After a two year wait, Football Manager 26 arrived with a great deal of hype and expectations and it would be an understatement to note that it has not dropped to universal acclaim. Frustration with the game has been loud and widespread, with players having no shortage of complaints and concerns following the game’s short open beta period and which have extended into full launch.
One of the most critical concerns fans have had with the game has been the difficulty of navigating around the game’s user interface. A poor UI makes everything in a game more challenging to complete and the game more frustrating as a result. With the Football Manager community being known for developing skins and mods to tweak and adjust the way the game looks and feels in past years, fans are hoping the same can happen for FM 26, but is this a realistic hope or just a fool’s one?
How Did We Get Here?
With a tweet.
While it’s a bit of facetious fun around the community of Zealand Shannon, one of the game’s biggest streamers, that the whole debacle kicked off with one tweet about the game’s graphics being poor, there is an underlying kernel of truth. The biggest cause of the disruptions to the Football Manager machine has been the move to the Unity engine from the studio’s own proprietary one, and improving the look of the game to more closely resemble other sports games was an important consideration in that decision, albeit it one not likely truly kicked off by one popular streamer’s mild criticism.
Unfortunately for players and developers alike, the move to the new engine has been far from seamless and the first trouble signs extend all the way back to last year, and why the annual series does not have a released Football Manager 25 to speak of. As the move over to a new engine continued, the release date for last year’s game was moved and moved until finally it was cancelled altogether to focus on a better FM 26.
This put even more pressure on this year’s release, and the reality is the game has significantly failed to meet the pressure on offer. It carries mostly negative reviews, and many players, including Korea’s number one FM streamer, have made the decision to abandon the game and return to Football Manager 24.
Chief among complaints about the game and its failings has been its user interface and navigability. Anytime you change how an established franchise operates, it’s going to cause some disruption, and that makes it even more important to get it right. Sports Interactive decidedly did not do so, and now players are struggling to come to grips with a UI that feels less intuitive and harder to complete their day-to-day tasks in.
Football Manager’s History With Modding And Skins
It should be no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the Football Manager community to learn that a large portion of the hope fans are still holding onto comes in the form of modding and skins for the game. Skinning is a long and storied tradition among the FM world, with popular skins and skinners seeing fans eagerly anticipating their new drop for a new FM, so fans can return to the UI and functionality they love.
Skinning has been so popular for fans because of the importance of navigability in a game like Football Manager. Sometimes lovingly referred to as spreadsheet simulators in disguise, sports management simulations may be about sports, but the majority of the work you do is in the admin, away from the pitch.
With a custom skin, players were able to find a layout for the game’s various panels, pages, and bits of information that work for the way they play the game. While tiny improvements to how you navigate may not mean much in an individual instance, the many, many times you have to do a given administrative task can add up to huge time savings with an efficient skin. This is why their creators are often so revered by players of the series.
Will Mod Support And Skinning Save Football Manager 26 From Itself?
There’s bad news and good news on this front. The bad news is that those familiar with the skinning scene are not overflowing with optimism right now. Popular streamer and Football Manager World Cup participant, Work The Space, discussed the potential for skinning in a video as someone who has released popular skins in the past.
In the video, he discusses how the volatile state of the game may be a big hindrance to anyone looking to make a skin. Because the game is undergoing so many changes and fixes still, it makes it hard to guarantee that any work you do on a skin won’t be immediately undone by an update that changes the game’s UI in a way that breaks your skin. This is a significant hurdle toward anyone investing serious time in modding the game’s UI.
The good news is that we are still early in the game’s release, and FM players are nothing if not persistent. As the game progresses through its release cycle and the build feels more stable, modders may be able to work with it to fix some of players’ biggest problems. This is highly speculative, however, especially as it’s been noted that players don’t currently have access to some of the resources that would make doing so easier and more effective.
It doesn’t seem that skinning will be the solution to gamers’ woes right now, and it’s to be seen how effective they can be in the future. For now, players are left to find ways to get the best out of what they’ve got. Do you think skins are coming, and will they significantly change how likely you are to play the game, or are you already set in stone with your FM26 engagement level?
Published: Nov 21, 2025 09:30 am