EA FC 25 Ultimate Team rewards overhaul: huge FUT Champions and Division Rivals changes

EA Sports has revealed all about previously unknown EA FC 25 Ultimate Team changes in a new update, including some massive changes that are being made to Champions Finals and Divison Rivals rewards.

EA FC 25 is just around the corner, with the game being released worldwide on Friday, September 27 while the game's early access kicks off on Friday, September 20. EA Sports has confirmed that players can access the EA FC 25 Web App from Thursday, September 19, and everything Ultimate Team-related has now been revealed – and it looks extremely exciting.

XP is being scrapped for SP (Season Points), the first special player items you can earn have been revealed including an 88-rated Adama Traore, Evolutions has been given a makeover, and an 'average transfer market price' system has been introduced alongside much more, but the standout changes are to EA FC 25 Champions rewards.

Here are all the changes coming to EA FC 25 Ultimate Team.

READ MORE: EA FC 25 TOTW 1 predictions – Lionel Messi, Harry Kane and Lamine Yamal feature in amazing squad

READ MORE: EA FC 25 Web App: best starter tips to kickstart your Ultimate Team journey

EA FC 25 Ultimate Team reward changes

Here are all the newly announced changes coming to EA FC 25 Ultimate Team rewards, as well as a few new features generally for the Ultimate Team game mode, as confirmed by EA Sports' recent blog post.

EA FC 25 FUT Champions

In EA FC 25, you'll need three wins from five Champions Play-Off games to qualify rather than four wins from 10, but you will now have 18 (yes, 18) attempts to qualify instead of eight. And when you make it through to the Champions Finals, the points system has been overhauled, with the number of games being reduced from 20 to 15.

This is the new EA FC 25 Champions Finals points system:

• Rank 1: 15 wins | 15 Points
• Rank 2: 13 wins | 13 Points
• Rank 3: 11 wins | 11 Points
• Rank 4: 10 wins | 10 Points
• Rank 5: 9 wins | 9 Points
• Rank 6: 8 wins | 8 Points
• Rank 7: 7 wins | 7 Points
• Rank 8: 6 wins | 6 Points
• Rank 9: 4 wins | 4 Points
• Rank 10: 2 wins | 2 Points

One win means one point. A much easier system to understand, and it makes you think why this hasn't been the case all along. Alongside a new rank system, the Champions Finals rewards are set to improve, with EA giving us a taste of this by revealing the Rank 1 rewards for EA FC 25 Season 1.

These are the EA FC 25 Champions Finals Rank 1 rewards for Season 1:

• 200,000 Ultimate Team Coins
• Tradeable 85+ x10 Players Pack
• Tradeable 84+ x10 Players Pack
• Untradable Base Icon Pack
• Untradable 89+ x2 Players Pack
• Untradable 82+ x30 Players Pack
• Three Tradeable TOTW x3 Players Pack

Compared to EA FC 24, these rewards are a massive improvement, and it's a promising sign for the sort of rewards that will be on offer across the other ranks. Players who finish in Rank 1 will also earn the club nickname 'Invincibles', while players between Rank 3-1 will earn the 'Flex' celebration.

EA FC 25 Division Rivals

The EA FC 25 Divison Rivals rewards are also changing, but along with the reward changes are some big requirement changes. As explained in the Ultimate Team deep dive last month, Division Rivals is being overhauled, with a new rank system being introduced that will see three points awarded for a win, one point awarded for a draw, and zero points awarded for a loss.

These changes are being made so EA can give out better rewards. These are the Upgrade Weekly Rewards for the Elite Division in EA FC 25:

• 75,000 Ultimate Team Coins
• Two Tradeable 85+ Player Picks (Pick 1 of 4)
• Untradeable 75 Gold Rare Players Pack
• Tradeable 50 Gold Rare Players Pack
• Tradeable Mega Pack
• Two Untradeable 83+ TOTW Player Packs

The number of wins required for Weekly Rewards is increasing in EA FC 25 from three to five and for Upgraded Weekly Rewards from seven to fifteen. Rivals reward options are also being streamlined into one single option per tier in each division, with the new rewards supposedly more balanced rather than being spread across 33 different categories.

