Football Manager 26

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Not recommended Posted November 26, 2025 on Steam Title: 25 Years of Loyalty Gone: FM26 is a UI Nightmare and a Beta Product in Disguise Rating: 1/5 Stars I have been managing virtual clubs since the days of Championship Manager 01/02. I’ve stuck with this franchise through most of my life that I have been playing games. But Football Manager 2026 is arguably the worst entry I have ever played, and for the first time in two decades, I’m uninstalling before the next game and reverting back to the old one, FM24. As a professional UX/UI Designer, I look at interfaces for a living. The overhaul in FM26 is a textbook example of fixing what wasn't broken. The move to the Unity engine was promised as a revolution; instead, it feels like a regression. Good design dictates that you don't alter User Experience (UX) just to freshen up the User Interface (UI). Yet, SI has done exactly that. They have buried critical information behind unnecessary clicks and flashy, tile-based menus that waste screen real estate. The data density, the very heart of a spreadsheet simulator like FM, has been sacrificed for a "modern" look that serves no function. It’s change for the sake of change, ignoring the muscle memory and workflow built by your core user base over twenty years. A Beta Sold as a Full Release We were sold a brand new era of Football Manager. What we received is, at best, a glorified Beta. The game is incredibly buggy, with menu lags, visual glitches, and crash-dumps that break any sense of immersion. The "living, breathing world" feels sterile and disconnected compared to previous iterations. It’s hard to get lost in a save when you are constantly fighting the interface just to make a substitution or check a scout report. The Verdict I am not against innovation, but I am against bad design. The UI could have been modernized without gutting the usability that made the series great. I will be uninstalling FM26 and reverting to FM24. I won't be spending another penny on this franchise until I see a product that respects its users' time and intelligence. If you are a long-time fan, save your money. This isn't the revolution we were promised; it’s a ruin.
• Not recommended Posted November 4, 2025 on Steam I have already close to 60 hours in this latest iteration of my favorite series, and unfortunately, I have mixed feelings. Setting aside the obvious (but aggravating) bugs and other technical issues, as they will most likely be addressed in updates and hotfixes, I think FM 26 simply wasn't ambitious enough in the right places. It does, however, succeed in the promised tactical innovations. Where it was ambitious but fell short - the UI: The UI overhaul certainly is visually impressive at first glance but really creates a clunky experience when playing the game and navigating through different menus and pages. SI have attributed this to a need for hardcore FM players like myself to "unlearn" what we knew before, but I believe it is more down to poor design choices. It simply is not intuitive in many places. In others, it feels awkward because it was clearly designed to cater to console players. Where it was ambitious and succeeded - tactics: The tactics overhaul in this iteration of FM has truly been fantastic to tinker with. I have always enjoyed the tactical side of the game, and FM 26 has introduced a new level of freedom to tactical-minded managers. While some of the player position terminology is a bit clunky (still better than the outdated terms used before), the overall tactical enhancements are clear. What is more, the game itself seems to respond to a larger variety of tactical choices when compared to previous FM games. In my season-long Braga save, I qualified for the Champion's League using a conservative mid-block approach paired with shorter passing and a lower tempo. In past iterations of FM, it was often difficult to avoid switching to a high pressing, high tempo tactical approach when in poor form. I also briefly tested a defensively solid counter-attack approach with Nottingham Forest, with moderate success. I do think the only thing holding back these tactical innovations is the UI, which makes messing with tactics at best, awkward and at worst, frustrating. Where it was not ambitious enough - the game itself: Aside from the UI and the visual "coat of paint," this is still the same FM we've been getting for years. While, for some, this could be perceived as a positive, I think after waiting two years, I am disappointed with the lack of innovation here. Yes, there are new animations, like players looking up before driving a low cross into the box for a poaching striker to pounce on, but the actual core experience has not changed. In many cases, issues that the FM community have had with the game for over a decade are still present. Players will demand insane wages from you before signing for a team with less standing for lower wages and lower playing time. Where its ambition was oversold - the graphical enhancements: While I have never played Football Manager for the graphics or visual experience, I do think SI oversold this aspect of FM 26. It looks... fine. The most notable improvements are to non-human objects, like trophies, balls, etc. However, the in-game character models are still well over a decade behind other titles. For years, FM players have complained about the strange and unrealistic newgen (players generated by the game) faces. This is still a glaring issue here. I believe the improved and far more varied animations I mentioned previously mask many of the issues with graphical fidelity, making a match feel more "real" when watching it unfold from afar. Conclusions: I am leaving this somewhat negative review out of a sense of duty to the FM community rather than to dog-pile criticism on SI. I genuinely love these games and only share my criticisms to offer constructive criticism as a hardcore player. I only hope that SI takes the FM community's thoughts into account moving forward as they continue updating FM 26 and producing future titles. Long live Football Manager.
