I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about the 209,000 coins I dumped into a Paul Pogba SBC on a chilly Friday night back in October 2025. It's December 2026 now, and my FC 26 Ultimate Team squad has long since evolved, but the scars – and the hysterical memories – of the Ultimate Scream promo remain. EA went all-out with spooky shenanigans, transforming legendary goalkeepers into pacy strikers, drip-feeding us objectives that required an unhealthy obsession with MLS players, and then laughing as our transfer market investments nosedived. Let me take you on a haunted house tour of the entire event.
The madness officially kicked off on Friday, 24 October 2025 with Team 1. This wasn't just your standard ratings boost promo – every card landed with a Role+ addition in November, and then a Role++ upgrade when December rolled around, making them absolute endgame monsters for months. But the real spice came from the position changes. The standout example? An 88-rated Jorge Campos ST card, sporting 85 Pace. Yes, the diminutive Mexican goalkeeper who once designed his own fluorescent jerseys was now a striker, and honestly, he terrorised my backline more than some 90-rated icons. Team 1 also gave us a 90-rated Vini Jr at ST, 89-rated Debinha at RW, and an 89 Joshua Kimmich at RB that I still occasionally see in sweaty Division Rivals lineups.
Then, on Halloween itself – 31 October – Team 2 dropped and dialled the insanity up to eleven. The headliner was a 91-rated Ousmane Dembélé, a card so terrifying that my defenders would probably just lie down rather than attempt to track his 5-star skills. But the real market menace was the new Wesley Sneijder Heroes item. I watched in horror as his 89-rated LM card hit 1,000,000 coins within an hour. I was sorely tempted to sell my grandmother to afford him. A couple of months later, by mid-December, he'd crashed to a very affordable 233,000 coins. The moral? Never buy hype. I didn't learn that lesson though – I just bought his card and immediately lost 3-0 in my next game.
Squad Building Challenges are where I truly lost my sanity. EA dangled not one, but two 86-rated Paul Pogba cards (CDM and CAM) in front of us, and I had to have both. The requirements were a labyrinth of high-rated squads that set me back around 209,000 coins on the first night, and you only had until Friday, 7 November to complete the set. I vividly remember panic-selling consumables at 3am to scrape together the final coins. Other SBCs popped up too – a Fridolina Rolfo, a Phil Foden, a Yannick Carrasco – and there was even a marathon of six SBCs across the fortnight to unlock a Myles Lewis-Skelly card. By the end, my club was emptier than a haunted mansion, but hey, I had a shiny new midfielder who immediately misplaced a pass that cost me a Weekend League match.
The objectives grind was its own special kind of trick-or-treat. First up, an 84-rated Diego Luna card. To earn him by 31 October, EA demanded I score 12 goals using an MLS player in Squad Battles on at least Semi-Pro difficulty, assist 6 with an MLS player, and win a bunch of Rivals and Squad Battles matches while using an Ultimate Scream player. I must have watched my Diego Luna loan card fluff sitters for hours. And once I'd recovered, they replaced him with an Ines Juarena objective. For her 84-rated CDM card, I had to assist with an Arkema Premier League player, score with a French player, and endure another wave of win-based tasks by 7 November. My thumbs ached, my sleep schedule crumbled, and yet I look back on it with a twisted fondness. It was the ultimate test of grind-or-go-home.
Let's talk about some of my favourite weird cards, because the Ultimate Scream roster read like a fever dream compiled by a mad scientist who'd never watched a real football match. Antony Di Natale as an 89-rated LW Hero? Breathtaking. Peter Crouch as an 87 CAM? I paired him with a tall striker and literally scored headers from the edge of the box while giggling like a child. Kolo Toure as a CM Premier League Hero was a throwback chaos pick, and who could forget 87-rated Marcus Rashford at Barcelona, available both as a ST and a RW? The card variety was immense, from high-end meta demons like Rafael Leao up top to budget beasts like Isi from Rayo Vallecano.
Below is a sampler of the madness. Heroes items are marked with an asterisk so you can pinpoint the ones that made history nerds like me weep with joy.
| Player | Rating | Club/League |
|---|---|---|
| Ousmane Dembele (RW) | 90 | Paris SG |
| Javier Mascherano* (CDM) | 89 | La Liga |
| Wesley Sneijder* (LM) | 89 | Serie A |
| Jorge Campos* (ST) | 88 | MLS |
| Peter Crouch* (CAM) | 87 | Premier League |
| Vini Jr (ST) | 90 | Real Madrid |
| Joshua Kimmich (RB) | 89 | FC Bayern |
| Paulo Dybala (ST) | 88 | Roma |
| Antoine Griezmann (CAM) | 87 | Atletico Madrid |
| Paul Pogba (CDM/CAM) | 86 | Monaco |
| Myles Lewis-Skelly (CM) | 85 | Arsenal |
| Romelu Lukaku (CAM) | 85 | Napoli |
| Diego Luna (CAM) | 84 | Real Salt Lake |
| Ines Jaurena (CDM) | 84 | FC Fleury |
By the time December 2025 rolled around and all those Role++ upgrades had fully matured, my squad was a Frankenstein's monster of position-swapped icons and overperforming silver-turn-golds. Was it worth the sleepless nights and a decimated coin balance? Absolutely. FC 26 Ultimate Scream didn't just give us special cards; it gave us stories – of heartbreak, insane market swings, and a goalkeeper who turned into a striker that genuinely haunted my dreams. If you missed out, just know that in 2026, we\u2019re still talking about the promo that made Halloween the best time of the Ultimate Team year. \ud83c\udf83\u26bd\ud83d\udc7b