Miles Jacobson on Football Manager 26, Modding & a New Era of FM

When Miles Jacobson sits down for an interview, love him or hate him, you’ve got to take note. At Tokyo Game Show 2025, the Sports Interactive boss spoke about Football Manager 26 as if he was introducing a whole new franchise rather than a yearly update.

Credit to Gamerbraves.com for the info and images!

And before we even get to the tactics overhaul, the first thing that had long-time players leaning in was the future of modding.

Modding

With FM26 shifting to the Unity engine and rewriting so many of its systems, some fans feared the series’ famous moddability might get lost. Jacobson was quick to reassure them:

“We’re no longer supporting 17-year-old laptops. We’re now supporting 10-year-old laptops. What other games are doing that when new things come through?”

He confirmed that logo packs, facepacks and other graphic mods will still work at launch. The catch is that custom skins and screen-configuration tools won’t be available on day one, but SI intends to add them later in the cycle.

“It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens throughout this cycle,” Jacobson teased, implying that the modding scene will have room to breathe once the foundations settle.

For a series that owes much of its staying power to its community of tinkerers, that’s a relief.

Lessons From FM25

Jacobson didn’t dodge the rather big elephant in the room: last year’s cancelled Football Manager 25.

“We failed… I apologise to everyone out there for not delivering a game last year,” he said, explaining that SI had been too ambitious and that the first attempt at a new UI “just didn’t work.”

The team hit the reset button and began asking themselves: If we started over, would we build it this way? In many cases, the answer was no.

That rethink has shaped FM26’s core philosophy. Jacobson framed it as:

“People can’t think of FM26 as the next version of the series. It’s the first version of the next 20 years.”

New Tactics

Among the most striking changes is the split tactics system, allowing managers to use different formations in possession and out of possession, closer to how modern coaches set up their sides.

There’s also a brand-new interface, built around bite-sized info and a searchable in-game “FMpedia” to explain everything from gegenpressing to why your star striker is sulking.

Jacobson admitted hardcore players will need to retrain their muscle memory:

“For the hardcore users… everything’s moved. You have to cancel your muscle memory and relearn it — but once you relearn it, it’s so much easier to use.”

Depth vs Accessibility

FM’s player base exploded from around 2 million in 2021 to 20 million for FM24, but most newcomers didn’t stick around.

“About 8 million people carry on playing for five hours. And if you play Football Manager for five hours, you play for 100,” Jacobson explained, underlining why SI built a dedicated accessibility team.

FM26 tries to keep the series’ trademark depth while presenting information in smaller, less intimidating chunks, which should please both newcomers and the veterans who proudly run spreadsheets alongside their saves.

Women’s Football

Another headline feature is the arrival of women’s football. Jacobson was candid about the delay:

“Firstly, I apologise that it’s taken so long. It should have been there earlier.”

Under the guidance of Tina Keech, SI built a new global research network and redid thousands of animations to reflect differences in body shapes and movement. FM26 launches with 11 women’s leagues across 14 divisions, more than most sports titles have for their men’s modes.

Jacobson’s chat with Emma Hayes, now USWNT manager, was particularly eye-opening:

“She taught me more about the menstrual cycle in an hour than I’ve learned from living with women for 53 years,” he said, a typically Miles’ way of underscoring the depth of the research.

Realism

FM26 also integrates Hawkeye’s volumetric data, the same cameras used for VAR, to capture how players look up before crossing or shape their bodies for a header.

On the ever-controversial transfer market, Jacobson pushed back on claims of unrealistic fees:

“The price that players move for is determined by how valuable that player is to their team… why aren’t you negotiating inside Football Manager as well?”

And yes, Gegenpress still works, if you’ve got the legs for it. As Jacobson quipped, “If you don’t have such good players, those players should get tired quicker. And that’s definitely in there.”

A New Era

Add in the long-awaited Premier League licence, new defensive AI, and the fact that Netflix rescued the mobile version from the brink of discontinuation, and FM26 feels less like a yearly polish and more like a proper reboot.

Jacobson ended on a characteristically big-picture note:

“If this is the first version of what we’re doing with the new engine, imagine what it’s going to be like in five years’ time… We don’t make a game, we make a world. We make a world of football, do anything you want in that world.”

For FM’s players, and especially modders, are you satisfied with what you’re hearing?

 

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