• Not recommended Posted November 5, 2025 on Steam This is the type of game that has a yearly release, similar to other sports game (apart from last year of course). That means gradual improvements, maybe not huge change year on year, but definitely noticeable over time and incrementally better. This was the year that was supposed to be the huge leap forward, with a brand new graphics engine and UI Now you have to understand, Football Manager is not your typical game. 80% of its gameplay is essentially staring at spreadsheet for hours and hours whilst playing something in the background. Most of your playerbase spends hundreds if not thoudsands of hours in this game, and that is across multiple editions. So when your core audience has thoudsands of hours spent looking at spreadsheets a certain way, it is always going to be a huge risk reworking your game's entire UI. You have to be extremely careful and build it extremely well if you're going to do that. What SI did, is not even close. Not even a little bit. Let's look at this FM edition as The New, The Old, and the Gone. [[The new]] [Positives] - New tactics system - great, long time coming - New graphics engine - compared to previous FMs? it's good, a big jump forward that leaves the door open for a lot of big improvements in the future. Compared to your average game? Looks like a 2012 game - Some tiny changes like the mentoring screen [Negatives] - The entire UI and UX. The entire game has been redesigned from the ground up, and it's bad. There is one thing to force people to forget their muscle memory to learn something better and another to make everything a worse experience. Menus are hidden, screens are hidden, navigation is not intuitive, features are barebones, there are essential things missing, etc. -- The UI is clearly made with console first in mind -- The UI is not scaleable. It looks the same on a small screen as it does on a wide monitor. It's very difficult to look at on a larger screen. -- Key UX principles have been ignored when building this game. There are popups in popups in popups. There are screens with 3 bits of information that you need to click inside a popup to view. -- Key UI principles are out the window. Everything has thick borders. Things that are not clickable have borders. There are lists of 20+ items that each have borders on them to click on. It's visual overload and it makes people's heads dizzy -- Functional bugs - the entire game is buggy. From obscure transfer history screens, to features completely not working, to the game freezing at half time. Breadcrumbs don't work. Back button sometimes works ,sometimes doesn't, sometimes it takes you to a random place. Menus don't take you where you're supposed to go. Back arrows reset everything you filtered before and move you to the top of the screen even if you scrolled 40 entries down -- Visual bugs - the game is INCREDIBLY unpolished. There are basic ui bugs like text cutting off, there are average UI bugs like dropdowns, checkboxes and radio buttons looking from a completely different game, and there are huge UI bugs like screens just not working properly. About 80% of the screens look like they were not fully polished -- The speed - the game UI is incredibly slow. If you're going to put every bit of information behind minimum 3 clicks and 3 popups, it should be LIGHTNING fast. It's currently slower than a chrome tab on a Windows Pentium. -- The flickers - every screen, menu and interaction is flickery when you go in an out -- The rendering - the UI just looks weird, some elements are blurry and don't look HD, while others look very sharp and pixely, like they are not rendered properly. -- The ballon d'Or winners are bugged -- I can go on forever [[The old]] Now let's talk about the old - aka what was already in there. Believe it or not, aside from the two bits under positive (graphics engine and tactics), all of that UI talk is just covering a new wrapper of the EXACT.SAME.GAME. Exactly, under the new UI and two new features, the game is absolutely the same game that was FM24. All of the core gameplay features have remained completely unchanged. Player interactions, transfers AI, contract negotiations, signing staff, manager movements, league and game sim AI, transfer logic, transfer and contract values, player development, training, etc. It's all the exact same and has seen no improvements. So what we're looking at in FM26 is spending tens if not hunderds of hours trying to adjust to a new UI in order to play the exact same game outside the matches. [[The gone]] Finally, let's look at what's not