How to Change MyCareer Difficulty

NBA 2K26 is a highly customizable experience that lets you tweak the difficulty to your liking, granting better VC payouts and other rewards on harder difficulty levels. The difficulty options are seemingly missing from NBA 2K26‘s MyCareer mode, so how do you change the difficulty of story mode?

Thankfully, the traditional NBA 2K difficulty settings are still there in NBA 2K26‘s MyCareer mode. They’re just locked behind some quick quests. NBA 2K26‘s initial story mode games are stuck at one fixed difficulty level, but you can raise the difficulty of MyCareer matches soon after.

How to Increase MyCareer Difficulty in NBA 2K26

You can only change your MyCareer difficulty settings in NBA 2K26 after you get drafted by an NBA team. Once you’ve begun your professional NBA career, you can pause the game, navigate to the Options/Quit tab, choose Settings, and then change your difficulty level.

There are six difficulty options to choose from in NBA 2K26, and each of them rewards you with a different amount of VC and MyPoints.

These modifiers will apply to all of your MyCareer games. Raising the difficulty to at least Pro is a great way to earn more VC than you normally would, and the tighter shooting windows and harder defense will prepare you for PVP matches in the Park.

While there’s no way to change the difficulty of the pre-NBA Out of Bounds matches, you can skip that storyline entirely and jump straight to the NBA Draft if you’d rather start playing professionally. Just head to the NBA Arena player entrance in the City to declare for the draft and find a home in the league.

You can always go back to Out of Bounds via MyCourt later down the line, so you don’t have to worry about missing any of the exclusive rewards tied to it. Regardless of your path to the league, it’s definitely worth turning up the difficulty for MyCareer games in NBA 2K26. More VC is always nice to have, and you’ll earn and upgrade Badges at an increased rate as well.

NBA 2K26

Released

September 5, 2025

ESRB

Everyone / In-Game Purchases, Users Interact

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op, Local Multiplayer, Local Co-Op

Cross-Platform Play

Yes – PS5/Xbox Series only