Football Manager 2026 has been a strange one to watch from the outside, and an even stranger one to live inside.

Sports Interactive’s move to the Unity game engine was always going to be a huge shift, but FM26 has landed like a half-built stadium. The foundations are there, then you walk into the concourse and realise half of it is missing. The UI has taken a hammering, missing parts of the old experience are daily complaints as SI rushes to bring them back, and the whole thing has carried that unfinished feeling that Football Manager fans can sniff out within five minutes.

And yet, in the middle of all that, the modding scene has done what you knew it would do when the game hits a proper crisis. It got to work. Two names have dominated that effort this year. BassyBoy, the most visible FM26 modder on X and the creator of the 3D Stadium Megapack, and Lotsgon, the modder who has pushed furthest into FM26’s most controversial area, the Unity UI.

They are doing very different kinds of work, but both are chasing the same thing – restoring immersion to a game that launched without any. 

BassyBoy: “I don’t know as I don’t play FM”

The funniest thing BassyBoy tells you is that he basically does not play Football Manager. Or at least, not in the way you would expect someone to. Yes, he has around 250 hours on FM26. No, he has not actually completed a match in a save. In his own words, that time has been swallowed by modding, to the point where “12–16 hours per day” is normal when he is not at work. Even on work or university days, he is still putting in around eight hours.

It is the kind of schedule that makes you wonder when he eats, and it also explains why his work has become so central to the FM26 experience.

His 3D Stadium Megapack shows why modding has mattered so much for this version of the game. Fans can argue about the match engine, recruitment, AI, or whether FM has become too easy, but when Football Manager looks flat, repetitive, or lifeless, it becomes harder to care. BassyBoy thinks FM26’s biggest issue is immersion, and the stadium work is his way of tackling that. It is not just about better visuals. He talks about the same goal when discussing UI and UX improvements, all aimed at making the game feel more alive rather than simply prettier.

The other part he admits he underestimated is what he calls “communication”. Four to six hours a day responding to messages, questions, and updates has become normal. Anyone who has ever released something popular to a fanbase that refreshes X constantly will recognise that. The work is one thing, but once people rely on you, you inherit the responsibility of explaining progress, managing expectations, and dealing with the fact that a hobby project has quietly become a public service.

He is also careful when talking about Sports Interactive. He confirms there has been contact, but refuses to go into detail because he believes those conversations should stay private. FM’s relationship with modders has always been a mix of mutual benefit and awkward boundaries, and you can feel that tension in how he answers. He wants that relationship to be healthier, and more formal.

His dream over the next five years is a version of FM where modders and SI coexist properly, with “talent from the playerbase” and “talent at Sports Interactive” working together. He is not positioning himself as a saviour, and he is not doing the “hire me” routine. He is talking about collaboration.

That fits with how he talks about the future more broadly. He will not tell fans how to feel, but he says he is positive. He does not think FM is dying. His argument is simple: if enough people love something, someone will carry the spirit on. He also believes SI are learning “very tough, but good lessons”, and that those lessons can lead to real change.

He is not pretending FM26’s launch was fine. Instead, he is saying the story does not have to end there, which is a rare bit of optimism for a fanbase that has had plenty of reasons to check out.

Lotsgon and the Unity UI

If BassyBoy is focused on making FM26 feel like a real football world again, Lotsgon is working on the less glamorous side of things: how the game is actually built.

FM26’s interface runs on Unity, and Lotsgon describes it in simple terms as something closer to a modern website than the old Football Manager screens. Colours, fonts, and basic styling are relatively easy to change, but once you start moving elements around, reshaping layouts, or rebuilding screens properly, it becomes much harder. The system was not designed with deep modding in mind, and that puts clear limits on what is possible.

Because of that, he is careful about what he promises. He says he is still experimenting and does not want to raise expectations before he knows what genuinely works. In his current development build of an FM Skin Builder tool, some parts of the interface can already be edited, including player profile screens. Other layout options may be possible too, but they behave differently, and he is still figuring out how far they can realistically be pushed.

This is a very different approach to the kind of modding people are used to seeing online, where someone posts a quick fix and drops a download link. Lotsgon is trying to build proper tools, the sort that would let other skin makers do meaningful work rather than small cosmetic tweaks.