here anymore. SI have announced that a bunch of features will be gone from FM26 (like international management, touchline shouts) and people have debated that enough. What they haven't announced though, is the countless of other features that they removed without notice. There are lists of tens of features completely or partially gone under the hood. Maybe not many huge ones, but a big part of quality of life. And as this game is played 80% outside the match day, these add up a lot. -- Data has been reduced to a minimum. Passmaps and heatmaps are gone from the game and the deep stats are barely there anymore -- Records and history of leagues, players and best XIs are gone -- Training is worse on all aspects -- Staff management is worse -- Youth team and player development is almost non existent -- Navigating the world is a lot worse -- The feeling of immersion is gone, as the "around the world" and "leagues in focus" sections are basically gone. You also don't get your shortlist's news tab anymore so good luck keeping track of staff or players at other clubs. -- The world feels smaller A lot of people have said this before and I really tend to agree - They decided to shift direction in order to appeal to more casual "fifa career mode" fans by simplifying every aspect of the game and dumbing down the part that happens between the matches.
• Not recommended Posted December 14, 2025 on Steam I’ve been playing Football Manager since 2004, easily 300+ hours every year. FM26 is the first time I genuinely feel disconnected from the series. The UI feels like a mobile game forced onto PC. Too much empty space, oversized buttons, and far less information on screen. FM used to be about depth and control, now it feels simplified and hand-held. I don’t feel like a manager anymore, just someone clicking “recommended” options. The match engine looks smoother, but the football itself feels less meaningful and repetitive. Change isn’t the problem. Losing depth is. FM26 doesn’t feel like Football Manager.
• Not recommended Posted January 1, 2026 on Steam I've never left a review before but the state of this game has prompted me into venting a bit. As someone who has played CM/FM since 1992 and sunk an embarrassing amount of hours into the game in its various guises, I guess I'm the sort of player that SI is trying to move away from with this iteration. But it's not just the change of UI and people shouldn't be gaslighted into believing that the negative reactions are solely down to older players who just don't like change. FM26 is simply a bad game. The UI is very poor. It scales terribly to my 27" monitor, the panels are ugly, the colour scheme makes it very difficult to differentiate action buttons or spot new options, the information presented is truncated to near-meaningless summaries and then hidden away across multiple sub-menus. And even then there is often just less information than was available in previous games. The new tactical interface looked like it'd be the main draw for me and the new basic positioning options are certainly a positive development. But the rest of the match experience is a massive disappointment. There are a few player animation upgrades but most of the graphic changes seem to be lighting, stadiums and 'cut scenes' which don't really affect the gameplay. Meanwhile, maybe 90% of the statistics and analytics have been entirely removed from the game. Gone. It isn't even possible to tell how many passes an individual player has made during a match. Nor how many headers. There are some very, very basic menus with passing percentages but the information is of the most basic, nursery level of detail and is effectively useless. There are no analytics - none. In complete contradiction to real life football's ongoing recent trend, SI has decided to dumb down its game so no-one can really understand what's happened on the pitch outside of the highlights. The addition of the 2d pitch in-between highlights is fantastic, but it doesn't overcome the removal of the analytics (and the basic bugs in the minimal data that is available) - even for players like me who play on Comprehensive highlights. My overall impression is that FM26 feels like someone who has never played CM/FM asked a company who has never played CM/FM to make a mobile port FM-knockoff to try and fleece some Early Access sales. Will it get better? Who knows. I've seen a lot of people justify the state of the game by saying the move to Unity has resulted in a 1* CA / 5* PA game. So I guess I'm reviewing the 1* CA and right now I couldn't recommend this mess to anyone.
