F1® 25: 2026 Season Pack

I've been waiting for a regulation reset like this since the ground-effect era dropped in 2022, and the 2026 Season Pack delivers one that actually changes how you drive, not just how the cars look. This is a paid DLC that bolts onto F1 25 (you need the base game), and it's essentially Codemasters' answer to skipping a yearly release: instead of a new box, you get a major content drop that rewrites the competitive landscape from the ground up. The mechanical headliner is the new active aerodynamics system. Classic DRS is gone. In its place, front and rear wings adjust in real time, which means your braking points and corner-entry habits from the 2025 content are only partially transferable. Layer on top of that the Overtake Mode, a deployable power boost described as pushing close to 500 horsepower on demand, and suddenly every wheel-to-wheel battle carries a tactical wrinkle. Do you spend it defending into Turn 1, or save it for a late-race push? The 2026 cars are also noticeably lighter and shorter than their predecessors, dropping to a 768 kg minimum weight with a tighter wheelbase, which translates to a front end that bites more aggressively through fast chicanes. Gamepad players will feel the difference; wheel-and-pedal setups will want to remap their Active Aero toggles before jumping into a ranked session. There are updated assists available too, so casual players who just want to enjoy the new teams without micromanaging energy deployment have cover. The grid expansion is the other big reason to care. For the first time since 2016 there are 11 constructor teams, with Cadillac (the first major American manufacturer in F1) and Audi both joining the field. Cadillac lines up Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, while Audi fields Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg. In My Team mode, your custom squad becomes a 12th entry, which makes the career economy a lot more competitive. The full driver shuffle, including Arvid Lindblad at Racing Bulls and Isack Hadjar stepping up alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull, is faithfully reproduced. The pack covers Driver Career, My Team, Grand Prix, Time Trial, Split-Screen, and Unranked Multiplayer, so your Saturday night lobby crew can get into the new cars without needing to grind a career save first. One hard caveat: 2025 career saves do not transfer, and the APXGP and Konnersport fictional teams from the F1 movie tie-in content are locked out of the 2026 modes entirely. The brand-new circuit, MADRING, is genuinely the most exciting addition. Built around Madrid's IFEMA Exhibition Centre, it runs 5.4 km across 22 corners and mixes tight street sections with faster purpose-built stretches. It's the first completely new circuit added to the series since 2023, and it's locked exclusively to the 2026 cars, so you can't sneak it into a 2025 career. Real-world F1 drivers won't even race there until September, meaning you're mapping your braking points on a track that hasn't been raced competitively yet. For split-screen sessions, MADRING is immediately going to be the first choice, because nobody has an unfair memory advantage. The honest caveat here is that this is a DLC, not a standalone game, and it carries a real price attached to a base game you may or may not own. Some final car models are also arriving in a post-launch patch rather than at launch, which is a mild annoyance. But as a way to bridge to the full next-gen title EA has confirmed for 2027, the 2026 Season Pack does the job better than a rushed yearly release probably would have. If you're already in F1 25, this is the content drop that justifies keeping the game installed.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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