FM 26 releases November and reimagined UI first look

Right, now that I’ve finished writing up a match report for a European game, I can fill my shorts with excitement over FM26. I thought when I did the news about the match engine and specs earlier this week, we wouldn’t get more details for at least another week to come, but I was wrong. Revealed to the surprise and excitement of many of us, the Football Manager YouTube channel dropped a new trailer covering UI (kinda), and we got a release date.

The trailer itself isn’t too detailed, but it does showcase some of the “representative UI – final experience may differ,” and I want to highlight that because, as we so often see at this stage, there are bits covered up. Throughout the trailer, there are quick pans over several menus, with the main focus being on the new “Portal,” which is effectively your homescreen in your save. You have the revamped inbox now called “Messages,” world news, fixtures, the calendar showing upcoming events, team reports, fixture schedule, and the league table which is called “Stages.”

It is all very clean, very nice, and accessible, with the navigation bar moving to the top rather than the side. I’m not complaining about that. The side functions for my work emails as I stumble through constant press releases, but this functions more like your browser does as you focus on the center for whatever you’re working on, but you move around using the top of the screen. What’s interesting is how much of those other – I’m going to call them tabs – look like, as bits are blurred out presumably so the team can finalize things and pull focus onto the talking points.

No, there isn’t an in-depth look at the “Reimagined User Interface,” but what little we do see shows a bit more flexibility and quality of life improvements. Bookmarks make an appearance, allowing you to quickly access certain things that you prefer to look at, rather than it just being a spreadsheet, as per usual. Don’t get upset, we also got a look at the player profile, and for the most part, we’ve got everything intact. It looks like an overview with panels to click on for detail, which is a good move forward.

The final thing I’ll mention, so that I’m not going blow-by-blow, is the search and revamped ability to more or less learn the game as you go. The search is shown and is said to offer a wider area of topics to quickly find whatever, whenever, wherever. Search options include team reports, “entities” such as stadiums, teams, and people, but most importantly, the new “FMpedia.” The FMpedia is essentially every detail given full descriptions, highlighted phrases to further read on, related topics below, and, in the example of squads, a link straight to the topic at hand in forms of gameplay.

From what we see, analysing and simply observing the trailer’s quick cuts between topics, everything we’re used to with FM24 and further back is still there. However, this new UI and new game in general look to be more accessible, cleaner, nicer to look at from first glance, and most importantly, giving you the information you need just a click or two away. I’m excited to see more and hopefully get hands-on in just a few more weeks.

Alongside the trailer came both a release date and a press release. Set to release the day before everyone in the UK is setting off fireworks in residential areas to celebrate terrorism (meanwhile painting roundabouts), Football Manager 26 will be released on November 4th, 2025. The Steam page also confirms, after updating beyond the vague guff the other day, that pre-orders will get you “advanced access.” Not just available on Steam, but also noted to be available via the Epic Games Store. According to the Steam post and press release on this, it will be available “two weeks” before launch, so that’s about the 20th-22nd of October.

As for price, that will (of course) change regionally, but broadly speaking, in the UK pre-orders are £44.99, $53.99 in the US, and as usual, €53.99 in Europe. Pre-orders have a 10% discount, so after release, it should be $59.99, €59.99, and £49.99, respectively.

Miles Jacobson, studio director for Sports Interactive, said on the announcement: “I’m honoured and delighted to be revealing Football Manager 26’s release date today. Setting Sports Interactive up for the next 20 years and beyond was an enormous undertaking[,] but I couldn’t be prouder of the efforts of the whole team over the past two years. FM26 represents a landmark release in our quest to produce football management perfection[,] and the whole studio is really excited to share it with the world.“

I don’t have words at this point that I can say without shouting at Miles to give it to me now, and mild abuse towards players who don’t perform to the xG. As you might guess, I’m beyond excited for Football Manager 26 and to finally get hands-on with the one feature we’ve still to see but I’m most excited for, women’s football. I think over the next couple of weeks we might see another couple of trailers, mostly focused around the licences, the other new additions, and as I’ve basically ignored here, details on the touch and console versions of the game.