Since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with sports management simulation games — to an absurd degree. Whether it was Total Extreme Wrestling, Out of the Park Baseball, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball, World of Mixed Martial Arts, Eastside Hockey Manager, or Front Office Football Nine, I’ve played (or at least tried to play) them all.
All that to say: this micro-genre of very niche video games is my true love. Football Manager is no different. I’ve poured thousands of hours into various editions of Sports Interactive's iconic series and formed hundreds of parasocial bonds with players who, technically speaking, don’t exist. (They’re real to me, dammit.)
Despite what you might think of a glorified spreadsheet simulator, these games aren’t grindy — they’re meditative. They reward patience and planning, demanding long-term vision, whether you’re clawing your way up from the lower leagues or assembling a squad for a run in Europe.
But Football Manager 26 demands a different kind of patience, one that asks longtime fans like me to accept unnecessary change to get to the good stuff. There’s brilliance here, buried somewhere under the clutter, but finding it requires faith bordering on masochism. In other words, the new UI/UX overhaul makes it harder to enjoy what’s otherwise an exciting evolution in gameday presentation.
After around 20 hours, I’m left wanting more — or at least wanting to look at something else. Which brings me to the question no fan wants to ask after a two-year wait: was this really worth it? Don’t we, the faithful, deserve something better?
Football Manager 26 has a new engine, new look
On build alone, Football Manager 26 is a massive upgrade — it’s the first in the series to run on the Unity engine. That shift, though, came with major internal challenges, which is why the originally planned Football Manager 25 was scrapped in February last year. It marked the first true cancellation in the series' history, something we hadn’t seen since Championship Manager 4’s delay decades ago, which, fittingly, was also caused by an engine change.
So, after two long years since Football Manager 24, we’ve finally arrived at the Unity-powered future of the franchise. And it looks...fine. You’d expect that extra development time to deliver flashy new bells and whistles — and yes, there are some, particularly in the new Match Day presentation. But beyond that? The rest feels, well, kinda meh.
Let’s start with the 3D manager and player models, a weak spot that has haunted the series for years, and sadly, that hasn’t changed. When creating my manager, the models are still rough around the edges, and the hairstyles appear to have been hastily sculpted in Blender. I’m not expecting EA FC levels of hair physics or texture, but could we at least get more than three Black hairstyles — Fade, Dreadlocks, and Afro — all with identical, receding hairlines? The same issue plagues the creation of female managers, where options boil down to 10 variations of the same middle-parted bob and maybe two natural styles for Black women — one of which looks suspiciously like a stretched-out rectangle glued to the model’s head.
Minor gripes, sure, but this stuff matters because immersion is what makes Football Manager special. It’s the beating heart of the experience, the thing that turns a spreadsheet simulator into a living football world.
Speaking of immersion, I genuinely appreciate how Football Manager 26’s revamped manager creation system leans harder into your character’s lore to shape their stats. In previous editions, you’d simply select your coaching badges, level of playing experience, and management style focus — choices that translated into skill points to distribute across attributes like Attacking, Motivating, or People Management. It was a precise, hands-on way to define your manager’s identity and, more importantly, their reputation, which influenced everything from which jobs you could land to how the board responded to requests and even how players approached contract negotiations.
Now, that sense of control is gone. You can't manually allocate points anymore; attributes are locked in based on the reputation presets you choose. The familiar 1–20 numerical scale has been replaced by circular icons that fade from red ("unsuited") to green ("outstanding"). Reputation is now determined through a three-step process: first, selecting the peak of your playing career, from Global Superstar to Amateur; second, identifying any non-playing roles within the football world, whether as a coach, scout, or pundit; and third, deciding how well-known you are in that space. These decisions set your baseline Coaching and Mental attributes, though the latter has been pared back — "Level of Discipline" is now "Authority," while "Player Knowledge" and "Youngster Knowledge" have been quietly removed.
To further tweak your manager's strengths, you then select “Tendencies,” which is a nice touch — I like having more narrative context behind my avatar. But the trade-off is a loss of flexibility. It feels like SI has simplified an already simple system. If immersion is what defines why I love Football Manager, then simplification is what defines my growing frustration with Football Manager 26’s new UI.
