Football Manager 2026: The good, the bad, and the ugly

After two years without a new installment in the franchise, Football Manager 26 is here.

An incredibly long awaited game, it's gone under huge overhauls thanks to it's new engine, Unity, as well as a UI change that has seen the game ditch it's old glorified spreadsheet aesthetic in favour of a tile-based system.

But are any of these changes actually good?

The game has received a pretty mixed reception during its early access beta, and now that we have a few (too many) hours in it, we think it's about time that we go over the good, the bad, and the ugly for this year's installment.

The good

The match engine

We have to start here. The absolute best thing about Football Manager 26. The match engine.

There's absolutely no denying that the switch to Unity and the subsequent upgrades they've been able to make in terms of graphics as a result of that change has improved the viewing experience.

Fast players now accelerate past their opponents, flair players clearly use their skill to trick defenders, too, and even beyond that, it just looks so much better.

It's something that most players will take for granted the moment that they begin to get used to it, but just go back and look at some gameplay from FM24, the difference is night and day.

Considering the issues with the game that we'll get onto shortly, and that this is only the first year of these changes, the change is drastically for the better, and we're excited to see what they do in the future.

Tactical overhaul

Out of possession tactics are something that have been requested by the Football Manager playerbase for a long time, and now that they're here, it's safe to say that we think they're bloody brilliant.

We get it, they might seem a little daunting or confusing at first, but the addition of the OOP tactics have added much more depth to the tactics within the game, and it honestly doesn't take that long to get used to it all.

Of course, it does also mean there are more ways to mess up your team, but doesn't that just make the game more fun? After two years with 24, tactics were pretty solved, this change just gives us a lot more room to experiment and play around with what might work, what might break the match engine, and what might just be a step too far.

The UI

Okay, we know this will be controversial, but we actually do like the UI.

It's very different, we know that. It takes a little bit of time to get used to, we know that, too. But neither of those things mean that the UI is inherently bad, saying otherwise is just being unaware of the fact that the real issue is that you just don't like change.

The UI isn't perfect, and we'll get to that in a little bit, but the main thing is that the potential is there and it's clear. It's easy to see how Sports Interactive will be able to build upon this edition of the games UI in order to improve it in the future, so even the things we complain about will likely soon be obsolete.

That said, regardless of the bugs that currently exist, we think the UI is good. Some of the functionality we're used to might be missing, but its by no means dysfunctional, however much certain players might try to make you believe it is.

It's also visually clean. The landing pages for each of the six main sections show a lot of different jumping in points or data, and that means it's also probably easier for a new player to get to grips with.

And that's probably good for the longevity of the series, even if the oldest of fans take issue with that.

Photo: Sports Interactive

The bad

The UI

We understand this might seem confusing seeing as we just put the UI in the good section, but hear us out.

Like we said before, the UI isn't perfect. It's far from it. Really far, in fact.

There are some screens that we can't not criticise, because they truly are unforgivable. Those screens, of which the "Loans" screen is one of the worst offenders, are rampant with dead space or under-utilised areas around the tiles. And to make matters worse, those screens almost always feature clunky scroll bars that might not even be necessary if the dead space had been utilised.

Dead space and scroll bars are real problems in the game, there's simply just too much of both, and eliminating one of them would probably negate the need for the other. It's something Sports Interactive needs to focus on, and fast.

There's also the issue that a couple of things take a few too many clicks to find, but we're willing to give them a pass on that one, it might just be that we still don't have enough time in the game to figure out the most efficient ways to do things.

Photo: Sports Interactive

The bugs

Football Manager's betas are littered with bugs every year, but this year's game is something else entirely. Over 7000 have been found so far, and with many of them coming somewhere within the UI, it's making the issues there seem far worse than they actually are.

Stability has already improved in the time the game has been out, which is a big thing, but too many things are still going missing from the UI. We still occasionally can't see match stats, certain things are still off centre or overlapping, some things aren't even there at all.

These small bugs, whilst manageable, begin to compound when they are so frequent. It makes the game feel rushed and lazy, and that hasn't helped the sentiments towards it at all.

