Arena is (almost) here.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 27 October at 2pm CET, Arena opens to everyone.

No code. No waiting list. No invite to chase on Discord. You show up, you create your club, and a few minutes later you're on the touchline of your first match.

Thank you, beta managers

Three weeks ago, the ladder was empty and nobody knew what Arena would feel like in your hands. Then you showed up. You played, you climbed, you broke things, and you told us exactly what you thought. That's exactly what we needed.

So before anything else: thank you. Arena tomorrow is a better game because of you.

What you told us

One thing came back again and again: new managers got stuck too early.

You'd win your first matches, open your first pack, and then the climb went flat. Rewards were small at the bottom, and the bottom is exactly where everyone starts.

That hurt to read, because it's the opposite of what Arena is for. Arena should grab you from the first match and never let go. Your club should get better every day you play, and there should always be something worth playing for.

So we went back to work. Three big changes came out of it: a new currency, a lot more progression, and fairer matchmaking.

Meet Gems

Here's the problem we had. $MFL is shared with Pro Manager: every $MFL Arena pays out counts in the same economy club owners rely on. That's why the rewards in the lower divisions had to stay small. And the lower divisions are exactly where new managers were getting stuck.

Gems fix that. They belong to Arena only, so we can finally be generous where it matters most: at the start.

Here's what that looks like. A new manager in Amateur III who plays their 10 matches, logs in every day and wins once a day earns over 350 Gems in their first week. That's seven 30+ packs. In the beta, the same week got you one.

And Gems come from everywhere:

• Weekly payout. Every division pays Gems, from 115 in Amateur III up to 3,000 in Legend. The higher you finish, the more you earn.
• First time in a new tier. Reach a tier for the first time in a season and you get a one-off Gems bonus.
• Login streak. Claim your daily gift: 5 Gems on day 1, rising every day to 30 Gems from day 7. Miss a day and the streak starts again at day 1.
• First win of the day. Your first ranked win each day pays 20 Gems.
• Quests. Daily and weekly goals, like winning a match today or playing 10 matches this week, pay Gems on top of XP.
• Season Pass. Some levels of the pass now reward Gems.

You spend them in the Store, on Arena packs and OVR boosts.

The login streak, first wins and quests together pay up to 780 Gems a week. Weekly payouts, first-time bonuses and the Season Pass don't count towards that limit.

You can also get Gems in two other ways:

• Buy them in the Store.
• Convert your $MFL. 10 $MFL = 1 Gem, up to 25,000 $MFL a week. It only goes one way: Gems can't be turned back into $MFL.

$MFL is still the prize at the top

$MFL is still the currency shared by Arena and Pro Manager, and it's still what the best managers in Arena play for.

• From Elite up, your weekly payout adds $MFL on top of your Gems. Master pays 10,000 $MFL a week.
• In Legend, your $MFL follows your final rank: from 20,000 $MFL for 20th place up to 50,000 $MFL for 1st.
• Pro players are still bought with $MFL, on the same marketplace as always.

To qualify for the weekly payout, play at least 10 matches that week. From the Pro division up, you also need to win 5 of them. The week closes every Monday at 11pm CET.

Your squad grows faster

• Bigger packs. Arena packs now go from 30+ all the way to 80+.
• OVR boosts. Give a player +1 on every attribute for his next 15 Arena matches. Boosts are priced by the player's card rarity, and a player can carry up to +3 from boosts at once.
• Your pro players progress in Arena. During the beta, only Arena players progressed. From tomorrow, your pro players do too, with the same rule: your first two matches each day make your starting XI and bench progress.
• A smoother start. After the pack you open in your second match, its best players go straight into your XI, and Andrea shows you how auto-fill builds your strongest lineup in one tap.

Fair fights

During the beta, squads that grew fast through packs could stay low on the ladder for a while, and kept meeting much weaker clubs. Fun for one side. Miserable for the other.

Not anymore. For your first 30 matches of each season, matchmaking looks at the strength of your starting XI, not just your rank. A strong squad meets strong opponents straight away, and new clubs play sides closer to their level.

In Amateur, your opponent's XI can't be more than 5 OVR above yours. In Prospect, it's now 10.

And you wait one minute between matches instead of five. Lose one, and you're straight back out there.

Also new

• Forfeit. Want out of a match? Forfeit it from the Exit menu. It counts as a 0-3 loss.
• Share your club. Share your card, your last match or your records in one tap.
• Season 1: First Night. A brand-new Season Pass with new pitches, stadiums, balls, flares and two new chants for your kop, with a Free track and a Premium track.

Everyone starts from zero

Season 1 is a clean slate:

• Reset: your beta Arena club, your Arena players and your rank. You'll create a new club tomorrow.
• Kept: every beta cosmetic you unlocked, the $MFL you earned and the pro players you bought.
• Pro players: any pro player who played in Arena during the beta is free again. A new season starts, so he can play in either mode.

The rule stays the same: a pro player plays one mode per season, decided by his first match.

Which means tomorrow at 2pm, the ladder is empty again. Nobody is in Legend. Every club starts at Amateur III. Twenty spots at the top, and they're up for grabs.

See you on the touchline

To every beta manager who played, reported bugs and told us what they thought, and to the content creators who shared the codes: thank you. You built this with us.

Now bring your friends. Tomorrow, 2pm CET, the Arena is open to everyone.

Let's go.