It’s not just that the new UI is bad to look at — though, for the record, I'm not exactly a fan of the purple and blue gradient either — it's that you can feel the design philosophy behind it. This isn't a UI made for longtime players; it's one built to simplify things for newcomers. That philosophy has been in motion since the first reveal of the now-cancelled Football Manager 25, which aimed to unify the series across all platforms. Now that FM has fully embraced its mobile and console ambitions, the result is an interface that looks and feels like it was made for a tablet first, PC second.
Everything has that iPad app aesthetic — modular pop-up windows, tiny text, oversized spacing — and on a larger monitor, it's straight-up punishing on the eyes. Many of the player and agent interactions now are styled as text messages. The intent is clear: make the game more accessible. However, in doing so, Football Manager 26 has compromised the identity of a series that once prided itself on depth and detail.
If I were to hand out thrones and roses for Football Manager 26, I’d start by giving credit where it’s due: I like that the developers took a more modern approach to the UI design. It’s clean, sleek, and visually in step with other contemporary sims. I also appreciate the intent behind it — a genuine effort to streamline the experience and get players onto the pitch faster.
And…that’s about it for the roses.
Football Manager offers death by a thousand dropdowns
I'm trying not to sound hyperbolic when I say the new UI changes kind of ruin what I love about Football Manager. For many of us, calling FM a "spreadsheet simulator" isn’t an insult — it’s the point. The joy comes from immersion: years upon years of data, history, statistics, and stories. I want to live in that data, to get lost in the archives of players and clubs and see how football's alternate history unfolds. But the new interface makes that harder. The game now feels actively resistant to exploration, bogged down by redundant windows, tabs, and submenus that bury simple information behind too many clicks.
Case in point: in one of my saves managing Cheonan in the South Korean K League 2, I wanted to check the K League 1 table. In FM 2024, this was easy — just click the arrow next to the league logo and jump straight up to K League 1. In FM 26, that quick action has turned into a labyrinth. I now have to hover over "Competitions" → "Asia" → "South Korea" → "Men's" and then select "K League 1."
It’s death by a thousand dropdowns.
Things that were once instantly accessible on the left-hand panel — competitions, scouting, finances — are now buried behind layered menus and pop-up windows, making me wonder what exactly was happening in the design meetings. Even viewing the competitions your team is involved in, once a one-click affair under "Competitions," now requires a trek through Portal > Overview > Stages before you can even search for the competition you want.
A lot of what made FM’s interface efficient and customizable is simply gone in Football Manager 26. Basic functions like reloading skins, clearing cache, or changing attribute colors have vanished, along with small quality-of-life settings that let players decide how menus behaved — like where the back button led or what default screen club, nation, or player pages opened to. Even long-standing visual tools like the attribute graph, passmaps, heatmaps, and scatter plot numbers have either been buried behind tiny pop-ups or removed entirely. The same goes for player comparison, role attribute highlights, staff comparison, and several key finance and training options.
Match Day and squad management haven’t escaped either. Essential navigation tools, such as the spacebar-to-messages shortcut, Match Day calendar, and standings, as well as the normal sideline camera, are gone. You can't filter or toggle replays like before, match stats during highlights are limited, and useful interface details — the little "i" next to player names, the quick fitness hearts, or the "Best XI" and "Where Are They Now?" features — have all disappeared. Even staples like the Development Centre, loan and international reports, and deadline day have been watered down.
When a game built on data suddenly hides that data behind friction, it loses its soul. And for a series as detail-obsessed as Football Manager, that’s not just a UI issue — that’s an identity crisis.
Match Day Experience still sings in Football Manager 26
Sorry you had to hear me bitch and moan about navigating the UI, but it had to be done. Now, let's move on to the meat and bones of the Football Manager experience.
If half the fun of FM is getting buried in data to build the perfect squad, then the other half is crafting the perfect tactic. And thankfully, in Football Manager 26, that part still sings. After lamenting the lack of granularity in manager creation, it's refreshing to see that tactical customization has instead been expanded. The new In- and Out-of-Possession tactics system provides players with far greater control over shape, structure, and tactical fluidity, along with more streamlined (yet deeper) player roles.
In previous editions, both phases of play were baked into a single tactic. Player roles had fixed "modifiers" such as Defend, Support, or Attack, and these came with hidden, unchangeable instructions. So if you wanted a full-back who attacked aggressively but still challenged for the ball defensively, you had to settle for Full-Back (Attack) or Wing-Back (Attack) and hope everything behaved roughly the way you envisioned.
