The 6 Most Cursed FM26 Saves

What Makes a Save “Cursed”?

With so much dreary news surrounding FM26’s current state. As well as a disappointing reception to their most recent Update 2 Patch 26.0.6. We thought we would try and lighten the mood a little bit, by focusing on some of the funnier and more novel challenges within the game. The Cursed Saves.

In Football Manager, a cursed save isn’t just difficult — it’s wonderfully self-sabotaging. These are the saves built on bizarre restrictions, eccentric rules, and self-imposed hardship that directly conflict with how the game is “supposed” to be played. A cursed save forces you into chaos: erratic youth intakes, tactical nightmares, name-based scouting, or squads that break footballing reality.

What makes them special is the storytelling. You don’t play a cursed save for clean tactics or flawless squad-building; you play it for the journey. For the moment your all-goalkeeper defence concedes a 40-yard volley, or when your youth-only strike force scores the goal that keeps your club alive. Reddit has embraced this brand of joyful suffering for years — and FM26 is no exception.

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How We Chose These Saves

To gather the most cursed concepts, we looked through the busiest Football Manager Reddit discussions, prioritising the ideas that generated the most conversation, upvotes and follow-up stories from players who actually tried them.

Our criteria were:

• Popularity: lots of replies, debates, screenshots or save updates

• Originality: ideas that bend or break “normal” FM logic

• Playability: cursed but still doable without editor tools

• Chaos Factor: rules that are restrictive enough to create drama, not just difficulty

Across dozens of threads, certain themes kept popping up again and again — youth-only challenges, geographic restrictions, truly deranged squad-building rules, and experiments designed purely to break the match engine’s spirit. These six stood out as the most entertaining, most replayed and most widely discussed in the community.

1) Youth-Only / Youth Intake-Only

A legendary FM challenge. You are banned from making transfers of any kind — you must build your entire legacy from the club’s youth intake. The early years are brutal, morale is fragile, and progress depends heavily on the randomness of each intake class. But once you reach stability, it becomes one of the most rewarding long-term saves in the game. It’s cursed because the game will never give you exactly what you need, but that’s part of its charm.

2) Regional-Only Recruitment (The “Bilbao Rule”, but Anywhere)

Inspired by Athletic Bilbao, this challenge forces you to sign players only from a specific region, city, or nation. “Only Basque players” is the tradition, but Redditors apply it to everything from “only Canadians” to “only players born within 50km of the stadium.” It’s restrictive, tactical, and oddly immersive. Scouting becomes a treasure hunt; survival becomes a story.

3) The Name-Only Save (Example: The Ross County Experiment)

Shout out to Mankl1876 on Reddit for this banger.

One of the strangest but most beloved cursed saves. You can only sign players who share a specific name or part of a name — first name, surname, or even a single letter pattern. The team sheet ends up looking like a sitcom cast list: eleven Rosses, three Martins, or a back line made entirely of people whose surname starts with “Mc.” Depth becomes a nightmare and your transfer window turns into a spelling exercise — but the comedy factor is unmatched.

Our pick for the most cursed. It has narrative, style, absurdity, and total identity chaos.

4) The All-Goalkeeper (or Inverted XI) Challenge

Every FM community has at least one hero who attempts this. In the purest version, you assemble an entire squad of goalkeepers and try to play actual football with them. A softer version forces players into the worst possible positions — centre-backs as strikers, wingers as centre-halves, and so on. The match engine does its best to cope, but inevitably implodes. Expect comical defensive lines, shanked finishes, and a long, dark journey through the lower leagues.

5) Over-30s-Only (The Veterans’ League)

Only players aged 30 or above are allowed in your squad. At surface level it sounds manageable, but over a full season, stamina and recovery become an existential struggle. You’re forced to rotate constantly, carefully manage fitness, and replace retiring players with similarly ancient alternatives. Registration rules become your enemy. The result is a save filled with cult heroes and tactical pragmatism.

6) Height-Restricted Saves (Tall-Only, Short-Only, or Attribute-Only)

Sign only players above a certain height (e.g., “6’3 and up”) or below it (“the 5’7 revolution”), or build a squad entirely based on a weird attribute requirement — teamwork only, flair only, eccentricity-only. The tactical outcomes are unpredictable: towering aerial monsters or micro-technicians leaving the league baffled. These saves are chaotic, fun, and oddly addictive.

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More Cursed Ideas to Try

If none of these Reddit favourites scratch the itch, here are some fresh cursed FM26 ideas to consider:

• One-Footed XI: Only players who are extremely one-footed.

• The Enemy Club Save: You must manage your rival and play ethically… or not.

• The Post-Apocalypse Squad: Only sign free agents, never renew contracts.

• The Commentary-Only Challenge: You’re banned from watching highlights — commentary mode only.

• The “Supporter Takeover”: Only sign players your fictional fanbase would irrationally love (local lads, cult figures, homegrown chaos merchants).

Cursed saves thrive on imagination. The weirder, the better. Whether you try a name-only experiment or take your pension-aged strike force to European glory, FM26 gives you endless room to create the kind of football story that could never exist in real life — and that’s exactly why these saves are so addictive.

Makes sure you also check out our Feature Articles section for more fun FM26 content and updates.