EA FC 25 Squad Battles

To help make each match in Squad Battles feel more meaningful, the number of matches that count towards your weekly rank is being reduced from 32 to 14. Of course, like in previous years, you’ll have the ability to continue making progress on Objectives and Evolutions Challenges after the 14 matches with additional opponent refreshes that won’t count towards your weekly rank.

EA FC 25 Live Friendlies

In FC 25 we’re making changes to matchmaking in Live Friendlies based on form, similar to the system found in Champions. This new system will take into account your wins and losses across all Live Friendlies (excluding House Rules) to find you a suitable opponent. Put another way, this means your Live Friendlies matchmaking will no longer be linked to your Rivals Division.

To reduce the potential for win form manipulation, only full match losses will count towards the way form is calculated. This means that if a match ends before the full time whistle is blown, the loss won’t count towards your win form. This will help ensure a level playing field and that the whole community is able to find an appropriate match up for their skill level.

As a shared playground to experiment with different & unique squads, we’ll be moving more Objectives & Evolution requirements into Live Friendlies, to ensure you’re consistently facing players trying to achieve the same goals.

Season Points (SP)

SP (Season Points), previously referred to as XP in FC 24, are being removed from all weekly modes rewards, which were trialed in FC 24. In FC 25 EA will be exploring more ways to frequently deliver SP through themed content that connects back to the season theme.

EA FC 25 Ultimate Team: what to expect from launch

This is everything else you can expect from EA FC 25 Ultimate Team when the game is fully released, courtesy of the latest EA Sports pitch notes.

FC Season 1: Total Rush

In FC 25 we want to bring Seasons to more players by expanding them beyond Football Ultimate Team and are extending them to Career Mode and Clubs for players to be rewarded for their progress each and every season.

For Football Ultimate Team players the FC Season will look and feel familiar—we’re focussed on delivering the same level of Football Ultimate Team rewards to players whilst at the same time introducing new reward types for Career Mode and Clubs fans. Before we jump into the details of what FC Seasons will look like, I want to spend some time walking you through our game design decisions.

We know that we have a range of players within the game who all play in a variety of different ways. With the FC Seasons we want to reward you for playing FC 25 your way, whether that’s in a single mode or across multiple modes. It’s important for us that you don’t feel forced to jump into another mode that isn’t something you want to play.

This means that we’ve tuned FC Seasons so that you’ll be able to earn all of a mode’s specific rewards by playing just in that mode. For example, if you love playing offline, taking your team to glory in Career Mode, you won’t be forced to jump online in Clubs or Football Ultimate Team to earn the high level Career rewards. Same goes for Clubs players, same goes for Football Ultimate Team players.

We also see that the total number of games played per season in each mode differs quite substantially. So as you enter Season 1 Total Rush, you can expect to unlock Clubs and Career Rewards in earlier levels, with Football Ultimate Team Rewards available at all levels in addition to making up the vast majority of the later levels. We believe this decision will allow Football Ultimate Team players to enjoy a new experience consistent with FC 24 Seasons & rewards, while Clubs and Career players will be able to earn a range of brand new rewards types by playing only their preferred mode, without significantly increasing how much they play each Season.

With the new Seasons, we also wanted to make it easier if you do choose to jump into another FC mode. Previously in FC 24, with an Football Ultimate Team exclusive Season, if you wanted to jump into another mode you might have felt that would come at the cost of building your Football Ultimate Team. Thanks to the new Seasons, in FC 25 if you’re loving Rush and want to check out how you and your friends would fare in a 11v11 arena, you can jump over and use any Clubs rewards you might have already earned. The progress you make in Clubs will contribute to your overall FC Season Progress, helping out your new Club and your Football Ultimate Team Club.

