The Football Manager 26 system requirements confirm my worst fears

The FM26 system requirements are finally out alongside a new gameplay tease, and they're exactly what we expected, which is going to come as bad news to many players. For the best experience, you're going to need an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or better alongside 12GB of RAM, specs that may well eliminate the basic work laptops that so many players have relied on for previous games.

The good news is you won't need one of the more expensive options on our best graphics card buying guide to get Football Manager 26 running well. However, as I posited in my FM26 graphics feature a few weeks ago, the specs are more demanding than usual, so many more gamers than with previous iterations of the game will be left unable to play on their existing PCs and laptops. Even if this was a change that had been signalled by the FM25 system requirements, it's still a shame to see this hardware limitation come to fruition.

Here are the Football Manager 26 system requirements for PC:

The Football Manager 26 minimum requirements are split between desktop and laptop components. This should help anyone who is still using an older laptop to determine whether they need to upgrade before they can play FM26.

For desktops, you'll need an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon R9 380 GPU paired with an Intel Core i3 530 or AMD FX 4100 CPU. You also need 4GB of RAM to meet these demands.

If you're using a laptop, you'll need either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M or AMD R9 M375 GPU alongside an Intel Core i3 330M or AMD A6 5200 CPU.

As for the Football Manager 26 recommended specs, they are split in the same fashion. For desktops, you'll need an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT GPU alongside an Intel Core i5 9600 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU. The RAM requirement also triples here to 12GB.

If you want to meet the recommended laptop specs, you'll want an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060M or AMD Radeon RX 6600M GPU paired with an Intel Core i5 1035G7 or AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU.

As for the Football Manager 26 download size, this has also increased to 20GB from the usual sub-10GB file size of previous games. You won't need an SSD to run this game, according to the system requirements, but we'd recommend upgrading anyway, as they're cheap and so much faster than hard drives. You can take a look at our best gaming SSD guide to see our current recommendations.

If you're stuck for upgrade ideas, you can check out our best gaming laptop guide for ideas across a range of needs and budgets. Likewise, if you're a desktop gamer at heart, you can consult our best gaming PC buying guide for ideas.

Take our Football Manager 26 system requirements PC benchmark test to answer the question… Can I run Football Manager 26?

Can your gaming PC or laptop handle these specs, or are you going to have to shop around for a new rig? Let us know over on our community Discord server.