FM26 debuts as the 10th most played game on Steam despite overwhelmingly negative reviews

Today, the latest in the Football Manager series from Sports Interactive launched, Football Manager 26. This is the first game in two years, as the studio decided to cancel Football Manager 25 last year. As with launch day on any game, there are issues, but many players have also been confused about how to use the in-game editor to edit players, to the point where some players think it’s been removed from the game. Overall, launch day for FM26 is proving to be a great example of how a game can get bad reviews and still be popular.

Football Manager 26 hits top ten games on Steam despite overwhelmingly negative reviews

Given the worldwide popularity of the sport, it’s not surprising that Football Manager is a popular series. According to SteamDB, FM26 has hit a 24-hour peak of 83,591 concurrent players, while still staying above 80,000 total at the time of writing. This puts the new title just barely in the tenth most-played game on Steam today, which is an impressive achievement for any game. But, if you were to look at the Steam reviews, you might think there was another story.

On Steam, Football Manager 26 has overwhelmingly negative reviews, with only 27% positive at the time of writing. Notably, there are only about 2,000 global reviews, a small fraction of the total number of players. The discrepancy between these two statistics is a great reminder to look for multiple sources of information and be patient before making a purchase.

Since the game hasn’t even been available for 24 hours, there is ample time for either of these numbers to level out. In the next day or two, more reviews could balance the Steam score to something closer to the middle of the road. Or, conversely, if everyone agrees on the game's quality, the concurrent player count could drop off significantly over the next few days.

Looking at sites like Metacritic and OpenCritic, Football Manager 26 has scores of 73 and 72, respectively. This is a smaller sample audience, as it’s currently only considering critic scores, but it is another metric to consider when it comes to FM26. By the end of the week, the scores could balance out in some way.

Football Manager 26

November 4, 2025

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• Overview

• sports games
• Sports Interactive
• Football Manager (franchise)