Football Manager 26 beta: Honest review on graphics, tactics, bugs, UI & more

Sports Interactive needs to fix a lot of things

The Football Manager 26 beta is now finally live for the fans and players on PC. The game is officially going to release on November 4, 2025.

We played the beta for hours, and there are many positives and negatives about it for now. Let’s check out more details in this article.

Football Manager 26 beta review & more details

It won’t be a lie to say that this beta has many bugs, crashes and most of the players are hating the UI/UX of the game.

However, the change of engine back to Unity has also done a lot of wonders for the game. The visuals and graphics have improved a lot compared to the previous.

For example, Premier League or Carabao Cup packages were pretty amazing. There are no shouts and motivation, which is kind of a bummer.

Let’s talk about UI/UX now. I have seen a lot of people complaining about the poor UI/UX optimization in the game. Plus, we have also faced some bugs, like: When we were trying to play the match, we wanted to change one player from the substitution squad; however, we weren’t able to do it because of the bug.

UI is pretty different in this game. It’s more like built for the console players; it’s nicer to the eye, a lot of things are going on the screen; however, it is kind of difficult to navigate things.

Also Read: Top 8 best Football Manager 26 saves ideas from FM YouTube stars

And I think that’s me done with #FM26 (at least in the Beta format)Some thoughts: – 5 crashes setting up a game– UI is nicer on the eye, UX is disgustingly bad IMO– No heat maps or data to develop tactics – Highlights/goals don’t workWhat’s your experience so far? pic.twitter.com/zeF6SOddBS

— Steve Hood (@HoodGamingUK) October 24, 2025

The UX of the game is too horrible and hopefully, Sports Interactive might make some changes when the game fully launches.

We tried to put our transfers based on the real date in Football Manager 26. It’s a pretty good experience that the transfers are only happening when they really happen, like a realistic transfer.

Like we tried to make Thierry Henry, the manager of Manchester United, but he didn’t join because of the rivalry between United and Arsenal. So this realistic approach was quite good and pretty different compared to EA FC games.

Now, let’s talk about the tactics. The user can now do everything from A to Z in Football Manager 26. On the ball, off the ball, plus you can change more in this formation. You can keep the tactics different for the right side and the left side. There are instructions for many things, like for set pieces, oppositions, etc.

The user has complete control over tactics in this game. Now, there might be some people who don’t like this aspect, so they can give control to their assistant manager.

But we really do like these changes and you can literally see the results of your tactics in the match from the players and your whole team.

Final Thoughts

Let me just say that if you are playing Football Manager 26 beta, then you should save your files on every major step. The beta has many crashing issues at the time of writing this article.

There are still many bugs and some freezing issues; well, it’s a beta, so this is kind of expected. UI/UX might be hard, but it will take some time to get used to. Hopefully, Sports Interactive can come up with something to make it easier to use.

Apart from this, all the new changes and the time Sports Interactive has taken for Football Manager 26 can be seen in the game. There are many improvements and new content with new leagues, which also makes the game more enjoyable.

Overall, the game is good and making all the changes based on beta complaints will make the game even more better at launch.

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