Fans fear both EA Sports FC 26 cover stars have been hit by FIFA curse

Football fans are beginning to worry that the FIFA cover star curse has returned, as both EA Sports FC 26’s cover stars are already injured.

Although they had already leaked beforehand, the cover stars for EA Sports FC 26 were officially revealed this week, alongside the first details and gameplay footage for the upcoming football game.

England and Real Madrid player Jude Bellingham is once again the main star (having also been on EA Sports FC 25’s cover), but he’s now joined by former teammate and Bayern Munich player Jamal Musiala.

However, in an unfortunate coincidence, both players are currently unable to play football in real life and will be out of action even after EA Sports FC 26 launches on September 26.

Despite suffering a shoulder injury in November 2023, Bellingham has continued to play and only recently underwent surgery. In fact, the news of his problems dropped the same day as the EA Sports FC 26 announcement and Bellingham’s not expected to return for another four months or so.

Aside from being out of the game by the time of EA Sports FC 26’s release, he’s also expected to miss the start of the 2025-2026 season.

As for Musiala, he was injured during the Club World Cup earlier this month, when Bayern Munich played against Paris St-Germain, where he suffered both a broken leg and a dislocated ankle.

He has since undergone surgery, but this still means he’s out of the game and, just like Bellingham, isn’t expected to be ready to return until November 2025 at the earliest.

While it’s unlikely this will have any impact on EA Sports FC 26’s sales, the timing is extremely unfortunate from a marketing standpoint, now that the two players EA picked to headline the game are on hiatus.

We’ve already seen some fans suggest the FIFA cover curse is at work. If you’re unfamiliar with it, there have been frequent instances of football players who appear on the cover of FIFA (what EA Sports FC used to be called) games suffering misfortunes.

It hasn’t happened every year and it has not always been injuries (FIFA 21 star, Kylian Mbappé, for instance, went on to score no goals at the UEFA European Championship in 2021), but enough examples have warranted the curse’s inclusion on Wikipedia’s list of sports related curses.

However, Bellingham was injured in late 2023, so EA really should have been aware he’d have to undergo surgery at around this time… not that that stopped the company sticking him on the cover of last year’s game too.

For what it’s worth, no such misfortunes appears to have befallen Swedish player Zlatan Ibrahimović, who retired in 2023 and graces the cover of EA Sports FC 26’s Ultimate Edition. Let’s hope he doesn’t somehow break any bones in the coming months.

Fans of the Madden NFL games (which EA also handles) have their own superstition about that series’ covers, believing any player who appears on it is doomed to suffer an injury.

In an old 2007 Kotaku interview, the EA Sports’ vice president of brand marketing at the time, Chris Erb, revealed that the curse chatter did little to dissuade footballers from asking to appear on the next Madden NFL cover.

‘We’ve spoken to plenty of guys from within the league, and they don’t think it’s a jinx,’ said Erb. ‘The players, who we work closely with, they definitely don’t think it’s a jinx, because they know better than anyone how easy it is to get injured, or to have a bad season.’

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