i know what it’s like to need to do an entire refresh. this sucks.
fm26 marks the move to the unity engine, which is a massive undertaking. every animation, every match engine calculation, every bit of the simulation had to be rebuilt. sports interactive originally planned to release this as fm25, but cancelled that version when they admitted the overall player experience and interface wasn’t where it needed to be.
the good news: the game looks better than it ever has. stadiums feel alive. player models are more expressive. the lighting is genuinely impressive for a management sim. players now move with much more fluid and natural motion, making matches appear far more realistic.
the reality: this feels like a foundation year. the ui has been rebuilt from the ground up, and it shows—not always in good ways. one review put it bluntly: “until sports interactive fixes most of the user interface bugs, this feels like an alpha football manager 27. it feels like cities: skylines 2 at launch.”
on the plus side, fm26 is the first game in the series to fully integrate women’s football, with over 35,000 licensed players. it also finally has the official premier league license.
as someone who’s been through large-scale rewrites myself, i have sympathy. miles jacobson said this was about “setting sports interactive up for the next twenty years.” sometimes you have to burn it down to build it better. i just hope fm27 delivers on what this version is setting up.