Now, that's changed. You can assign dual roles — one for when your team is in possession, and another for when they're not. That means your Full-Back (Attack) on offense can become a Pressing Full-Back out of possession. It's a meaningful shift that makes your tactics feel alive, adapting dynamically to the game's flow.
As someone who's not exactly a tactical savant, I love this system. I'm a simple man who runs a 4-3-3 and calls it a day — but now, when defending, I can drop my three central midfielders into defensive midfield roles to add extra cover, especially since my full-backs love to bomb forward. It feels intuitive, flexible, and genuinely rewarding.
New to Match Day is the Instant Result button, a longtime feature of custom skin mods that were often buggy or unstable. In past games, you couldn’t actually simulate matches unless you took a "vacation," and even then, those wins were credited to your assistant coach. Personally, I’ve always been an Instant Result user — without it, playing through a single season could easily take 20–25 hours. With it, that drops to around eight–10 hours, and depending on how deep the addiction runs, I can crank out two full seasons in a week.
That said, I might be rethinking my stance now that the new Unity engine makes the in-game action genuinely pleasant to watch. "Pretty" might be overstating it, but FM 26 looks significantly better.
Lighting is improved, camera angles are more dynamic, and player animations have been overhauled. Granted, those animations can still be janky — it’s painfully clear that these are 3D models with limited physics whenever there’s physical contact. Players clipping through each other during tackles or dribbles remains a jarring sight.
Still, I don’t have many major complaints when it comes to actually sitting through a match. Compared to older editions, FM 26 is easily the best-looking entry yet — for both the men's and women's sides of the game. Even better is during moments where the game is simming the action, there's a 2D match engine that shows the flow of the game, making it easier to see what's going on between highlights.
Women's Leagues are here in Football Manager 26
One major thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the inclusion of Women’s Football in the game for the first time. It's been teased since 2021, with SI acknowledging it would take years to integrate the women's game properly — and now, it's finally here. I quite like it. As with any new league, the challenge lies in learning how this side of the football world operates compared to what you already know. The database of players is completely new to me, but I appreciate how FM handles it: the stats system treats men’s and women’s attributes on equal footing. A "20" in any skill means the same thing, regardless of gender — it's not scaled down or adjusted to make women appear inferior.
Both men's and women's leagues load into the game together and can't be separated. So if you start a save in countries like England or France, you'll automatically have both their domestic leagues running simultaneously. That said, there are differences between the two experiences. SI clearly tried to reflect the real-world dynamics of women’s football — lower transfer fees, smaller budgets, more player movement, and shorter contracts. Even injury trends are represented realistically, with women being more prone to long-term ACL injuries compared to men.
Beyond that, though, much remains the same. The familiar issues persist: broken player interactions ("What do you mean this player wants a new contract with four years left on his deal?") and repetitive press conferences that start to feel like déjà vu after your tenth match week. I have over 1,000 hours in FM 24, and it's the same conversations. Please, lord, make it stop.
Is Football Manager 26 worth it?
Yes — but with an asterisk the size of a Match Day tactics board. The foundation here is undeniably strong. The move to Unity has given FM its biggest technical leap in years; the in-match presentation is genuinely improved, and the inclusion of women’s football finally delivers on a promise SI made long ago. Tactics feel smarter and more flexible, and there’s a level of polish under the hood that suggests real ambition for where the series is headed.
However, for every step forward, FM 26 takes a step sideways — largely due to a frustrating new UI that prioritizes simplicity over depth. The new UI is sleek, much like an empty apartment, but it strips away the intuitive complexity that made FM such a joy to get lost in. Longtime players will feel that friction immediately; the sense of immersion that once pulled you into its spreadsheets and stat lines now feels diluted, hidden behind extra clicks and menus that just don’t need to exist.
And yet, despite my complaints, I know I’ll keep playing. Because that’s the thing about Football Manager: it gets its hooks in you. You can gripe about the interface all day, but the moment you find that one wonderkid or pull off a last-minute equalizer in a cup final, the magic returns.
So yes, Football Manager 26 is worth it — not because it's perfect, but because even at its most frustrating, it still captures the beauty, chaos, and heartbreak of football better than anything else out there.
Topics Sports Video Games