Considering that none of them are game breaking either, it also means that they will likely be low priority fixes for SI, meaning they could be in the game for a while. It's not exactly a good look when you already had to cancel last year's game because the UI was in such a bad place.

The online experience

If you're like us then a lot of your hours in Football Manager will come in online saves. We love them. We love playing against our friends and beating them over seasons, and we even love watching them beat us and getting the feeling that we actually have something to chase.

Sadly, that might not be possible in this game. Right now, online is a mess.

When testing it, we could barely get through the first month of gameplay. UI bugs were somehow even more frequent, whilst the match experience was miserable. In three games, people had to close their game mid-match on four separate occasions because those games just stopped and wouldn't start again. When two players actually faced each other, they both had to leave the game for it to even kick off.

We eventually gave up on match day four, when all four players advanced into the game and the game never actually advanced. Even if three players were forced on holiday to skip over the day, the host player couldn't force themselves on holiday, so the game just had to be closed.

It's honestly a miserable experience. It'll put a serious dampener on the entire year of FM if it isn't fixed soon.

Photo: Sports Interactive

The ugly

You, the fans

As we've seen reactions to the game, there is one thing that we've begun to ask ourselves - did the people who claim to love the game even want this one to succeed? Or are they still bitter over the fact that SI did the brave (and correct) thing by cancelling last year's game?

Seriously, the amount of people going completely over the top about the aforementioned issues is crazy. Outside of the issues with online, nothing we mentioned is actually game breaking. It's annoying, sure, but it doesn't really have much of an effect on the game itself.

There's also the people giving up after struggling around the UI for an hour or two and then berating content creators for saying it takes 15-20 hours to get used to it. Even worse are the ones calling them liars for saying that.

Go back to when you first played FM - did you instantly understand the UI then? We don't think so.

If you were like us, then you had to get a friend to show you the ropes. Once you knew the basics, then it just became about common sense and muscle memory, and the same is true for the new UI, too. Nothing is that hard to find.

Sure, it might not be as intuitive as the older UI, but it's hardly impossible. You just don't like change, and that's okay, but at least be self aware of it rather than pretending like it's everyone else's problem and blaming someone else.

The loss of the soul

There is, however, one issue with the game that we won't criticise anyone for disliking - the immersion.

To put it plainly: the immersion is gone in FM 26. Poof. Gone. Dead.

We've played through five full seasons now, had over 100,000 players loaded in each one, and we can count on one hand the amount of times we've looked at the other leagues around the world.

Looking at the other leagues used to be an accidental ritual in older FMs, something that you would get lost in and only catch yourself doing when too much time had gone by. It was because the game always passively kept you updated with the other leagues, it always gave you something to catch your eye, but that's all gone in FM 26.

And with it, so is the games soul.

Football Manager 26, for everything it does right, falls down on the most important thing about the game. Making it feel like the world around your team actually matters. Gone are the days of deep diving the Spanish league as an English club, or the second division as any club in the top league of a nation, they just don't feel like they exist anymore. It feels like you're only simulating your own team.

To make matters worse, it barely feels like you're simulating that at times. Instead, it just feels like you're skipping from game to game, transfer window to transfer window. Anything else going on just feels a little invisible.

It's the biggest problem in FM 26, and it's one that feels like will be present all year. Unless SI do a sizable UI update with the Winter database, something they've never done before, that immersion will be sorely lacking from this year's game.

Sadly, it makes the game feel like a shell of its predecessors. Like the light has gone from its eyes. It's a problem that grows larger with each season that we play, so how long before it becomes a problem too big to handle?

This is all without mentioning that the experience of a match itself is worse, even if the graphics are better. We know that Sports Interactive said that they were removing shouts because they didn't work as intended, but that honestly didn't matter to us players. We wouldn't have known that if they didn't say anything.

We used to be able to praise our players, or encourage them if we felt they needed it. Even berate them in times of crisis. It all felt like it didn't something, and now that's gone. When a game isn't going your way, you mostly feel like a passenger. Managing games is now a much more passive experience, and that also hurts the immersion.

It's a shame, because we really do think that FM 26 is a good game that shows a lot of potential to be great. We just fearful that the greatness might not come until FM 27, and we're not sure how many people will still be interested by that point if the gap hasn't already begun to close.