Similar to XP previously, your progress through the FC Season will be tracked through “Season Points” (SP) which are awarded for completing objectives either in specific modes (Football Ultimate Team, Career & Clubs) or at a game wide level (any FC mode).

As we reflect on FC 24, we feel that Seasonal Rewards felt extra special when they connected with Campaigns happening in Football Ultimate Team, in particular Team of the Season, Festival of Football, and FUTTIES. In FC 25, we’ll be focussed on bringing this connection earlier in the cycle, blurring the lines between Season and Campaign theming, as well as focusing on authentic football concepts that expand across multiple FC modes.

Now let's discuss some of those new rewards in the FC Season as we look to Season 1: Total Rush…

Season 1: Total Rush is a brand new Season and Campaign concept that emphasizes social play and teamwork through Objectives across FC 25. In addition, we’ll provide new Player Items well suited to Rush. On 11 October, the Total Rush Campaign will celebrate dream picks from some famous faces who bring together their styles and skills, to unlock new combinations suited to the small-sided game.

Throughout the 6 weeks of Season 1: Total Rush, players will be able to progress towards the first Total Rush Quartet.

Creating dedicated places to compete with unique squads and improving incentives to play with them is a focus of ours as we head into FC 25. In FC 24 we heard your feedback that the Football Ultimate Team experience over the course of the year can begin to feel stale, particularly if you are coming up against the same line up, game-in game-out.

In FC 25, we’re introducing a brand new concept: the World Tour. Starting in Spain, home of the UEFA European 2024 Men’s Champions, we’ll deliver a unique regional experience each and every Season. Each Season we’ll look to deliver a range of Nation or League-themed content to help you build your World Tour Squad.

In Season 1, you’ll be able to take your Spanish Squad into the One Nation Live Friendly. In addition, keep an eye out for weekly objectives themed around LaLiga, Liga F & Spanish Players. Throughout the Season you’ll be able to add even more Spanish, La Liga & Liga F Superstars to your Club, in addition to Squad Foundations, special Evolutions & SBCs.

This year, Squad Foundation Players will provide +2 League Chemistry points instead of the standard +1, giving you greater flexibility when building new squads. Look out for weekly Squad Foundation releases throughout Season 1.

Evolutions

Evolutions are one of the biggest additions we’ve made to Ultimate Team. In last year’s pitch notes, I discussed that Evolutions at launch could look very different from how they’d look in the future as we better understood what was and wasn’t working for you. Early into FC 24, it was obvious that whilst Evolutions were helping you have greater say over who was in your Ultimate Team, there were a number of frustrations as some players just missed out on an Evolution’s eligibility because of entry requirements. Chaining upgrades from one Evolution to the next, or finding the perfect Evolution for your favorite player was harder than we would have liked it to be.

To help address this, in FC 25 we’re changing the way that Evolutions upgrade your players. In FC 24, Evolution upgrades were applied equally across all players. For example, if an Evolution provided a +10 upgrade to pace, it would always apply the same upgrade up to a maximum of 99. This created tuning challenges that resulted in entry requirements being quite strict.

In FC 25, select Evolutions boosts will have maximum limits. Applying this new system to the above example, you might see an Evolution that gives a +10 upgrade to pace up to a maximum of 90 pace. In the old system, this Evolution would have had an entry requirement of a maximum of 80 pace. But with this new system we could set the maximum to something much higher or might not have a maximum at all. For example, if we set the maximum entry pace to 92 in the new system, you could compare the Attribute upgrades in the following way.

We believe this change will help reduce the pressure of finding “the right Player Item” to put into an Evolution, with a greater range of players being able to maximize each Evolution, which in turn will lead to a much broader range of Evolutions seen in-game.

In addition, in FC 25 we’re changing where you’ll complete many of your Evolutions. To make sure we align with the purposes of each mode outlined above, we’ll be reducing the number of Evolution challenges that require Champions and Rivals engagement and shifting many of those online gameplay requirements to Live Friendlies and Rush.