When he talks about being close to a “breakthrough”, he is not talking about flipping a switch and suddenly fixing the UI. He means finding a reliable way to work with FM26’s files. Instead of poking around blindly, his approach involves turning those files back into something readable and editable, then rebuilding them properly afterwards. The hardest part has been understanding how FM26’s layout files work, but he believes the community now has enough knowledge to start building from a solid base.

That idea of a solid base comes up again when he talks about the game itself. Despite the backlash, he thinks FM26 has strong foundations, even if many fans would disagree. His main issue is user experience rather than the football underneath it. He is also careful not to turn this into an attack on Sports Interactive, pointing out something that often gets lost in fan discussions: rebuilding a front-end takes time. What looks like a small visual change can represent months of work, especially when a studio is moving away from systems it relied on for decades.

There is also an important difference between him and BassyBoy when it comes to SI. Lotsgon has not had any direct contact with the studio. He does not know their position, but he hopes they understand how important skins and customisation are to the community. He was encouraged by earlier comments from SI about needing better modding tools on the new engine, and says that if the studio ever wanted help, he would be happy to contribute, even seeing his own work as a potential reference point.

It is a clear signal of where FM could go if Sports Interactive decide that modding and customisation should be properly supported in the Unity era, rather than left for the community to figure out alone.

Both of them have the same target – immersion

What stands out is how closely BassyBoy and Lotsgon end up describing the same end goal, even from different directions.

BassyBoy is blunt that FM26’s biggest problem is immersion, and he thinks it can be improved through stadia and UI and UX changes that make the game world feel more believable. Lotsgon talks about “lack of immersion” as one of the closest things to a long-term risk, linking it to a perceived shift towards younger or console audiences. He warns that Football Manager has always been about detail and stories, and that losing those means losing the soul of the game.

He adds an important bit of reassurance, though. He believes the core of the game is still “very much the FM we all love”, it is just “ugly from the outside at the moment”.

That line explains why these mods matter. If the football is still there, if the simulation still works, then fixing the wrapper becomes a way back into enjoying it again. Not saving the game. Just making it feel like Football Manager rather than a shiny new interface you tolerate while waiting for the real thing to reappear.

What modding can fix, and what it probably cannot

BassyBoy’s answer to what can never be fixed is classic modder thinking. He believes everything can be solved in different ways, because he prefers solutions to problems. Lotsgon is a bit more grounded, but still optimistic. He says he has not come across a true “never” yet, aside from the broader question of whether Football Manager can keep its soul while chasing a new audience.

UI and immersion are exactly the areas where modders can create immediate change. Better stadia, cleaner layouts, more familiar information placement, fewer small UX frustrations. That stuff changes the feel of a save quickly.

What they cannot do, at least not without SI’s cooperation, is rewrite the core product vision. Modders can make FM26 feel more like home, but they cannot decide priorities, restore cut features, or control how quickly the Unity transition settles.

Both seem to understand that. Lotsgon frames most of his short-term aim as making the game look nicer and putting information back in familiar places “until FM27”.

BassyBoy talks about coexistence rather than replacement. They are not pretending they can turn FM26 into a different game. They are trying to push it closer to what people hoped it would be when they first clicked “New Career”.

Why Football Manager is still worth caring about

Neither BassyBoy nor Lotsgon are doom merchants. Both think the future is positive, even while understanding why so many fans are frustrated.

Lotsgon points to improvements SI have already made since release and argues that the feedback from this messy start could be hugely valuable, shaping the game for the next generation. He also believes Unity’s long-term potential, once the foundations are solid, could surpass what the old engine allowed, even if the road there is rough.

His five-year wish list is easy to nod along to: better regen faces, deeper UI and UX customisation including custom charts and data views, more licensing and likenesses, and even the idea of local LLMs to make chairmen and managers more dynamic. Whether SI ever go near any of that is another question.

BassyBoy’s ambition is less about features and more about people. Keep his job in education, keep modding, and “make the difference for someone else”. He enjoys the sense of community that has grown around fixing FM26, even if it has swallowed his evenings.

That is the slightly bittersweet punchline of FM26’s modding year. Fans should not have needed this much community labour just to feel comfortable in a new Football Manager. But now that it is happening, it is hard not to respect the work and get behind it.

You can argue about whether SI should have shipped the game in the state it launched. You can argue about whether Unity was worth the pain. You can argue about how quickly it will all settle. What you cannot argue is that people stopped caring. Not when some of the biggest names in the community are spending their free time trying to give players back a sense of control they feel they lost.