Two years on from FM25’s initial announce, we finally have our first proper look at actual gameplay from Football Manager 26, the game that supplanted it after FM25’s troubled and ultimately cancelled development.
It’s only a brief tease for now: a one minute, 12 second trailer focusing on footage from the new match engine, developed in Unity for the first time. Here’s that trailer for you to have a look:
An immediate stand-out is the level of visual detail. Stadiums and crowds are significantly improved, looking a bit like a FIFA game from the mid-00s. That might sound like an insult, or back-handed compliment at best, but the differences in what these two types of game are doing under the hood are stark – and Football Manager has to run on significantly less powerful hardware at the same time.
As for other changes, you can read much more in our massive Football Manager 25 and 26 interview with series boss and Sports Interactive studio head Miles Jacobson from just a few days ago, where he details the anatomy of an annualised game cancellation in full – from exactly what happened with FM25, to telling Sega about the need to pull the plug, and then what to expect from FM26 itself. We’ve a little extra from that interview to come too, so keep your eyes on the site for more Football Manager goodness.
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