Football Manager 26 is incredibly rugged around the edges, but still retains more of the core gameplay

It’s been a long time coming, but Football manager 26 it’s finally here. Because 2025 is the first year we haven’t seen a recent one Football manager game – or Championship Manager before – it’s been clear since 1992 that when Sports Interactive decided to cancel last year’s planned entry into the highly regarded soccer management simulation game, it must have been in bad shape.

It was always an ambitious sequel, and the developers clearly announced the switch to the Unity engine and planned to utilize it to make huge graphical leaps. In up-to-date football matches, the match experience should be a flagship feature, but so far it hasn’t looked out of place on the original PlayStation. On Unity it now looks at least like a PlayStation 2 game.

The comical thing is that I’m not exaggerating one bit, but that’s not a criticism in any way. It’s not quite as dramatic a leap forward as long-term virtual managers had hoped for, but it’s still an improvement. Match introductions feature league-specific cutscenes, player animations are much smoother, and the way the ball moves looks much more realistic. Football Manager is more than just a match engine, but we hope this is a solid start to consistent graphical improvements over the next few entries.

Some highlights

This will be the main topic unfortunately because Football manager 26 is, overall, still very much a beta release. There are improvements, and among all the disadvantages, it is essential to remember that this is still the case Football manager at its core.

You’ll still be hooked, playing for hours, sacrificing sleep to try and lead your beloved local club to glory… The point is, despite all the hype and excitement around 26 being a complete modernization of the series, it significantly missed the mark.

In addition to the visually improved match engine, there is another area where Football manager 26 he has really improved in: tactics. For the first time in the history of the series, you can now utilize two tactics at the same time: one when you have the ball and one when you do not have it. Player roles available for any position change, you can utilize a completely different formation, the whole thing works. It adds an extra vigorous to tactics that we haven’t had before and is one of the few real strengths of the recent game.

It would also be remiss not to mention the inclusion of women’s football for the first time in history, and that too in an impressive way. There are 14 women’s leagues in 11 countries, from the world-famous Women’s Super League in England to the hidden neighboring Adran Premier in Wales.

Sports Interactive employs 40 researchers dedicated exclusively to the women’s game, and while there’s no denying that this mode won’t be as popular as management in the men’s leagues, it’s a great step towards representation and is crucial in helping the sport become as recognized as it deserves.

It was delivered a year later but still undercooked

Unfortunately, even after the release of update 26.0.4, Football manager 26 it’s still buggy, featureless, and a needy excuse for a full-price video game launch, especially one that has over 20 years of history and consistency to fall back on.

This year’s installment is missing so many features that were available in previous installments of the game, including but not narrow to: international management, touchline shouting, squad depth tab, live cup draws, data center, club creation mode, versus mode, challenge mode, transfer deadline, end-of-season summaries/fanfare, advanced match statistics, the ability to save pre-set lineups and so many other, slightly less significant removals, that I could sit here all day.

Not to mention there are plenty of bugs that don’t exactly break the game, but are still annoying. The ability to select substitutes for penalty kicks, nonsensical text commentary during the match, wrapping long text and obscuring other text… these are just a few examples from a much longer list.

Although Sports Interactive revealed that there was shouting on the sideline really useless, providing only a minimal morale boost if done correctly, I still find my muscle memory looking for them in almost every match.

This placebo effect was very real Football manager 2024and while I understand the need to refurbish them before bringing them back as a feature, this is perhaps what I miss the most. That and the submission deadline, particularly by omitting a signature as the documents were only submitted 15 minutes after the deadline, something that was in a dedicated deadline mode FM24 would have prevented. Damn fax.

Teaching an senior dog recent tricks

Finally, there are many, many changes to the UI. As more and more players level up Football manager on consoles – despite the fact that the game was designed exclusively for PCs for a long time – development is focusing more on them, leading to a complete overhaul of the user interface.

This was solid for me to get used to as a die-hard gamer with over a decade of experience. Even though I know how the game works from scratch, I had to re-learn where everything was, and it was frustrating that I went somewhere I expected and inexplicably wasn’t, so I had to utilize the search function.

I hesitate to call it bad UI design, though, because there’s a good chance I don’t like it just because it’s such a drastic change from what I’m familiar with. If you introduce a recent player to both Football Manager 24 AND 26 side by side, ask them to learn each one, and then ask them which they prefer? I suspect that may be their answer 26even if it is arduous for us, veterans.

However, as mentioned earlier, this is still Football Manager. This may be one of the worst releases in the series, positively received by critics and fans alike, but if you love the series despite all its flaws, you’ll definitely enjoy it Football manager 26.

Especially the improved tactics and match engine, as playing Tiki Taka against Manchester United in a way that we certainly couldn’t do in real life is worth it compared to the match engine we experienced in the previous series. This game is basically a beta version Football manager 27and it should be treated as such.

Play if…

Don’t do this if…

Accessibility features

How Football manager have always consisted primarily of spreadsheets, accessibility options include larger text, a colorblind mode, the option to enable flashing commentary when a goal is scored, and straightforward colors for the commentary text to aid distinguish it from the background.

The game also supports 19 different languages, has multiple mid-match camera settings, but doesn’t have difficulty modes or anything like that because they aren’t required.

As with everyone Football manager match, I started a one-season reserve at my beloved Manchester United, with the goal of finishing as high as possible in the league, but also not worrying about long-term finances and transfers. According to Steam, I’ve played about 17 hours of the game at the time of writing.

I played around a lot with recent tactics, spent a lot of time scouting and signing players who could make an immediate impact, and sold a few (it really helps when Saudi Arabian clubs make ridiculous offers for players in your squad).

I also tested management in the women’s game for a compact time and gained experience plenty errors. This was all played on a Windows 11 PC via Steam. Football manager 26 it’s not particularly intense since the series can run on virtually any hardware, but my gaming PC has an RTX 3080 and 32GB of memory.

First reviewed November 2025