It’s fair to say Football Manager 2026 hasn’t had the smoothest ride. Since launch, most of the conversation around the game has been dominated by frustration. Horrendous performance problems; a hated UI; missing immersion, and a lingering feeling that something important was lost in the jump to a new engine.

For a lot of players, FM26 didn’t feel like the bold leap forward that was promised. Instead, it felt like a reset that had gone a bit too far and compromised what made Football Manager special. But according to Football Manager’s most influential creator, the story might not be finished just yet.

In a recent deep-dive video, Zealand, whose reach across YouTube, Twitch and the wider FM community makes him the game’s most prominent voice, explained why he believes FM26 could still be turned around. Not by Sports Interactive directly, but by the modding community.

Unity’s hidden advantage 

Much of the backlash around FM26 centred on its move to the Unity engine. For years, players had grown used to the old framework. It was stable, predictable and deeply understood by both developers and modders alike. Unity changed that overnight.

At launch, it felt like a downgrade. Visual features were missing, the UI struggled and the game lacked the atmosphere that long-term saves live and die on. But during his interview with prominent modder BassyBoy, who I’ve also spoken to myself, Zealand suggested that the community may only now be starting to understand what Unity actually allows.

It could end up being FM26’s biggest opportunity rather than the root of the problem (what we all initially thought)

As BassyBoy explains, the mods we’re seeing right now are only the earliest experiments. Stadium rebuilds, lighting systems, crowd behaviour… that’s just the surface. In his words, modders have barely scratched it. He compares the process to uncovering the first layer of dinosaur bones, with most of the discovery still buried underneath.

Watching fully rebuilt stadiums load into the game, complete with realistic surroundings, custom skyboxes and time-of-day lighting… the same point kept coming up. Football Manager runs on emotional investment. Anything that deepens that bond between player and club matters far more than raw visuals alone.

For all its launch issues, Unity appears to give modders far more room to push immersion than FM ever had before.

More than just stadiums

What makes this moment feel different to previous modding eras is the scale of what’s possible.

According to BassyBoy, Unity opens the door to systems that were either impossible or heavily restricted in older versions. Custom player models. Improved net physics. Depth perception. Environmental lighting. In theory, all of it can be done, once the right access points are found.

As he puts it, modders are trying to override existing systems cleanly. Disabling original assets and replacing them so seamlessly the game treats custom content as native. Once that wall comes down, everything else becomes easier.

This is where Zealand’s optimism starts to creep in. FM26 may not feel finished today, but the foundations underneath it could be more flexible than anything the series has used before.

The big reveal 

Then comes the part that genuinely made me sit up. UI modding, which had effectively been locked down earlier in FM26’s life, has been cracked. Skins are coming back.

Not officially. Not publicly released yet. But according to both Zealand and BassyBoy, the breakthrough has already happened. Work is underway behind the scenes, and the tools are becoming usable again.

For long-time Football Manager players, this is massive. The UI has always been one of the most personal parts of the game. Skins don’t just change colours, they change how FM feels to use. In past editions, community skins were essential. Every time I posted a screenshot without one, I’d get a flood of comments asking why I was still using the default.

Their absence in FM26 was one of the loudest complaints after launch. Until very recently, browsing the usual download sites meant finding nothing more than the same interface in slightly different shades.

Now that door appears to be opening again. When Zealand says UI modding has been “cracked”, the tone shifts immediately. This is about changing the experience of playing FM26 day to day rather than just superficial, cosmetic tweaks. 

If skins return properly, a game many players currently find awkward or uncomfortable could look and feel completely different within weeks.

What I think 

As much as I love optimism –  and I’d genuinely love to be proved wrong – first impressions matter a lot to me. For plenty of players, there simply won’t be the time or inclination to give FM26 another chance, even if genuinely game-changing updates arrive later. You might get a big PR push from Sports Interactive, but modders don’t have the budget or backing to shout about their work to the entire community. There’ll be plenty of excitement on X and YouTube, no doubt about that, but whether it translates into a meaningful rise in player numbers, or a real shift in the game’s negative reviews, is another question entirely.

From the small patches we’ve seen recently, it feels like Sports Interactive may already be turning their attention towards FM27. Because of that, I honestly have more faith in the next game being the one that gets things back on track than I do FM26. Still, on a selfish level, I’d love nothing more than to see this version dragged back up to the standards of previous years. Which is why, for me, the modders really are doing the lord’s work.