• Not recommended Posted December 22, 2025 on Steam UPDATE Feb '26 (nearly 300 hours of my life wasted at this point to satisfy you, the reader): Kennels are more of a dog than this game is. Don't be waylaid by the casual player who has never played FM24 and thinks that the updates have fixed anything beyond putting lipstick on a filth covered pig. If you like mascara amongst a mud pit, then you are in for... disappointment. Everyone who plays this game gains nothing but disappointment, not even a relief for our masochism. Then again, the world is going to hell, why not hope for the best with the indomitable averageness of another FM release? Brother, sister, hear me now: this ain't it. If this game is good at anything, it is killing one's love of the beautiful game. And for that we should lambast the lot of them with their Sega lanyards. TL;DR - Abandon hope all ye who purchase here. No, this is not an upgrade from FM24 (nor FM23, nor FM22, nor FM21 tbh). Don't buy this game unless you're being held at gunpoint. Then refund it. Let's break this down (I've got 135ish hours into the game at the time of reviewing, Plus 1000s of hours into previous games) The good: - A marginal upgrade to the in-match graphics. - The addition of the real names to competitions (something that could be modded since at least FM12 when I started playing, so not really an upgrade) The neutral: - The in-game engine has not changed despite the reskin. All that is present now is that you can better see the nonsense that occurs in-match e.g. players still attempt to shoot from roughly 5 degree angles instead of crossing to a central player. This has been an issue with the game logic for over a decade. The bad (and oh dear, there is so much bad. Let's breakdown how much worse this game is to previous editions): - The UI is astonishingly bad. Let's be clear here: they took two whole years to take a functional UI and make it so bad that the SI forums are littered with people trying to find workarounds for simple functions (search "how do I create friendly matches for U21 teams" if you want to claw your eyes out in frustration) - There is still an extraordinary backend bias towards some teams and their players (and thus the reverse against their opponents). The exceptional scouting of FM of old departed years ago and we've been fighting an uphill battle against the SI shills ever since. - If you care about anything more than shots, possession or corners, then the in-match data set will make you cry. That's all you get. Care about, for instance, chances created? You have to wait until the match is over. - I genuinely thought that the 'shouts' feature had been abolished. Nope, it's just harder to find AND use. - Opposition instructions for player can only be set before a match for "anticipated lineup", so if a player is selected that falls outside that ambiguous parameter then you'll have to set it yourself. - Related to the above: in-match opposition instructions are a weird little button that you have to fumble around to find like a blind man looking for Babylon. - In-match, should a sub be made by your opponent, it will 9 times out of 10 not be reflected in the opposition instructions section anyway so I hope you remembered the name from the 2 second pop up that occurred in-game. - Online saves are capped so that even in a single team save, you will run out of space before the end of a single season. Have SI run out of Sega money for cloud saves? Or are they pocketing the money for future game failures? Who is to say? Not I, a humble acolyte and football devotee. I care only for the game, and there is no game here. - Set pieces are fundamentally broken. Throughout an entire season as Arsenal, I’ve scored two goals from corners (and neither were directly, they came from unforced errors after the fact), nobody has scored one against me (nor in other games). Nobody in the entire league has scored a free kick, which is unsurprising when I note that in my own matches no free kicks are ever shot at the goal, they’re always laid off to a nearby player. There are more problems but right now I can't recall them. The above represents a good cross section of the worst of them. All in all, this game is a disgrace. SI should refund the lot of us and spend a good long time sitting in the corner alone thinking about what they've done (or rather, spent 2 years not doing).