FIFA 23: The NEW World Cup Mode

The FIFA World Cup often hailed as the biggest competition in all of sports, is set to kick off on November 15th. In anticipation of the global phenomenon tournament, EA are releasing an exciting new thematic World Cup game mode for their most popular title to date: FIFA 23. This mode comes with a handful of interesting and unique features that center around the 32 teams taking part in this year’s World Cup tournament. In this article, we’ll run down all the new features included in the World Cup update and explore how it will change the general FIFA experience.

Who is the FIFA 23 World Cup Mode tournament for? 

The short answer is that the World Cup update is for almost everyone who owns a copy of FIFA 23. The new game mode will be available on the following consoles: PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, Google Stadia, and Mobile. However, the fact that we even need to address this question speaks to a larger issue at the core of EA’s development strategy. Historically, the FIFA franchise has always been widely available in the gaming community, with most titles released on all major consoles and often across hardware generations. It has never been hard to get your hands on a FIFA game, which is probably one reason for their mind-bending commercial success.

In the past, the FIFA name was synonymous with a standard of quality and a promise of innovation that could be observed in every game you played, regardless of your chosen console. Unfortunately, these days the standards are slipping as every new FIFA release widens an already noticeable gap in quality between the current-gen versions of the game and the old-generation versions. This gap first became noticeable two years ago with the release of FIFA 21. The omission of hyper motion from the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game marked the beginning of EA’s neglect for the old-generation consoles. This became a reoccurring theme when in FIFA 22 many of the new cinematics and animations were unique to the newer consoles and again in FIFA 23 when hyper motion 2 was exclusively released on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

On Nintendo Switch, the lack of dedication is even more painfully obvious as the game is functionally identical to its predecessor in every way except for including new kits and updated squads. Sadly, this approach to development is one that alienates a lot of casual gamers who don’t have the financial means to buy the latest consoles and ironically flies in the face of FIFA 23’s central tagline: “The World’s Game.” Of course, EA should develop their games with a vision for the future and take full advantage of the new hardware, but that doesn’t mean that the older versions of the game should suffer. Fortunately, the World Cup mode and all of its unique features are coming, free of charge to all the major consoles—PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Google Stadia, and Mobile.

World Cup Kick Off Mode

The world cup mode gives players the option to launch a normal kickoff match just as they would in the original game. Truthfully, this is just a re-skin of the original kick-off mode with different menus to capture the theme and color palette of the Qatar World Cup and updated kits for all 32 nations taking part in the tournament. Additionally, matches in this mode will be set in either of the two new digitally realized World Cup stadiums. It comes as a slight disappointment that EA could only add just 2 out of the 8 World Cup stadiums, especially considering how interesting and well-designed Qatar’s new stadiums are. Overall, the Kick-Off mode doesn’t reinvent or change anything and offers little value beyond shallow cosmetic tweaks.

World Cup Custom Tournaments

In tournaments, players select their favorite national team and embark on an authentic virtual World Cup journey. Start in the diverse and action-packed group stages and battle your way through to the final to have a shot at lifting the coveted trophy in a faithfully recreated version of Qatar’s new Lusail stadium. Players will have the ability to customize their personal World Cup tournament by mixing up the groups to their liking and even swapping in unqualified teams from the larger FIFA 23 roster. Have you always imagined your home country lifting the biggest trophy in football? Do you constantly wonder what a Messi vs Ronaldo World Cup final would be like? With custom tournaments, you can live out your wildest World Cup fantasies and answer all the whacky ‘what-if’ scenarios that your imagination can spark up. Ultimately, these options are a welcome addition as they give players ownership over their virtual tournament and allow them to build the World Cup of their dreams. 

FIFA World Cup Online Quickplay

One of the magical things about the World Cup is the way it connects people from different corners of the globe and walks of life over a shared love of the beautiful game. Naturally, a game mode based around the World Cup should capture the same feeling of community and diversity as the real tournament. In order to emulate this effect, EA have included an online dimension to the World Cup mode.

