The trouble with reinventing the wheel from scratch after you’ve already perfected it is the simple fact that most people like a smooth ride. Football Manager 26 is one of those moments where the wheel is being reinvented, coming two years following “the most complete Football Manager of all time,” as some might say. So when it comes to a new UI, taking away some features, placing some things in weird or hidden places, and setting out timelines for the return of certain parts of the game. It was always going to lead to pitchforks and fire from at least a few people.

Or, if you’ve spent any time online these past two-ish weeks, you’ll know that it has been a bin fire full of batteries and fryer grease. The vocal people screaming that it is “literally” unplayable after 30 minutes to 2 hours, the people in the middle still trying to get to grips with everything, and then there are the sociopaths like me who’ve played far too much. Is Football Manager 26 better in every way when it comes to FM24? No, I’m not Manchester United or Arsenal levels of delusional. Arteta isn’t winning the league, Amorim still can’t win a trophy, and FM26 is a bit ropey in places.

Aside from a new UI and far too many fixture modules (or “tiles and cards”) in the new home screen, one of the other new additions is Women’s football. As I’ve said to a player in the database and to another’s family members, I love Women’s football because the wind won’t knock them down. A massive addition to the database, this offers several leagues (some I’ll moan about), a new philosophy to top-tier football, and a whole lot of players I actually know the names of without looking them up online. Though speaking of players I don’t know, the “major” addition was the Premier League license.

Inadvertently, through playing and engaging in the background of the wider discourse around Football Manager 26, there is a degree of “one step forward, two steps back” that I almost agree with. Everyone and their granny seems to be moaning about the state of the UI from the beta and now release, which I can’t entirely disagree with, as the “Portal” is 60-70% fixtures. Some of those tiles and cards feel too cramped and sometimes filled with unnecessary bits and pieces. Then you get to the data hub, and if I’m honest, I’ve seen more data on the inside of a toilet bowl.

The problem with the data hub is that I’m left asking, “What does that tell me on the pitch?” If you’re in Team Analytics and look to figure out your passing game, you’re given those four-quadrant scatter plot graphs, telling you which team in the league is better or worse. Again, when it comes to players, when it comes to sections of the pitch, when it comes to teams I’m facing, this graph shows me which teams are worse, but not too much of how. It is the same graph style for Player Analytics, too.

It’s leaving you in the dark on which side of the pitch to focus the ball down, where the attacks come in to your Final Third, and lots more. There is the use of the radial/polygon charts for individual players and team’s attacking or defending data, histograms on player form, and in one instance of showing the pitch, Goal Analysis. Heat maps, passing maps, and little details that those who care more about this are angrier about are all gone. Maybe hidden, but that’s kind of the problem.

When I see those bemoaning FM26 is “more of a console game,” “dumbed down,” and so on, I think that’s summed up by the data rather than the UI changes at large. The UI isn’t terrible, but at the same time it’s not good – and I’ll tell you why. Just look at the “Portal – Overview” screen: Fixtures in the top right, stages of whatever competition you’re next playing in the bottom right, Calendar center bottom, Fixtures and Next opposition Report tiles in the center, a news carousel in the top center, and messages on the whole left side. Why are so many tiles focused on fixtures?

I said it in the article I did before the embargo on reviews lifted; this is not only lacking the modular nature of FM24 skins, but it seems to lack any idea of what I believe most people (the vocal ones at least) care about. Fixture Schedule, sure, but I don’t know why I need the calendar when I could just click on the date in the top right next to the “continue/go to match” button. Or the shortcut next to messages on the Portal submenu itself. Again, the question over the UI that I keep returning to is “what does this do that nothing else on this screen does?”

Bookmarks are a great addition that does what nothing else does: It takes me directly to whatever I want without a drop-down menu. I think that’s what a lot of people I’ve heard from are unwilling to express concisely: The workflow for some players is not only monotonous, but in places, things like the calendar are redundant. I don’t know the exact numbers, but with millions of players all playing in vastly different styles for vastly different reasons, the way some of this UI is implemented doesn’t entirely work. That isn’t a “unlearn and relearn thing,” that’s a play style thing.

