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It's been a long time, but Football Manager 26 finally here. Since 2025 was the first year we haven't seen anything new Football manager game – or Championship Manager before this – since 1992 it was clear that when Sports Interactive decided to cancel last year's planned entry into the respected football management simulation gameit must have been all in a bad way.
Review of information
Platform reviewed: PC
Available: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S
Release date: November 4, 2025
A few highlights
Unfortunately this will be a recurring theme because Football Manager 26 Essentially, it's still a beta version. There are improvements, and among all the shortcomings, it is important to remember that it is still Football manager at its core.
You'll still be engrossed in the game for hours on end, sacrificing sleep to try and lead your favorite local club to glory… Simple, despite all the hype and excitement around 26 being a complete overhaul of the series, it missed the mark significantly.
However, aside from the visually improved match engine, there is another area where Football Manager 26 really improved: tactics. For the first time in the history of the series, you can now use two tactics at the same time: one when you are in possession of the ball and another when you are not in possession of the ball. The available player roles for each position change, you can use a completely different formation, it works. This adds an extra dynamic to the tactics that we didn't have before, and is one of the few real benefits of the new game.
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the inclusion of women's football for the first time in history, and that too at an impressive level. There are 14 women's leagues in 11 countries, from the world-famous Women's Super League in England to the not-so-famous Adran Premier next door in Wales.
Sports Interactive has 40 researchers dedicated to the women's game only, and while there's no denying that the mode won't be as popular as managing the men's leagues, it's a great move for representation and is crucial to helping the sport become as recognized as it deserves.
Delivered a year late but still undercooked
Unfortunately, even after the post-launch update 26.0.4, Football Manager 26 is still buggy, lacking in features, and a poor excuse for running a full-fledged video game, especially one that has over 20 years of history and consistency to fall back on.
There are so many missing features in this year's edition that were available in previous iterations of the game, including but not limited to: international management, sideline shouting, squad depth tab, real-time cup draws, data center, create a club mode, versus mode, challenge mode, transfer deadline, end of season recap/fanfare, expanded match stats, ability to save preset squads, and so many other less significant changes that I could be here all day.
Best bit
While it still pales in comparison to other modern football games, the match engine is a huge visual upgrade that is long overdue.
Not to mention a ton of bugs that aren't exactly game-breaking, but still infuriating. The ability to select players on the bench to take penalties in a shootout, meaningless text comments during a match, long text wrapping and hiding other text… again, these are just a few examples from a fairly long list.
Even though Sports Interactive reported that there was shouting on the sideline effectively are useless, providing only a minimal boost to morale when done correctly, I still find my muscle memory looking for them in almost every match.
This placebo effect was very real in Football Manager 2024and while I understand the need to update them before returning them as a function, this is perhaps what I'm missing the most. This is also the transfer deadline day, in part due to the missed signing because the documents were submitted only 15 minutes after the deadline, which was something of a special deadline day regime in FM24 would have prevented it. Damn fax.
Teaching an old dog new tricks
Finally, there are many, many UI changes. As more and more players choose Football manager On consoles – despite being a PC exclusive for a long time – development is more focused on them, resulting in a complete overhaul of the user interface.
As a die-hard gamer with over a decade of experience, this was hard for me to get used to. Even though I know how the game fundamentally works, I had to re-learn where everything was and it was very frustrating when I went somewhere I expected but inexplicably wasn't, so I had to resort to the search function.
However, I'm hesitant to call it bad UI design because there's a good chance I don't like it just because it's such a radical change from what I'm familiar with. If you give a brand new player both Football Manager 24 And 26 side by side, have them explore each one, and then ask them which they prefer? I suspect their answer might be 26even if it’s not easy for us veterans.
However, as mentioned earlier, this is still Football Manager. This may be one of the series' worst launches, received by critics and fans alike, but if you love the series despite its flaws, you'll enjoy it. Football Manager 26.
Especially the improved tactics and match engine, because playing tiki-taka with Manchester United in a way that I know we could never do in real life is worth it compared to the match engine we've put up with in the series so far. This game is essentially a beta version Football Manager 27and it should be treated accordingly.
Play if…
Don't play if…
Accessibility
How Football manager have always been mostly spreadsheets, accessibility options come in the form of larger text, a color-blind mode, the ability to enable commentary flashing when a goal is scored, and simple colors for commentary text to help distinguish it from the background.
The game also supports 19 different languages ​​and has a number of mid-match camera settings, but it doesn't have difficulty modes or anything like that as it doesn't require them.
Like everyone Football manager Game, I started a one season save with my beloved Manchester United, with the aim of finishing as high as possible in the league, but not having to worry about long term finances or transfers. According to Steam, at the time of writing I have played about 17 hours of game time.
I experimented a lot with new tactics, spent a lot of time scouting and signing players who could make an immediate impact, and also sold a few (this really helps when Saudi clubs make ridiculous offers for players on your team).
I also checked out the controls in the women's game for a while and experienced many errors. All this was played on Windows 11 PC via Steam. Football Manager 26 isn't particularly intensive since the series is known to run on almost any hardware, but my gaming pc goes in for sports PTX 3080 and 32 GB of memory.
First inspection November 2025