There are two ways to play online in this game mode. The first is through the online tournaments option and the second is the 1v1 quickplay. Online tournaments are a very simple concept: you pick one national team and take them through the 4 elimination rounds—16s, Quarters, Semis, and the Final—playing 4 random online opponents on your road to lifting the trophy. On the flip side, online quickplay is essentially just a one-off head-to-head match in which you face off against a player that you invite. In the end, whether you’re looking to create new friendships by facing off against random opponents or destroy existing ones by challenging your friends playing online is undeniably the best way to experience the new FIFA World Cup update.

FIFA World Cup Ultimate Team

It comes as no surprise that EA would capitalize on this opportunity to release tons of new content for their flagship Ultimate Team mode. As with the rest of the update, the new Ultimate Team content has been designed to match the theme of the Qatar World Cup. The main addition to FUT is the limited-time World Cup Player Items. These are essentially special World Cup cards that are assigned to every player from the 32 nations participating in the World Cup. These cards possess slightly boosted attributes from their base forms and are only available until January 4th, meaning that once the deadline passes, they will be removed from everyone’s squads. The name of the game in this World Cup season is to collect as many limited Player Items as you can in order to trade them in for End of Event rewards and FIFA World Cup Swap tokens. In short, the more cards you collect, the better rewards you stand to win. These rewards include player picks, rare packs, and even exclusive World Cup Heroes cards.

World Cup Heroes is FUT’s latest collaboration with Marvel. These special cards allow you to unleash the power of classic World Cup icons from past tournaments. Mesmerize defenders with the 5-star skill moves of Jay Jay Okocha, tear defenses apart with Donovan’s blistering pace and control the box using the aerial dominance of England’s Peter Crouch. Marvel has designed a collection of 21 uniquely illustrated images to represent each Hero card. This joint effort marks the first time in the history of FIFA Ultimate Team that an outside studio has designed the cards.

Sadly, it’s impossible to discuss Ultimate Team without mentioning the shady loot box mechanics and intrusive micro-transactions that plague this otherwise perfect game mode. The World Cup update does nothing to change these flaws and, in fact, reinforces their presence by adding new flashy player cards to the market. In the end, the World Cup mode isn’t going to change the way you play Ultimate Team, but it does come with a handful of little tweaks that help drive home the World Cup theme and keep players immersed in the FUT world.

Play Ultimate Team on our site! Now is the perfect time to hop in with the release of the new World Cup-themed content. Test your team against capable online opposition and immerse yourself in our vast and social FUT community. If you want to earn money playing FIFA Ultimate Team, the best option is to play on the GameChampions platform.

FIFA World Cup Mode Tournaments for Money

If you're a casual gamer looking to make money playing FIFA 23, then Game Champions is the perfect place for you. We host free FIFA tournaments with mouthwatering cash prizes worth up to 2,000 euros. In connection with the new FIFA 23 update, we will be hosting a special World Cup-themed tournament. Joining our free tournaments is very easy and can be done in 3 simple steps. First, register an account on Game Champions—this process takes only 2-3 minutes. Second, go to the website and click on the FIFA 23 card and find the ‘Tournaments’ tab—all players are automatically registered in the latest tournament. From this page, you will need to keep track of all the matches you play, your progression in the leaderboard, and the tournament timer. Finally, the last step is to start playing matches and climbing up the leaderboard to stand a chance at winning a share of the epic cash pot.

Joining and playing a match is also very intuitive and only takes a couple of minutes. All you have to do is create or accept an existing match—you can easily find a match under the ‘Matches’ tab—once you and your opponent are both ready that’s when you turn on your console of choice and get ready to play. You will need to add your opponent as a friend so that you can connect to their PSN, Xbox Live, or Origin account.

After that, there’s nothing left to do but invite your opponent to a match and battle out to win the rewards, which can either be money if you’re playing a cash match or tournament points, or both. In the case of the World Cup mode, you will need to select the ‘Online Quickplay’ option and then enable ‘All National Teams’ (as seen in the image above). This will allow you to choose any national team from the FIFA 23 roster and not be confined to two teams. If you are playing with our dynamic Champions Draft mode, you will need to select the specific team that was assigned to you and play the match in those conditions. Once you have become familiar with the ins and outs of our tournaments, you can start playing free matches, earning points, and climbing to the top of the leaderboard.