What's New in FM27 — Every Headline Change Sports Interactive Has Announced

Before you read

Why FM27 looks the way it does

• In FM26, by the studio's own account in its review of that game, the new interface and navigation were not well received by everyone, and many players felt a loss of immersion compared with earlier editions.
• For FM27, Sports Interactive names immersion as its main focus: the game world, the navigation and the interface itself.
• Its stated approach is to evolve the design it introduced in FM26 while bringing back ideas and behaviours from earlier editions that players valued.

Interface and navigation

• The main menu is rebuilt around Portal, Squad, Tactics, Recruitment, Training and Club, with fewer cards and more full-screen screens. The full detail is on the Matchday and Interface page.
• Sports Interactive also lists ultrawide monitor support, scaling modes, editable keyboard shortcuts, rearrangeable bookmarks and tile swapping; all of them are covered on the Matchday and Interface page.

A deeper football world

Continue Flow

• Pressing Continue no longer always brings you back to the same place: Sports Interactive says you will regularly land in different areas of the game outside the Portal.
• A new Continue Flow system, offered when you begin your first career, sets how often the game stops and what it shows you. There are three presets, Streamlined, Balanced and Comprehensive, plus a fourth option, Custom.
• Streamlined gives fewer breaks on the way to match days; Balanced and Comprehensive show more information as it happens. Custom lets you choose how often the game stops for messages, results, fixtures and news.
• A separate setting decides whether the Continue button walks you through your messages or continues with messages left unread. All of these can be changed later in Preferences.

Transfers behind the scenes

• Young players weigh game time more heavily when choosing a move, so the promise to treat a club as a stepping stone carries more value in contract talks.
• A sell-on fee in a player's contract now shows in Scout Reports, and clubs ask for more money for such players.
• AI managers and Directors of Football re-evaluate their shortlists to weigh experience and leadership in the dressing room.
• Sports Interactive also mentions Squad Cost Ratio rules and adjustments to spending across the game world.

Training and Tactical Effectiveness

• Training becomes one of the areas of the primary navigation bar, so it is one click away from any screen. Copying and pasting training plans returns, and the screen shows the physical load of the plan for the current week and the weeks ahead.
• The senior squad's training now centres on preparing for the next match and opponent. Sports Interactive says the previous Units system, built mainly around developing attributes, is replaced: sessions can work on, for example, pressing high or sitting in a low block.
• Individual training stays, for attributes, traits and new positions, and has to be balanced against the short-term need to win matches.
• Tactical Effectiveness is a new system that builds on the previous Tactical Familiarity system. It rests on four areas: Tactical Understanding, Player Ability, Player Buy-In and Next Match Information, shown as gauges in the Tactics, Training and Recruitment screens and in Scout Reports.
• Tactical Complexity is a new measure of how many team, player and opposition instructions you use. Sports Interactive describes a trade-off: a simple plan may work at once but has limited potential, while a complex one takes longer to learn and may be too much for a lower-league squad.
• International managers can now set training plans during a camp, an addition Sports Interactive credits to community feedback.

Manager Creator, accessibility and Newgens

Editors, messages and rules

• The In-Game Editor gets a new interface and becomes a full-screen experience, with information grouped to save clicks, a clearer default tab and tooltips on editable fields. Sports Interactive also promises better performance.
• A concussion recovery protocol, developed through conversations with the medical team at the Professional Footballers' Association, requires a neurologist's clearance before a player returns. Progress shows in the Medical Centre, fitness reports and player status tooltips.
• Messages carry more: monthly reports on finances, loans and how the board and fans rate you, an end-of-season awards message, the NXGN 50 list inside the message itself, and scouting progress as a list or cards.
• Staff advice grows: suggestions from staff meetings arrive in one message you can act on all at once, and you get more advice while scouting and negotiating transfers.
• Player status flags stack up to three again, with four new ones: language course, coaching badge, leadership training, and available for reserve or youth team action. Unemployed managers can again view shortlists and the player database.
• The Daylight Offside rule, which Sports Interactive says is being trialled in the Canadian Premier League, is in the game and can be switched off or added to other competitions in the Pre-Game Editor.
• Sports Interactive counts more than 18 million database changes and 1,500 competition updates, with two new licensed leagues, league restructures in Northern Ireland and Wales and new cups in Chile and Peru.

Shuffle Draft

• Shuffle Draft replaces the old Fantasy Draft. It was made with FIFAe, FIFA's digital tournament circuit, and can be played online, in public or private lobbies, or offline against AI managers, who also fill any empty online slots.
• Up to 32 teams play a Knockout Cup or Group Stage & Knockouts; a League takes up to 20. Squads are 14, 16, 18 or 20 players.
• The host builds the player pool from presets such as Wonderkids, Veterans and World's Best, from strengths such as Physicality or Leadership, or by hand. Men's and women's players can both be used, but not in the same event.
• Everyone drafts at once: each team picks one player from a set of 20, then the sets pass on to another team. Injuries and fatigue are cleared before every match, and the host can allow up to five Re-Drafts of up to 20 returns or removals each.

Still to be seen

Cross-checked