The NBA 2K series has typically been one of the more consistent sports game franchises in quality, though the series did have a bit of a rough patch a couple of years ago. They did a good job at rebounding from that last year, and now NBA 2K26 aims to continue that upward swing with a game that is focused on offering players an authentic NBA experience with some smaller upgrades and a new story mode mixed in.
Is it worth the upgrade from last year or is this more of a roster update that needs to be benched? Read on to find out.
Building the Lead
NBA is easily the most player-driven sport around due to the limit number of players on each team and how front and center each one is in a game. Players across the league have different playstyles and ways that they move on the court, which NBA 2K26 works to emulate better than ever before thanks to the continuing use of ProPLAY. Now using actual NBA footage, the signature moves and movements of the players are replicated in the game with thousands of different animations. You can really tell this in the player movement, as it looks much more natural than in recent entries where they almost look like they stutter as they move in comparison to how smooth they are now.
Last year’s entry introduced a brand new shot meter that seemed okay at first, but quickly grew frustrating to use compared to the typical meter found in the game. 2K listened to the fan complaints and has reverted back to a more classic style meter where there is a green portion at the top that you should aim for to get the best shot off at any given time. The impact of this meter and how accurate you must be will depend on the difficulty level and certain modes, but the meter itself will be universal across all game modes. There are other improvements across the gameplay board, too many to go over in fact, but they all work together exceptionally well to make NBA 2K26 the most fluid game in the series to date.
Presentation in the NBA 2K series has always done a great job at being as true-to-life as possible across the board. This has included top-of-the-line scans for players in the game and the various arenas from across the league, having all of the elements that set them apart from one another. Thanks to new improvements, the player models are even more realistic than ever, including better sweat physics and even showing things like cracks in the lips due to dehydration. Arenas has been upgraded immensely with more variations of fans in the stands that have foam fingers, rally towels, and more. The in-arena entertainment is better than ever as well, which may actually prevent you from trying to skip them during timeouts in the game.
Out of Bounds
NBA 2K26 jumps you right into your MyCareer as soon as you start up the game. This begins with a face-off against a team of NBA Hall of Famers and All-Stars put together by current NBA superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the reigning champs, the Oklahoma City Thunder. Speaking of SGA, he also curated the game’s very enjoyable soundtrack that you hear all throughout the menus. You don’t have to face him alone, though, as you get to put together a team of your own, including the likes of players like LeBron James, Steph Curry, Tim Duncan, Magic Johnson, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
When you jump back into MyCareer directly, you will get the opportunity to create your MyPlayer from scratch, from archetypes created by 2K, or based on specific players. The story-driven nature of MyCareer is back as always, with what felt like better voice acting than many years in the past. Specifically, the voice actor for MP’s father really stood out and felt more natural than most NPCs found in previous games. You can choose to start back in high school and raise your draft stock through the story mode MP: Out of Bounds or just jump straight into the NBA.
MP: Out of Bounds is a very enjoyable story mode within NBA 2K26 as you play through your player’s journey starting in high school and trying to be the best around. There are a lot of cutscenes here that help set up the story, which may begin to seem a little long-winded over time, to where you just want to get to the game. However, the content is actually pretty captivating and kept my interest most of the time.
Between games and such, you will be in your home base where you can do things like upgrade your player and setup your skills. Not only is the goal for your team to win and your player to perform well in each game, but you will also have a one, two, and three star goal to complete. This often involves outscoring a certain player on the opposing team by a certain amount of points, which is always a lot of fun and adds some good competition.
One of the major goals within Out of Bounds is to increase MP’s 2KU 250 Rank, which can be achieved by performing well in games and winning. I also made sure to try to achieve 3 stars in every single goal, just to ensure it had a specific impact. Each game you have will have a player to watch on the opposing team that is higher ranked than you most of the time in the NBA 2KU 250, so you have to go out there and prove yourself on the court by outplaying them.
You do not have to finish playing through the Out of Bounds story to jump right into the City either, as you can go to MyCourt from your home base between games and walk right outside into The City that is full of other players. The City itself is what players have come to expect from this mode, where you can explore the much more intimate The City that it was a few years ago. One of the biggest complaints many others and myself had a few entries ago was that The City had managed to outgrow itself and gotten too large, to where it felt like you were spending most of your time traveling around time rather than actually doing missions or playing basketball. Thankfully, NBA 2K26 builds on last year’s game with a smaller-scale The City that can be mostly accessed without too much traveling.
NBA 2K26’s MyCareer also brings back the fan favorite Parks within The City. The Parks are now seasonal Parks, with Season 1’s being known as Skyline Park. The top REP player in each park also gets the Park MVP icon that hovers above their head while in that park. Defeating them will give you 5X on both REP and VC for what came, so always keep an eye out for that icon when playing. You can also become a legend in the park by getting your name placed to the side of the court if you have the longest win streak in that current season. What makes this even better is that if someone else has a top streak going, you can take them down and get major VC bonuses as a result. For instance, if you take down someone with a 30-game win streak, you can earn 30,000 VC as a bonus and we all know how precious VC is in this game.
Also new to this year’s City are the introduction of Crews that can be just a few players or up to 50 in one Crew. This works just as you would assume, as it’s your faction within The City. You can work together with your Crew to complete weekly goals and level up through the 30 levels available to unlock things such as custom Crew logos, clothing, VC, and REP multipliers, and much more.
