Want to play Football Manager 26? This time, you might need a gaming PC upgrade

Football Manager 26 officially exists, and we've finally been given our first look at some gameplay in the new Unity engine, but is the era of low-power laptops and PCs finally over for FM fans? While it's hard to say anything definitive based on what we've seen so far, we can use the proposed system requirements for FM 25, which was never released, to get an idea of what kind of power you may need.

Even with a graphical overhaul, there's no risk of Football Manager 26 demanding one of the best graphics card picks from our comprehensive buying guide. That being said, processing power is key in these simulation games, so having one of our recommendations for the best CPU is sure to be a massive help.

At the time of writing, Football Manager 26 still doesn't have an official Steam Store page, and the one for FM 25 has been retired. However, when it was live, I covered the Football Manager 25 system requirements, and they offered some interesting insight into how the game was going to change with the move to Unity.

For the recommended specs, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 was listed, which wasn't even a top-end GPU at the time of its release, but the real intrigue was a Football Manager game having recommended specs in the first place. Previous releases have only ever listed minimum specs, and ancient ones at that.

It's also worth noting that, even in a direct comparison to FM24, the proposed FM 25 specs were quite a jump up. FM 25's recommended specs demanded an RTX 2060, while FM 24 only asked for an Nvidia GeForce 9600M from 2008. A comparison of the other listed specs for FM 25 includes 12GB of RAM compared to 4GB, an Intel Core i5 9600 as opposed to an Intel Core 2, and a whopping 20GB file size instead of the sub-10GB files we've been used to.

Everything pointed towards the move to Unity being a new era for Football Manager when it came to the hardware you would need to run it. The demands were not unreasonable by modern standards, but they came as a bit of a shock to long-time players.

Now, as we have our first look at FM 26 in action, albeit with very short clips in an FM 26 reveal trailer, none of which show mid-match footage, the question is being asked whether the system requirements could go even further. Is this the end of an era where Football Manager games will run on just about any old PC or laptop, even if it wasn't designed for gaming?

Simply put, if your laptop or PC barely runs FM 24, it does appear as though you'll struggle to play Football Manager 26, as we expect the system requirements to closely follow those of the unreleased FM 25, if not pushing even higher.

If, like me, you find yourself wondering why such a jump is necessary, the reason is as simple as the new 3D match engine requiring greater resources to power it. It's moved from a fairly rudimentary 3D engine, built using an in-house system that was very much shrouded in secrecy, to Unity, one of the most widely adopted game engines, with Sports Interactive openly admitting this allows it to access "a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools."

It sounds like the old engine was tired and perhaps even reached its potential some years ago, and the move to Unity was needed to push Football Manager to the next level. This sneak peek we got at the new engine suggests that, while the graphics may not quite be on the level of EA Sports FC 25, there is still a huge technical leap coming. The graphics look far more detailed and realistic, and thus require more powerful hardware and increased resources to run smoothly.

One saving grace is that, provided you've purchased your laptop or PC within the last five years and it's a gaming-focused machine, it should still be fine with running FM 26, perhaps just with performance that won't rival anyone using a more modern or powerful gaming-focused rig.

We eagerly await the "FM 26 match day first look," which is due very soon. We're hoping to know a lot more about the game, its demands, and what to expect in terms of performance once the reveal is complete and a Steam page is live.

In the meantime, you can check out our best gaming laptop and best gaming PC guides if you need to get a head start on upgrading your current setup.

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