Sega announces Football Manager 26 release date, bringing the series back from the bench
Pre-orders for the PC versions are now available if you want to score FM26 before launch.
Sega’s Football Manager series has been in a bit of disarray the past year. You could chalk it up to the cancellation of Football Manager 25 (FM25), which was meant to be the 2025 entry for the series. The would-be game faced multiple delays and feature omissions before ultimately getting shelved.
However, the franchise is bouncing back with Sega’s latest announcement that Football Manager 26 (FM26) will be releasing later this year.
FM26 is set to bring the big changes that FM25 was supposed to usher in. This includes the shift to Unity, which was one of the reasons why FM25’s development was tumultuous. With the extra time that the team at Sports Interactive got (and presumably the lessons learned), Sega says that Unity will allow FM26 to have new animations and visual effects based on “real gameplay” to make the matches more immersive.
This is in addition to a new UI, which also utilises Unity. There’s a re-designed navigation bar that includes a Portal page (also brought over from FM25), which is a hub for key information like your inbox and match schedules. Alongside this is the ‘Tiles and Cards’ system, where each page has relevant info summarised into bite-sized tiles. These tiles can then be expanded into more detailed cards when you click them.
FM26 will also debut management for women’s football clubs, and will also show off the fruits of Football Manager’s Premier League licensing deal, with official club badges, kits, player names and photos available in the game. These two features were set to appear in FM25, too.
Finally, FM26 will allow players to carry over save data from FM24 and FM23 (the mobile version of FM24 is only compatible with FM26, so take note).
Pricing and Availability
Football Manager 26 will release on 5 November this year, and is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam (with macOS support), Epic Games Store and Microsoft’s Xbox Store. FM26 Mobile (iOS and Android) will release on the same day as the rest of the platforms, though it’s not Unity-powered and is only available for Netflix subscribers. Finally, the Nintendo Switch version, dubbed FM26 Touch, will be Unity-powered, but will only release on 4 December.
Local pricing for the game is set at S$80, and only the PC versions (those linked above) are currently available for pre-order. These pre-orders get a 10% discount, and early bird purchasers can play an Early Access version of the game approximately two weeks before launch, with data saved when moving to the full release.