There will also be regular opportunities to use your squad of Evolutions players in Live Friendlies with linked objectives providing rewards for doing so.

Item View: Average Transfer Market Price

We know understanding the value of the players in your Club is important to you. Whether you’re planning a Squad overhaul on the Transfer Market, comparing the value of your Starting XI with your mates or assessing what you just packed, we want this information to be easily accessible to you. We’re introducing an Average Transfer Market Price value for Player Items in the 5th Player View. When you’re looking at a Player Item, simply flick the right stick to the left and you’ll find the price reference above the player’s Skill Moves and Weak Foot.

Traditionally fans have used a number of community sites to get up-to-date transfer prices. We still expect these sites to remain the home of the most in-the-moment prices for players who love trading on the Transfer Market.

The aim of the Average Transfer Market Price is to provide a convenient reference point for a wider range of fans vs delivering an exact minimum value. As a new feature, we’ll look to review the tuning of the Average Transfer Market Price based on your feedback and our own internal findings throughout FC 25.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the Transfer Market is a highly volatile environment where the valuation of items can shift minute by minute, hour by hour, so you’ll likely want to double-check prices before making significant actions.

Multiple versions of Players in Packs

Since Ultimate Team 23, it has been possible to obtain multiple versions of the same Player Item in packs at the same time. Most commonly you might have seen us use this with ICONs & Heroes in Golazo or during Ultimate Team Birthday. More recently with the FUTTIES you might have also seen that in some batches a single player featured multiple times.

We wanted to clear up any confusion in our approach to this feature. Our aim is to create more opportunities to obtain diverse versions of your favorite players. Although there might be multiple special versions of a single player in packs at once, when we add one (or multiple) special items we remove their base (Bronze/ Silver/ Gold) version from packs. This ensures that you’re always getting a special version of that player.

There are obviously a number of ways to obtain Campaign versions of Player Items. If a Player item features as an Objective or SBC reward, their base version will remain in packs throughout the Campaign.

Club Membership

In FC 25 we’re introducing a new program called Club Membership that will reward you for playing consecutive titles from launch. In FC 25 Club Members will get a series of exciting rewards throughout the course of FC 25 including:

Ultimate Team

• Ultimate Team Role++ Evolution
• 2 Club Member Kits
• 2 Club Member XL TIFO
• 3 Club Member TIFO
• 3 Ultimate Team Crests

Clubs

• Clubs Members Gloves
• Clubs Members Boots
• Clubs Members Arm Sleeves (1 left, 1 right)

Clubs & Career

• Clubs Members - Mask (Facial Accessory)
• Clubs Members - Bandana (Hair/Headwear)

After launch, Club Members will continue to receive rewards over the course of FC 25. To be eligible for Club Membership, you must have played FC 24 before 27 September, 2024 and played FC 25 before 1 November, 2024.

FC Founders will also unlock customization rewards in Ultimate Team 25, so that your friends and opponents will know you’ve been part of the FC franchise from the start. Founders can join Club Membership reward track, in which case you'll get rewards for both. As a reminder, Founders are those players who played FC 24 before 1 November, 2023.

EA Play Membership

Starting from the launch of FC 25, EA Play members will receive a series of monthly rewards with a selection of Ultimate Team Loan Player Items and Draft Tokens.

Pre-Season & EURO rewards

Pre-season carryover rewards earned in FC 24 Football Ultimate Team will be available in FC 25 starting 10 October 2024.

For those UEFA EURO 2024 fans who completed the European Journey, you’ll also receive an untradeable 82+ x2 Player Pack for FC 25 Ultimate Team starting 10 October 2024. You must claim your European Journey reward in FC 24 by 20 September.

All Pre-season & European Journey carryover rewards earned will need to be redeemed within one month by logging in to Football Ultimate Team in EA SPORTS FC 25 using the same EA Account used to earn the rewards in EA SPORTS FC 24 by 10 November 2024.