Some are focused on playing a season or two with a big club, then starting a fresh new save, which is fine. Some will focus on a lower league and try and get them up through the football pyramid. Then there are psychos like myself who’ll play into the decades, growing a club, a nation, or even a trophy cabinet from across the globe in multiple leagues, across a multitude of systems. The latter of which is a bit more story-focused, a bit more focused on those news articles telling you that Rúben Amorim was sacked after getting Man United relegated.

It’s stories like that, which feed the shifting world narrative that only happens in your game. Indeed, where’s the sauce? The fantasy land nonsense that puts Scottish football on its head, the giants felled in English football by Wigan, and the notion that Wayne Rooney was good at anything as a manager. The storytelling of prior years, particularly FM24, is what I fell in love with. Players you identify and eventually get signed by the real-life counterparts because you’re just so damn good, but also the teams you fall in love with because you do a globe-trotting adventure.

In the four saves that I’ve done throughout the beta, I didn’t have that spark so much. Though that could have been simply the fact that it is the beta: I started with a Houston Dash save curtailed by registration issues, moved on to a Southhampton save bringing Teagan Bowie down to rejoin Micky and Abbie, played a Falkirk save for a bit because of course I did, and to check out the Premier League license I made sure Slot got the sack at Liverpool, proving the team can be good, even with those players. Though I won’t turn down an Egypt save in a future journeyman.

My saves and experiences thus far are about seeing how the game works out, and despite my moaning and echoing of the moans by a loud section, I do like Football Manager 26. The match engine is visually improved, despite lacking a couple of simple things like more incremental match speeds. The Premier League license looks great, though I’d slow that pre-match drone down a touch more, with all the graphical uplifts from team sheets and league tables to vague interpretations of stadiums. “The stadiums aren’t right, though.” So? There are thousands to model.

Depending on several factors, the match engine not only looks great, but can feel great, as the tactics overall have become more important. It’s no longer just one tactic you’re setting up, but rather two, so you’re watching the team flow in and out of positions based on their spots in the phase of play. You can take advice if you want to jump straight in, or you can be a weirdo like me, having two separate tactics based on opposition tactics and tweak lots of little bits. Both my tactics at Liverpool have Inside Forwards and a Channel Forward, with my 4-2-3-1 Wing Play also having a Channel Midfielder.

I can already hear the “That’s stupid, they should be an Advanced Playmaker,” great, but I’ve got Liverpool unbeaten from July 26th when I took over to early December when I last played this morning, beating Man City twice. When tactics work, tactics work for whatever rhyme or reason. I won’t call myself a tactical genius, not publicly anyway, but once you get a handle of these new in and out of possession tactics, it becomes a whole lot more intriguing. Player animations feel a bit more like the real game – looking before a cross, hands behind the back in the penalty area, and so on.

The in-match between highlights screen is something that I’m honestly not excited about. From left to right, you have the home side’s formations and team sheets, you have match stats in a panel with momentum and the xG graph, the next panel is match events (goals and cards) and match info (attendance, Ref name, weather), then the away team formation/team sheet. None of that I’m too bothered about. I could do with always seeing xG and match momentum over formations – though I’d like to see opposition stamina too.

My “problem” is dugout advice, Latest Scores/league table being expandable, and the great big tablet with everyone’s trackers showing where they are on the pitch during the game. Dugout advice is fine, but I don’t need to know of every individual substitution the opposition makes, I don’t need updates on every score elsewhere in the league, and what advice is there can often be ignored. The tracker tablet, however, is either far too fast during gameplay to figure anything out or takes too long to get through matches. Match highlights I’ve set to 1.25 speed as it’s a balance for both styles of football, and the tablet between highlights speed is 20x the speed.

In theory, the tablet works, but in reality, I think it might have been better served as a Data Hub, a post-match analysis sort of idea. Something to highlight where players are doing the tactic right or doing it wrong. Something to break down why a tactic is or isn’t working in a post-mortem sort of way, instead of trying to make sense of scatter plot charts. At a decent speed to stop matches from lasting 30 minutes as is with the new “Dynamic Highlights,” it feels clunky, cumbersome, and is very difficult to analyze during a match.

