The long awaited release of Football Manager 2026 is edging closer. To put into context how long it has been, the most recent release in the series is still Football Manager 2024 where my current save is in 2037 and I’ve brought Wrexham from the Vanarama to the Premier League. I’ve gotten my monies worth out of that game, for sure. But the great news for Football Manager fans is that we finally have signs of life from Sports Interactive after a teaser trailer just dropped.
Football Manager 2026 Teaser Trailer
5 Things We Learn from the FM2026 Teaser Trailer
Here’s what we’ve learned from it so far.
1. Football Manager 2026 Might Launch in November
The biggest reveal from the teaser for me is that we may be on for Football Manager 2026 launching in November. The teaser emerging in mid-August means the full launch trailer could very well come in early September. This would put Football Manager 2026 back on the same schedule as FM 2023 and FM 2024.
Music to the ears of fans who have been waiting patiently. However, not all signs from the teaser are massively positive.
2. Sports Interactive Still Has Lots to Do
The story of the teaser is a little disjointed in my opinion. It starts out at Brighton’s AMEX stadium (the last stadium I visited myself in 2025 to see Liverpool lose!).
It appears that the footage of the AMEX is real video footage, before cutting to some great looking Premier League branded shots (more on that in a bit). This footage is tagged as “Actual Game Footage – Not Final”. Which is a tale of two halves. It looks great, but is still work in progress, leaving plenty of space for nerves and doubt to creep back in.
The video then cuts to real world footage at what appears to be Bournemouth and Everton before cutting back to in-game footage. Here we see fully animated players and officials emerging from the tunnel with an animated crowd.
What’s worrying me here, isn’t the in game footage, but the cuts back to real-world footage for anything that would require seeing actual players or officials. The only sight we have of these players has heads out of shot for example. This might be worth a whole point on it’s own.
3. The In-game Graphics Engine Gets a Massive Overhaul
It would appear that the in game graphics is set to have the biggest upgrade in Football Manager (and even Championship Manager) history. This generation of Football Manager heralded the move towards a new Unity Engine. With that came a world of new graphics options and improvements.
The teaser suggests to me that the match experience will be closer to a slightly older FIFA game (which would be awesome), but that those graphics are someway away from being fit for public display.
This leaves me questioning my first point.
It would appear that we will get 3D players for the in-game match engine animation. But I’m left utterly confused by what expectation Sports Interactive is trying to set here. Because cutting to the real-world footage of teams emerging sets the expectation that this is the goal for the pre-match experience.
Hopefully they are just tweaking the final bits, but I do wonder how close to being ready some features are.
4. Peter Drury May Be the Voice of Football Manager 2026
The voice of modern football is Peter Drury. He’s a poet of the game. Him featuring on the teaser is incredible as he delivers a level of drama you’d expect from him: “The wait has been long. The buildup impossible to ignore. So much has changed, but that feeling… it never left”.
I initially thought this would only be a guest appearance in the trailer, but the more I think about it, the more possible it is that he wil feature as a commentator. EAFC has had a long term commitment to it’s commentary team which includes Guy Mowberry et al. So Peter Drury, while iconic in the sport of football, doesn’t have a digital home.
That is except for an official add-on for FM 2024 where fans have modded the game to include Drury commentary.
If the game is to get the graphical overhaul that Sports Interactive seems to be hinting at with this teaser, that same experience would be awful without a voiced commentator. Sports Interactive are surely savvy enough to know after the failure to launch of FM 2025, managing expectations of fans of the series is quite important.
All of this; just speculation on my part.
5. Premier League Licensing and EAFC Sponsorship
As I mentioned, a big thing for FM2026 is official Premier League licensing. Now, fair enough. You might not be learning this for the first time given it was supposed to be the big news for the “never saw light of day” Football Manager 2025, which Sports Interactive shelved due to time constraints. But Football Manager 2026 has finally secured the official licensing rights for the Premier League.
This means the proper club names, logos and more. It should add realism, depth and immersion to the gaming experience. Many will argue that this depth was easily added by add-ons easily obtained online, something I’ve done every year. But to have this out of the box, simply improves the overall gaming experience for everyone.
6. Match Day First Look Coming Soon
We are going to learn a lot more from the full match day first look video which the teaser highlights is coming soon. Sega, the game’s publisher, is at Gamescom in Cologne next week. As am I, so I’ll be chasing down some contacts to see if there’s anything to happening.
I expect that new match day trailer to have either right or wrong some of the speculation I’ve made above.
If the game is back on track for a November launch, I’d fully expect that new match day trailer to emerge in the next few weeks ahead of an early September full launch video. Things could start moving quite quickly from here on out. I’m staying positive even after the pain of FM 2025.
