FC Pro World Championship Thrown Into Chaos by PSN Server Collapse

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Empty esports tournament stage with gaming stations showing network error on screens

A PlayStation Network outage brought Day 3 of the FC Pro World Championship to a standstill on July 24, delaying the final League Stage matches of the Diogo Jota FC Pro World Championship – the biggest EA Sports FC 26 esports tournament – mid-event at the Esports World Cup in Paris.

The outage left pro players unable to access Ultimate Team, the exclusively online mode used in all competitive play, preventing them from warming up and practising ahead of their matches. While EA FC 26 can be run locally, squads built in Ultimate Team are unavailable offline, which effectively made the game unplayable at a competitive level.

What We Know About the Delay

The Esports Foundation confirmed the delay was made to ensure competitors had adequate time to warm up and prepare as usual, with a statement noting the tournament would be live again soon – though no specific timeframe was given. At the time of writing, Sony had not commented on the outage, and servers had been down for over three hours.

Wide shot of the FC Pro World Championship stage with large screens showing a football match and players competing.
The main stage at the FC Pro World Championship featuring the match between New York Red Bulls and Manchester City.

EA Sports and the Esports Foundation have since confirmed that the final League Stage games have been postponed to Saturday, July 25, with play now scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM CEST. Today’s stage was meant to cut the field from 36 players down to 24 ahead of the Playoffs, with the top eight earning a direct spot in the Round of 16 and a guaranteed minimum of $40,000 in prize money.

What’s at Stake

Levy ‘levyfinn’ Rieck and Matías ‘Bonanno’ Bonanno head into the rescheduled day at the top of the standings, having won all four of their matches so far. The overall prize pool exceeds $1 million, with the tournament originally scheduled to conclude on Sunday, July 26 – a timeline that the delay now puts under serious pressure.

Portrait of Matias Bonanno wearing a light blue Manchester City eSports jersey against a brown background
FC Pro player Matias Bonanno posing in official team gear.

The incident is a stark reminder of how completely elite-level FC competition depends on online infrastructure running without a hitch. With the rescheduled League Stage now set for Saturday morning, the pressure is on for PSN to hold steady – and for organisers to deliver the playoff drama this weekend still demands.