Though I know why Sports Interactive has removed shouts and such, having this effectively replace those points of interaction during matches feels bare. “The shouts didn’t do much,” ask your partner how much you do in the bedroom vs that battery-operated thing in their bedside drawer, then we can talk about useless things. The shouts aren’t necessarily about the on-pitch players; it is as much about my manager, the character in this situation, having a bit of expression. That’s sort of lost in a system that feels less interactive now.

It’s not just in the match engine that this is a problem, either. Sports Interactive and particularly Miles have said the philosophy with the FM25 come FM26 UI redesign is to do away with emails in place of things like WhatsApp, as a sign of the times. I think that philosophy has gone a bit too far into “You’re just sending texts” instead of looking at Football Manager 26 as much as a text-based RPG over a sending texts RPG. In press conferences, player meetings, or even staff meetings, you cannot gesture to emphasize whatever text option you’ve picked. Again, personality and interaction are thrown away.

Those two things don’t make FM26 unplayable, far from it. The point is more so that storytelling thing I was on about, which goes hand-in-hand with seeing news and what people in your save are saying. I don’t want to say that a lot of that immersion has been ripped away, there are still social comments under news posts and all, I think it is just the way it is shown. The way news stories are sort of crushed into a small window in this Tiles and Cards system means that the actual in-game “news” article is a thin strip, like reading the newspaper through the letterbox, while the comments get breathing room.

A good example of that immersion from FM24 versus 26 is the Around The World sort of thing, showing fixtures elsewhere, world football news, and rumors that spiral. Rarely do you have a reason to go to the “News Site” tab of your Portal, and I’ll admit rarely has it been forced in my face either. Even then, the so-called “interesting” bit is a column next to fixtures and stages that’s just text-based titles of articles. Unless you know the name Xabi Alonso, “Alonso on Who to Watch” flies over your head, and you’re ignoring these little bits hidden away.

Again, this goes back to the UI thing everyone is on about with FM26. It feels like everything is just a click away, but oftentimes you don’t know where that click exactly is. For example, Team Meetings are no longer a big red button of “we need to discuss the unhappiness,” you need to go into the Squad window, right click on the team name, and then you can click on Team Meeting. To find staff, you need to bring up the drop-down menu for Club, click “Staff,” then click on “Club Staff” to see which positions are unfilled at the club. Always another click away.

This is where I understand the complaints about the UI/UX, because it can feel like things are hidden away. Some are fixed by the Bookmarks, but at the same time, it feels like “what is the point in so much of the UI elsewhere, then?” Again, to go back to it, you can bookmark the calendar and the fixture schedule (which are already repeated on the home screen) and you can click on the date for the calendar as is, which is above the bookmarks. I’m as baffled by those decisions as some men are confused about Women’s football being included this year.

Yes, a transition as clunky and loud as a full set of kitchenware being thrown down a concrete staircase: Let’s talk about Women’s football and FM26. I love it! Ok, let me pull that back a little bit because I do have complaints and things to highlight, but for transparency, I’ve been to a lot more Women’s football than I’ve been to Men’s football in the last decade. I could go into more detail, but the point is that WSL and WSL 2, Liga F, NWSL, A-League, and so on, are a good start. A few decent baseline leagues, teams under that for promotion and relegation, and so on.

I have, however, repeatedly banged on about “why is Wales in there with the Adran Premier over leagues and nations that the game itself is ranking leaps and bounds higher?” I believe the majority of the database work for all leagues is generally done through volunteer scouting, of sorts. So when the SWPL runs unplayable like a ghost ship in the distance while ranked 21st by default (SWPL 2 ranked 48th), Sweden’s Elitettan is fully licensed and playable while ranked 20th, and the Adran Prem is ranked 61st, it is a bit “disheartening,” might be the wrong word. The teams and leagues are there, they’re just not playable, to which community databases come into play.

Much like the mad people that do the whole 10 tiers of English Men’s football, smaller numbers are adding in the ability to play as Hibs, Celtic, Rangers, Glasgow City, Aberdeen, Gartcairn, Falkirk, Hutchinson Vale (relegated last season with a goal difference of -200), and so on. As well as lower league additions for England, France, and so on, but also other parts of Europe that were missed, like Austria.

