Football Manager 26 has added international management. This lets you manage national teams, picking players to represent the country and compete in international tournaments.
While this feature comes standard in past entries, FM26 is only adding it now as a post-launch update. The update also includes the ability to manage the women’s national teams as well. Players can be managers of a club and an international squad simultaneously.
The rather timely addition of this new feature is no coincidence. Football Manager 26 is the first game in the series to have a license agreement with FIFA. As such, FM26 will feature full branding of the FIFA World Cup 2026 hosted by USA, Canada and Mexico. Expect new cutscenes (including a celebration where you see the captain lifts the FIFA World Cup trophy), broadcast graphics, team sheets and kits. Not all national team kits will arrive with this update as licensing approvals are ongoing, but the missing kits will be added in a later update.
A new quick start option lets you start a save to start a FIFA World Cup 2026 campaign before the tournament begins in June so you can pick your starting 26-player squad. If you want an even quicker start option, an update coming in June will let you quick start before the first World Cup match you’re managing.
Curiously, only 47 of the 48 qualified nations of the FIFA World Cup 2026 will be playable. Japan is currently unavailable due to licensing, as the game describes it, though the press release on the this announcement assures that this may change in the future.
Gameplay-wise, a few new additions have been made to FM26 to come alongside the ability to manage national teams. The squad registration flow for national teams has been made more intuitive with the new Provisional Squad selection system, which allows you to call up more than just the 26 shortlisted players to see if they are worth of getting a cap.
The National Pool will be located in the main headers of the top navigation bar, so you can easily access to the national manager’s version of scouting. The National Shortlist will now feature each player’s recent club form as well. On the same note of scouting, there is now Scouting Focuses that can help you search for dual nationality players, who may be outside of the current pool of scouted players. Might be helpful for nations that are lacking in homegrown talents.
Finally, there are new features for training. Match Preparation training focus prompts now appear before every match so you can prioritise between In Possession, Out of Possession, and Set Piece play. And national teams can recruit Set Piece Coaches.
This new update for Football Manager 26 is out now.
Football Manager 26 had a rough start thanks to its transition to a new game engine, which involved the annual football management sim having to skip an entire year. The upgrades and added licenses are still continuing, as indication of this new update announcement.
Football Manager 26 is out now on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store) and Mac. Football Manager 26 Console, a slightly different version for consoles that isn’t quite feature parity with the PC/Mac release, is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. A version of the game is also available via Netflix and Apple Arcade.