Developer Sports Interactive is finally ready to give us our first real look at the revamped graphical engine that will be powering the upcoming Football Manager 26. In a new trailer, the studio has given us a look at what a typical match in the management sim will look like. Check out it below.
While not quite a the same level of visual fidelity as a title in the EA Sports FC series, the trailer does showcase an impressive level of improvement over the previous releases in the Football Manager series, with players being fully modelled and animated. This will allow Football Manager 26 players to be able to better come up with new tactics and strategies on the fly, since a typical match will make it much clearer about the strengths and weaknesses of the various athletes across both team rosters.
To achieve this level of visual fidelity, Sports Interactive has moved the Football Manager franchise over to Unity Engine. This engine change was a major reason for the studio skipping out on last year’s instalment – Football Manager 25 – in favour of simply working harder on the next title.
With the release of this new trailer, the studio has also revealed a few more details thanks to updates made to the Football Manager 26 Steam page, which also includes the PC hardware requirements to run the title.
At minimum, Football Manager 26 will require a PC to have either an Intel Core i3-530 or AMD FX-4100 CPU 4 GB of RAM, and either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon R9 380 GPU for desktops. For laptops, the title will require either an Intel Core i3-330M or AMD A6-5200 CPU, and either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M or AMD Radeon R9 M375 GPU. For systems without discrete GPUs, desktops and laptops can both make do with an Intel HD530-equipped CPU with 512 MB of VRAM.
However, to get more out of the visual fidelity of the game, Sports Interactive recommends that desktops have either an Intel Core i5-9600 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, 12 GB of RAM, and either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT GPU. For laptops, the studio recommends either an Intel Core i5-1035G7 or AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU, and either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile or AMD Radeon RX 6600M GPU.
Football Manager 26 was officially announced back in August. While we didn’t get to see any gameplay in this announcement, the 30-second teaser did end up being a sign of things to come, since it showcased a football placed on a podium right before a Premier League match was about to begin.
“FM26 promises to take players on a journey to define their footballing destiny with our most immersive and visually rich Football Manager experience yet,” wrote the developers when it announced the game. “The potential for storytelling is redefined by taking players closer to the heart of the beautiful game.”
Football Manager 26 is coming to PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and the Windows Store. It doesn’t yet have a release date, however.