So with that said, let’s address the smelly men in the corner, “is it Premier League level quality?” If you think a league like the WSL with prize money that’s 1/200th of that of the English Premier League’s prize money, then I need to speak with your dealer. No, the attendance, the size of the stadiums, the prize money, the wage bill, the notoriety, and so on aren’t comparable because you don’t actually care about Women’s football. That’s fine. If you don’t like it, then don’t talk about it. In more ways than one, I’m drawn to Vivianne Miedema’s comments to the Telegraph, “We need to be really careful not to just turn into the men’s game.”

In the match engine, there are small tweaks to make it distinct, make it slightly more realistic to the Women’s style of football. Though similarly to the Men’s side, players are going down a little too easily – something not characteristic of Women’s football. For me, it is a great addition that much like FM26 as a whole, is a good-great building block to launch from for next year’s release and the year after that, and so on. I think what will carry Women’s football this year in particular will be the player-shared databases, which I’m excited to see more of, especially the creative ones that introduce pro/rel to the US, both in Men’s and Women’s football.

All of this said, there have been technical hiccups I’ve encountered, not just in small ways, but some significant ways. One that I knew was going to happen at least in the beta was the pronoun mix-up that is common the first time a game series introduces Women in leading roles. That’s a “funny” one that we don’t see too much of now since the PS2 was discontinued. I also had the player who comes on as a substitute, but comes on while wearing a tracksuit instead of the team kit. Like water off a duck’s back, those two aren’t anything to get angry about.

However, I’ve had the entire between highlights screen bug out, which lead to my only crash around 28 hours in, I’ve had the camera locked to the corner kick view, the Houston Dash save didn’t register players before registration closed, players that were handed a red card appearing to be substituted, and minor UI bits where drop down menus wouldn’t appear. Only one of those is actually game-breaking – the rest are more frustrating. However, some online have called this a travesty of the highest order, because in 2025 a game was released with bugs. Breaking news, the internet is full of overreacting drama queens.

Performance is something I can understand being angry about, as I’m seeing odd drops now following the updates of the Beta from the 30th of October onward. I’ve also seen significant drops in frame rate when you shrink the bar along the bottom in the match engine showing your players, though I so rarely do it that I’m not too fussed about that. Again, that’s more annoying and solvable than “broken, can’t be fixed, totally unplayable, I want my refund!”

As a whole, Football Manager 26 is a bit like a stupid-lovable dog; sure, he turns your cream rug brown and is sick on the bed after you’ve just put fresh sheets on, but he runs up to you when you get home, curls up around you when you spread out on the couch, and also hates that neighbor you hate. What I’m saying is that despite its flaws, and there are many this year, there is something in there if you’re willing to deal with the sick on the bed and a poopy rug.

I love the addition of Women’s football, even if I wish it were more involved. I understand why, but all the same, it needs a lot of building. The look of the new match engine and the Premier League license in particular look great. The best bit of all is easily the tactics, providing a lot more depth to explore and test out, or leave to your staff. The bookmarks are great, but I’d like something a bit more meaningful, which is really a fault with the UI itself rather than the bookmarks having minor redundancies.

Ultimately, while I don’t love Football Manager 26 as much as I did with FM24, there is a reason I’ve put in about 120 hours since the Beta dropped. FM26 isn’t for everyone, and I don’t think everyone is going to love it right now, but they will like it more in a month or two with patches, or maybe wait until FM27 next year. I’m hoping Sports Interactive can resolve most of the issues with FM26, but the reality is, I don’t think anyone wants to hear it.

Following the cancellation of FM25, there is an expectation, a belief that the ambition of FM26 was sky high, and when it was a lot more realistic, that’s when people are attacking and bemoaning the game. Rightly or wrongly, people are going to do it, and in some cases, I can’t blame them. Especially if it is a performance-based issue. In the very vocal “it’s dumbed down” and “they’ve made it a console game” comments, I do want to ask those people to expound on what they are saying.

A PC review copy of Football Manager 26 was provided by SEGA for this review.

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Football Manager 26

$59.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• New tactics.
• The match engine improvements.
• Women's football.

Cons

• The UI, often redundant and rarely great.
• The Data Hub is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.
• Still some major technical issues after a while in Beta.