Street Kings is a new variation of Streetball in the game that moves all three courts into one location instead of the three spread-out courts from last year. In Street Kings, you can play by yourself or team up with up to two friends against very difficult CPU bosses. This not only still serves as a great way to help level up your MyPlayer, but also has 40 levels of rewards itself for you to unlock. If playing solo, you must recruit teammates within the Street Kings area by defeating them on the court, so there is a major grind here to start. You should not underestimate how difficult these 3v3 matches can be, as they were easily some of the hardest challenges in the game. Regardless, I found this to be a lot of fun and the improvements over last year were enough to make a difference.
The one major downside of The City each and every year is that you better be prepared to spend some money if you really want to level your player up and get any gear. It’s hard enough even if you get the deluxe edition and start with 100,000 VC, but the grind is exponentially harder without that. While the prices of cosmetics felt a little better than WWE 2K25’s market, they are still way too high here and almost require you to spend real money unless you’re spending hours upon hours daily playing the game. This is always a major downside to the NBA 2K series, so you just have to decide if it’s worth it or not.
A Career Journey
Besides the main MyPlayer and MyCareer, NBA 2K26 brings back the WNBA mode variants once again. Within The W, you can build your own MyPlayer and play through their career in the WNBA. As in past entries, this is not a fully fledged mode like MyCareer is for the NBA, but it’s still fun to play through if you enjoy the WNBA regardless.
MyNBA is back as always with a few different options to choose from when starting the mode, though the overall experience across them feels really no different than last year’s game. MyNBA is your typical season mode where you can pick a team to play through seasons with offline or online. You still get to choose which era you want to play in as well, including the Modern era, Steph era, LeBron era, Kobe era, Jordan era, and the Magic vs. Bird era. There’s really not much new to this here either, so you pretty much already know exactly what to expect. There is also a MyWNBA version for those who want to do a WNBA Season and a MyNBA Lite variant for those who want an even less robust version of the NBA mode.
MyGM lets you take control of the team from the GM level instead, where you run the team. There are two MyGM style options to choose between, MyGM Offseason Scenarios and MyGM Sandbox. the Offseason Scenarios option lets you take part in 30 hand-crafted starting scenarios for each team in the league. These are pretty simple, such as scouting players, hiring staff, drafting players, signing players, and more. There’s a lot of steps here, but it’s not really enough to make this mode feel brand new and instead just feels super stagnant from recent years like MyNBA itself.
One new feature under the MyNBA umbrella is that of playoffs in online leagues. Under the Playoffs mode, you can choose to still play offline or go online. From here, you can try to find an existing public tournament or setup your own with setting regarding if it’s public vs. private, the amount of time allowed between games, and if there are forced player-CPU matches or not. I greatly appreciated this as a much quicker mode to play with friends without the responsibility of playing so many season games and just being able to play through playoffs instead. You can also choose to do Playoffs under the WNBA menu heading, but this one is limited to offline single player player only. Considering how Playoffs is really not that involved of a thing, it’s pretty disappointing that they could not have an equal version for both NBA and WNBA here that offers online play for both.
MyTeam is the series’ ultimate team equivalent and is at its core the same as most years, but with more major feature change that will make a lot of people happy. For the first time, you can not have intergender rosters within MyTeam. This means you can have a wide mix of WNBA superstars on your roster including A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, and Paige Bueckers, alongside NBA superstars like Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Since this is something we’ll likely never see actually happen in real life, for a long time at least, this is rather cool to be able to do in the game and it works quite well. As you play through your MyTeam season, the MyTeam arena will start to be adorned with all of your achievements, and your top players will even be immortalized on the Top REP Court Floor, which is really awesome to see.
Dynamic Duos are back again as well, which let you paid players together to boost their stats based on real-life connections. Besides microtransactions as always, the one major downside for me in MyTeam is the limited nature of some cards where they can only be used a limited number of times. I much prefer the style found in MLB The Show’s Diamond Dynasty, where players are yours for good once you get them, rather than them expiring after a certain number of games.
Something I really miss in the NBA 2K series are challenges based on past classic moments, such as the Jordan Challenges and Mamba Challenges of the past. I know they have been gone for a few years again, but it’s sad to see such a great mode that really helped to celebrate the history of the league not become a major part of the series year to year. Looking at something like WWE 2K’s Showcase series as an example, it would be great to see the series add something like this to not only honor the past but also give players something unique to enjoy besides the standard modes we are used to every iteration.
A much requested feature is finally here in NBA 2K26 with the inclusion of cross-play across all online game modes in the game. Unfortunately, this is limited to just PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S systems, surprisingly leaving out PC and Nintendo Switch 2 for the modern consoles, while it was not a shock that the last-gen consoles like PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch were left out. The latter is easily because of the different versions of the games being run, but PC and Switch 2 are a bit disappointing to not see included with cross-play.
Verdict
Sometimes, a game series enters a period where it’s best not to try to reinvent the wheel. While it would have been great to see some new modes or major revamps of some existing ones, NBA 2K26 instead focuses on polishing the existing gameplay and continuing to provide a virtual experience akin to the real on-the-court action on top of the always standout MyCareer and The City. While it may seem like just a simple roster update on the surface outside of the new MyCareer content, you will realize just how wrong that is by actually playing the product to see the gameplay improvements found here. Also, the tease that we likely will be getting some sort of college basketball content as DLC in the coming months could very well change the game, literally.
Score: 8.5/10
Pros:
- ProPLAY improvements allow for even smoother gameplay
- MP: Out of Bounds story is intriguing with solid voice acting for once
- Streamlined Street Kings is difficult and fun
- Intergender rosters in MyTeam
- Online playoffs
Cons:
- MyNBA and MyGM are starting to feel stale
- Microtransactions through The City and MyTeam
- Lack of anything groundbreaking across the board
NBA 2K26 was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.
