The ball has been in play for Football Manager 27, but only now it has announced a release date and published a key art, a a few weeks after low-key revealing it via a series of deep dives.
Publisher Sega and developer Sports Interactive will be releasing Football Manager 27 this November. This is the first iteration based on the big revamp introduced in Football Manager 26, so big that the annual series had to skip a year of release.
While the first two deep dive videos show what the developers are bringing back, including changing the UI so that important, more used features like Tactics and Training are placed back at the forefront rather than being buried under menus, this third deep dive is all about match atmosphere. In other words, the improvements to the 3D match engine.
The in-game footage shows a more dense crowd in big stadium matches. More crowd models have now been added (though expect to still some repeating patterns still, based on the footage shown here), crowd clothing should replicate the venue’s region and climate, fans will actually wear kits of the clubs they are supporting. Also, big matches like derbies and cup finals will see the crowd goes a step further and start waving flags around.
The year’s current weather season will now affect the pitch, both its surroundings and its surface. Time of day will also change throughout the 90-minute match, and is reflected by the change in lighting over time. There are now more stadium varieties, including modern one based on stadium designs from 1990 to 2010.
More pre-match cutscenes have been added, with multiple camera angles so the same cutscene sequence won’t exactly play out with all the same angles over and over. Premier League and UEFA matches in particular will get more love when it comes to the preambles.
Side note, FM 27 retains the Premier League license, which also means that it will inherited feature logos and signage for EA Sports FC, a competing football game unaffiliated with the publisher and developer that you probably already are aware of.
Player models now have more body types, increased muscle definition, and more natural hair movement.
Football Manager has always been jokingly referred to a spreadsheet game, as for the longest time the match day was just represented in 2D blobs. FM26 switched game engines to Unity in order to really bolster the 3D match experience. The results were mixed, especially back at launch. But FM27 is saying, and showing, the right stuff.
Football Manager 27 kicks off on November 10 For the PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store), Mac, Xbox Series X|S and Netflix.