The Football Manager 26 Winter update is about to arrive, just as the season nears its dreary end. While we’ve spent months running saves, ranking teams, and scouting wonderkids, FM26 has been in dire need of some huge updates, and we’re finally getting one.

On the 9th of March, Football Manager 26 will finally see the update that comes in the winter (spring, really) of every Football Manager cycle. It’s usually an exciting point where the database gets refreshed. With Football Manager 26, however, it now feels pretty crucial given all the issues people have had.

In this article I’ll go through the biggest improvements and what was crucially omitted. I’ll then say whether this update is enough to satisfy me and the community. Ultimately, you can decide for yourself whether you agree.

The headline change

The most important change is the full January database update. This lines up with what we’ve seen in previous game cycles. Sports Interactive say there have been “5 million+ database changes” since release. That sounds dramatic, but it’s fairly standard for this update.

It includes:

• January transfers worldwide
• Loan deals and contract changes
• Squad updates
• Staff changes
• Player attribute tweaks
• Current Ability adjustments
• Potential Ability adjustments

This is obviously important for realism, but it probably won’t have much impact on the playerbase’s sentiment towards the game. The quality of the database itself has never really been in doubt. In reality, it just adds realism and is nice if you’re about to start a long-term save.

The big new change

Now here’s a fun one. This is probably the most genuinely new feature they’ve announced in the entire changelog: “Implemented dynamic aging for regen portraits.”

Before this update, regens had static faces that didn’t visually age. Now youth players will always look younger and older players will visually age over time. As a result, long saves should feel more believable. As is expected for Football Manager, these regens still look absolutely horrific, but at least they show progression.

I like that they’ve added this change. On the surface it might seem superficial, but it helps with the immersion people have been craving. It also shows they’re not just firefighting. Among all the backlash around FM26, they’re still introducing new features and experimenting with new ideas. You could already do this with certain regen facepacks, but adding it to the base game makes it accessible to everyone.

The most important changes

These are the genuinely useful changes that respond to problems people have highlighted with FM26.

Firstly, users can now change player instructions and roles directly from the tactic visualiser. Previously you could see the tactical positioning, but making changes meant switching screens. Now you can adjust roles, change instructions, and tweak tactics directly from the visualiser. It’s a small change, but it will speed things up for players who constantly adjust their tactics.

The second change sounds minor but could actually be quite significant. The fixtures and results page has been redesigned to full screen, and users can now set it to automatically open before and after matches. It’s a quality-of-life improvement that should help pretty much every player.

CONCLUSION – These are probably the most important changes for people who have had big issues with FM26. The database improvements are nice, but these are the ones that actually address the UI problems. Arguably they still don’t go far enough. Realistically, they probably need to redesign every single screen so we’re not constantly dealing with pop-ups. But it’s at least a step in the right direction.

Other improvements

Here are the other fixes I haven’t personally experienced, but which clearly respond to common complaints:

• AI manager sackings now appear more prominently in the news screen
• Work permit transfer bug – players no longer get upset when a transfer fails due to work permit issues
• Penalty shootout soft lock – a bug that could lock the game during penalty shootouts has been fixes
• Director of Football signing bug – the Director of Football can now sign players who were recently on trial

The number of bugs when the game was first released was pretty unprecedented. It’s good to see that most of them have finally been addressed.

What they missed

This is arguably even more important than what they fixed. There are some areas where the silence is pretty noticeable.

No news about international management

With the World Cup coming up soon, there’s a very noticeable lack of updates related to international management. It feels crucial that they bring it back properly before the World Cup playoffs, and that they start building hype around it. If done well, it could easily be a feature that helps rejuvenate the fanbase.

No match engine improvements

There are no gameplay adjustments mentioned at all. Nothing about AI tactics, defensive shape issues, or other match engine concerns. That might not be Sports Interactive’s biggest priority right now, but it’s interesting that it isn’t mentioned anywhere.

No mention of AI squad building, transfer logic, or long-term save problems

A lot of Football Manager players run into issues in long-term saves. There’s no mention of that here.

There are also ongoing complaints about AI logic in the transfer market and how clubs build their squads. Again, nothing in the update addresses this. These systems are crucial for making the game world feel believable, so the silence around them stands out.

You can understand why they might take a back seat while UI problems are being addressed. But at the same time, the UI changes in this update probably aren’t big enough to justify every other issue being pushed aside.

CONCLUSION

So is this enough? In some ways, yes. The database update was always going to happen and it improves realism. The dynamic aging feature is a genuinely nice addition, and the UI tweaks should make the game feel smoother to use day-to-day. After the messy launch, fixing bugs and improving stability was also clearly necessary.

But if you were hoping for a major turning point for Football Manager 26, this probably isn’t it. The biggest criticisms of the game – the match engine, AI squad building, and long-term save issues – still haven’t been addressed here.

So this update feels more like a stabilisation patch, rather than a transformation. It improves the experience but it doesn’t fundamentally change how people feel about the game. Whether that’s enough will depend on the player, but for many in the community it probably won’t be the moment that suddenly restores their confidence in FM26.