Our resident Football Manager expert Billy bring all the info FM fans could want on the new Unity Engine & the potential changes and improvements the new engine could bring to FM 26.
There’s a lot of buzz around Football Manager’s move to the Unity engine. It’s the sort of announcement that gets tech forums frothing, while the average FM player just nods politely and mutters: “Cool… but does that mean my regen winger will actually have a human looking face this time?” So let’s break it down properly.
What Is the Unity Engine in FM26?
What does it mean for the match engine and the way we actually play FM? And how has Unity fared in other simulation-heavy titles? Time to dig in.
What is Unity? Unity is one of the world’s most widely used game engines. It’s basically the scaffolding on which developers build their games… a toolkit that handles graphics, physics, sound, user interface, cross-platform support and so on, so the studio doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel each year.
For Football Manager, the shift is monumental. Sports Interactive has used its own custom engine for decades, which has been pushed and prodded into something resembling modern football. But those limits have been showing. By moving to Unity, SI now gets access to modern graphics tools, multi-platform scaling (handy for PC, console, even mobile), and a more flexible development base. In plain English: it should look better, it should run smoother, and it should, in theory, future-proof FM for the next decade.
Match-day Improvements:
The most obvious change is graphical. Unity comes with its Universal Render Pipeline, which allows for sharper models, more detailed environments and dynamic lighting. In FM26, stadiums should look properly alive: banners rippling, crowds reacting in waves, and pitches looking less like green wallpaper paste. The teaser trailer already hinted at this; cinematic cutscenes, improved stadium detail, and crowds that don’t all look like clones of the same bloke in a parka. Camera angles are also being upgraded to feel more like a TV broadcast. And then there’s the UI. SI has teased a new “tiles and cards” interface, where each tile is a neat little info panel you can expand into a card for detail. It’s essentially FM’s way of modernising the spreadsheets-with-skin look. If done right, it could finally end the days of getting lost in the inbox like it’s an actual work email account.
Gameplay Changes:
Here’s the crucial bit: Unity doesn’t write FM’s brain. The match AI – tactics, stats, player decision-making – is still SI’s code. So don’t expect Pep Guardiola levels of tactical nuance just because they’ve slapped a new engine underneath. What Unity does influence is presentation. Animations, physics, ball trajectories, player collisions and goalkeeper saves should all feel more fluid. The days of keepers diving out of the way like they’ve got money on the other team may finally be numbered.
It also opens doors. With Unity’s rendering flexibility, SI could, in future, add features like interactive crowd events, dynamic stadium upgrades or cutscenes that actually feel immersive. Unity doesn’t guarantee that will happen – but it makes it possible. And there’s a hidden benefit: SI no longer has to spend half its time duct-taping its old engine together. That frees up more resources for refining the actual football side of things.
How has the Unity Engine worked in other games?
To understand what FM might look like under Unity, it’s worth seeing how other management sims have handled it. The results? Mixed.
The Good:
Cities: Skylines runs on Unity and shows the engine can handle massive, complex simulations with slick visuals.
Motorsport Manager (also Unity) earned praise for its clean menus and race-day graphics, which looked surprisingly sharp even on modest PCs.
The Bad:
Pro Basketball Manager 2022 suffered from stuttering, freezing and visuals that looked like something from 2008. Reviews were blunt: “not impressive” player models and constant random crashes.
We Are Football, another Unity sports sim, was called “bland” and failed to give matches any spectacle.
User Interface:
Unity comes with its own built-in UI system, which can be sleek and responsive if handled well – but clunky if not. Motorsport Manager nailed it: simple bottom-tab menus, clear layouts, and easy navigation. Reviewers found it intuitive. Pro Basketball Manager, on the other hand, froze when loading certain screens, turning every player click into a lottery. This is especially relevant because SI admitted the UI was a major reason FM25 was scrapped. They said the “overall player experience and interface is not where we need it to be”. Moving to Unity was meant to fix that. So while the promise of a slick, modern FM interface is exciting, there’s pressure to deliver. If it lags or freezes, fans won’t forgive it.
Modding:
One of Football Manager’s superpowers is its modding scene – custom databases, kits, skins, tactics. Unity doesn’t automatically make modding easier. In fact, many Unity titles have fairly limited modding unless the devs deliberately support it. Pro Basketball Manager added Steam Workshop support, which kept its small community alive. But most Unity sims don’t have the depth of modding tools that FM fans expect. SI will need to make sure the pre-game editor, skinning and data packs are still fully supported, or there’ll be riots on the forums before you can say “regen haircuts”.
The Consensus:
Unity can produce attractive, stylised visuals, but sports sims often fall short of AAA polish. What Unity really brings is cross-platform stability and modern UI tooling. The look and feel depends heavily on how much effort the developers put in.Performance and stability. Here’s where Unity’s reputation gets a bit… shaky. Unity titles often struggle with optimisation, especially in simulation-heavy genres. Players report fluctuating frame rates, random crashes, and memory hiccups. Motorsport Manager, for instance, could swing wildly from 20 fps to 130 fps on the same machine. Pro Basketball Manager stuttered with tiny databases that make FM’s look like the British Library. Why? Unity games sometimes rely too heavily on single-threaded processes and garbage-collected memory, which makes them choke on large data sets.
For a database the size of FM’s (hundreds of thousands of players, leagues and staff), SI absolutely has to optimise Unity’s multi-threading tools, or else the game could crawl like a Sunday League winger in the 88th minute. The pattern with Unity sims is clear: they launch with teething problems, get patched, and eventually settle down. That’s fine for smaller games. For Football Manager, with its reputation for rock-solid stability, that’s a risk SI cannot afford to take.
Should We Be Excited or Worried?
Pros: Better graphics, more realistic animations, modern UI, scalable across platforms, future-proof.
Cons: Potential for performance hiccups, crashes, limited modding support if mishandled, and the simple fact that switching engines is hard.
Unity is a proven, flexible engine, but it’s not perfect. For Football Manager, the stakes are higher than for smaller sims. This isn’t a quirky indie title – it’s a 30-year-old franchise with one of the most demanding fanbases in gaming. If SI gets it right, FM26 could feel like the most polished, immersive entry yet. Matchdays could finally look like the TV broadcast the teaser promised. The UI could feel snappy and modern. The game could be more future-proof, and easier to expand over the next decade. If they get it wrong? Well, then we’re all back on FM24, swearing at the transfer AI, but at least enjoying smooth gameplay while we do it.
Final Thoughts:
The move to Unity is Football Manager’s biggest technological leap in years. It offers SI the chance to raise the bar, but also comes with pitfalls that other Unity sims have fallen into. As fans, we should be cautiously optimistic. Unity doesn’t guarantee brilliance, but it does give SI the tools to finally modernise the look and feel of Football Manager. Now it’s on them to prove that FM26 won’t just be prettier, but also faster, more stable, and just as moddable as ever. Because at the end of the day, we don’t just want our regen striker to look good. We want him to bag 30 goals a season without the game crashing on deadline day.
Check out our full, in depth FM 26 Release Date article, which is constantly updated when we get news on anything FM 26 related!
William Reid is the admin of Out of Context Football Manager, an X account dedicated to all things FM. A former Social Editor at LADbible Group, he now brings his deep knowledge of the game to Ingenuity Connect as our resident fantasy football expert.
19 Aug, 2025
