be determined by a combination of EA and community votes,” so a popular name was never guaranteed a card. EA’s vote page points to Instagram for the player results rather than naming them, so this guide does not list player winners. The two music results are on EA’s own pages: John Newman’s “Love Me Again” won the retro vote and Nonô’s “Joga Bonito” won the FC 27 vote.

The dates on those pages do not all agree. The August 28 announcement says retro tracks go live “on 24 September,” while the result page says the winning track “will be added to FC Mobile on September 25th.” Neither page confirms when the track actually appeared, so check the in-game playlist before deciding something is missing.

What the anniversary update changed on the pitch

For returning players, three major gameplay additions are Gauntlet, Game Plans and the new PlayStyles. Each comes with a limit that is easy to miss in a preview.

Gauntlet is a PvE mode built on squad depth. EA’s Gauntlet deep dive says winning a match “removes an appearance from any player on the field,” and a player becomes unavailable once their appearances run out. Each match carries up to three stars tied to objectives, and a match can be reset and played again “with player appearances refunded and previously earned stars retained.” Going back for a missing star therefore gives you the appearances back and keeps the stars you already hold. House Rules change the terms of a single match: Hot Zone and Position Hero give extra points for goals from marked areas or set positions, and No Rules turns off fouls and offsides.

Game Plans merge formation and mentality. There are five mentalities, from Ultra Defensive to Ultra Attacking, and the patch notes say mentality adjusts team width, attacking runs and the height of the defensive line at the same time. The catch is where they work. EA’s Game Plans deep dive says they are “only available in Divison Rival H2H and certain PvE matches,” not in VS Attack or Manager Mode. For eligible matches, set them up under My Team > Club > Game Plans, separately for each lineup. The same page is inconsistent on the limit, saying “up to five Game Plans per Squad” in its introduction and “up to 4 Game Plans per lineup” in the setup steps; the August beta notes said four.

PlayStyles are counted differently in the beta and live notes. The Limited Beta tested four new PlayStyles: Incisive Through Pass, Dead Ball, Driven Lob Through and Slide Tackle. The September 24 patch notes announce “two new PlayStyles,” Incisive Through Pass and Dead Ball. The live patch notes name only those two; a guide listing four may still be describing the beta.

Does the anniversary reset your club?

Not in any of the three years so far. The 2024 anniversary patch notes said “there will be no season reset this year,” and the press release that day said existing players could carry their progress into the new season. In June 2025, EA’s FC Mobile account posted “There will be no Season Reset in 2025.” For 2026, the mid-August post said “No Season Reset for 27.”

Those statements cover your club, not every ladder. Division Rivals has its own season-reset rank adjustments: the FC Mobile 26 patch notes changed them so that players “are relegated by 5 ranks instead of 10 after season reset.” Beta progress is a separate case again: EA’s beta FAQ says progress and account information do not carry over from the beta to the live game.

So the useful preparation before an anniversary update is the dull kind. Keep the account you actually play on linked and reachable, and leave room on the phone for the season download (the storage headroom check helps). Do not reinstall merely because an anniversary update is coming; if troubleshooting ever requires it, first make sure your progress is recoverable. If you are coming back after months away, our note on testing an old save before restarting makes the same case for other games: look at what you still have before deciding to abandon it.

When to look for the fourth anniversary date

No fourth anniversary date appears in the EA posts checked for this update, and I would not treat September 24 as a fixed date for the next one. The 2024 to 2026 pattern makes season-update news worth watching, but it does not establish when or how EA will announce the fourth anniversary. In 2026 the order ran from a mid-August teaser to the August 28 announcement to the September 24 launch, which put the official date in public almost four weeks ahead.

Use a dated EA announcement before setting a reminder for the next anniversary; the September 24 date belongs to the 2026 event. Keep the main game separate too. EA SPORTS FC 27 is a different product with its own release schedule, editions and early access, covered in our FC 27 release guide. The two calendars sit close together: in 2025, EA described the FC 26 launch as coinciding with the FC Mobile 26 Update and Anniversary Event. Each product still has its own release information, even when EA discusses both in the same announcement, so check which product a dated post is about before planning around it.

My read after lining up the three years: when the next anniversary opens, check the event and its reward schedule early, because EA has attached rewards or fan-picked content to it every time: weekly login rewards in 2024, limited-time rewards including fan-voted ones in 2025, and players and songs picked with fan votes in 2026. It is not a reason to rebuild a squad around rumors. Of everything that arrived on September 24, 2026, Gauntlet is the piece most likely to change how a deep club gets used long after the anniversary banner is gone.