FM27: Clearer Interface & Smoother Navigation

Cleaner and More Intuitive Navigation

Navigating in FM should feel natural and in FM27 our design philosophy has evolved to make that process feel smoother, intuitive and more familiar.

In FM26, the tiles on each screen served two purposes: the presentation of information and navigation. You clicked on a tile, it opened a card, and that was how you moved through the full game experience.

For FM27, we’ve refocused them so that their primary use is for information and almost all the navigation you need is in the primary and secondary menus at the top of the screen. 

The primary navigation menu has been updated with renamed sections: Portal, Squad, Tactics, Recruitment, Training and Club. Each one better reflects your core responsibilities as a manager, while reducing the number of steps needed to reach the information and actions you use most.

By making tiles primarily an informational tool, we’ve been able to change screen compositions through the game, prioritising the quality and relevance of information at your disposal. So, in the Squad screen, you’ll see your squad straight away. Tactics takes you straight to your tactics; Training takes you straight to your training and so on - at least at first, with more on customisation in this area a little later.

And, within each of these menus you’ll benefit from an improved secondary navigation system. Here, we've improved the signposting to make finding specific areas easier and re-introduced the toggle button to allow you to quickly access and switch between screens within that area without you needing to go back to the overview and find the relevant tile.

Within these core areas, there’s now a control panel at the top which essentially gathers the key actions you can take in that area. For Squad it might be holding a team meeting or delegating responsibilities, while for Recruitment it could be adjusting your transfer budget or reviewing staff advice.

With many of the cards also becoming full-screen experiences, there’s less closing of windows to move forward; in turn meaning significantly fewer clicks to access what you need.

By presenting it to you like this, you’ve got greater efficiency in navigation and decision-making as your next step is always available and immediately obvious.

By making your next step immediately obvious and pairing these navigational changes with under-the-hood performance upgrades and significantly reduced input latency, FM27 makes both navigation and decision-making feel faster, clearer and more efficient.

Making your Messages work for you

Efficiency of navigation and decision-making is at the heart of the wholesale upgrades to Messages for FM27.

To give you a clear visual cue and make it easier to get into the things that matter most to you as a manager, messages are now colour-coded based on topic and have been designed to make better use of space.

Colour-coding message categories is just one aspect of the visual fidelity improvements in FM27. We’ve added more club colours to the top navigation bar to showcase more team individuality, while by launch, you’ll discover new branded backgrounds that deliver greater vibrancy in every screen. 

Within these messages, information is now also presented far more directly. For example, when you receive a message about a Scout Report, this now includes the scout report itself. It’s no longer a tile you need to click into.

There are fewer duplicate items too. So, when you receive multiple transfer offers for a player, these all now appear in the same message. That, in turn, makes it quicker and easier for you to decide on the next steps for your squad.

Giving you the full picture in these messages and beyond is an uptick in the volume of tooltips available in FM27, providing further context and insight whether you’re looking into the attribute descriptors of potential new staff or your star player’s medical report.

Scaling to your managerial style

Whether you’re playing on a laptop or with an ultra-wide 4K monitor, you’ll get a more optimal experience in FM27.

We’ve reworked the logic of the UI to recognise your preferences and adapt to your screen size and resolution settings by changing screen compositions to display more information and reduce empty space.

You’ll notice these changes in the game’s key scalable elements like tables and lists.

Tables now show you as much information as possible vertically without forcing you to scroll, while horizontally they’re designed so that the screens are populated with as much relevant data for you as possible. You can also combine this with custom views, so you can be creative with the type and volume of information you want to see.

This is supported by the addition of a scaling mode to the Preferences menu for those with HD and 4K monitors. You’ll start your first FM27 career on the default information setting with two alternatives available. Detailed and Condensed allow you to load two varying levels of additional detail onto your screen, while Default remains there if you want UI elements to be bigger.

Alongside custom views, this level of control gives you the flexibility to customise your experience based on how you play and the volume of information you need for your managerial style.

More customisation tools to match your pace

There are four other key aspects to the customisation changes introduced for FM27: Secondary Navigation Landing Spots, Shortcut Remapping, Bookmarks and Tile Swapping.

The first two are additions within the Preferences menu. Here, you’ll also now discover a setting that enables you to change where you land when you click on each of the options in the primary navigation bar.

So, if you have more of an interest in certain aspects of Squad or Recruitment, you can change the setting so that you can get there in fewer clicks.

There is now once again the functionality for you to edit the in-game keyboard shortcuts to whatever you want them to be.

Bookmarks offered a quicker, more reliable way to navigate in FM26, allowing you to pin the individual game screens and areas that mattered most to you. You’ll notice from some of the screens shared here and in our deep dive video that we’ve evolved this system to give more value in every save.

There is greater control over the Bookmark Bar itself. We’ve added text descriptors for those that you prioritise, meaning that there’s immediate recall beyond just the in-game icon. Within the bar itself there’s also now the ability to re-arrange the placement of your Bookmarks, making it easier to tailor based on your needs during different phases of the season.

Last but by no means least is the introduction of tile swapping. In the Portal and other areas of the game, we’ve added dropdowns on certain tiles that allow you to swap them out for another of the same size; giving you more control about the nature, quality and relevance you’re seeing based on your gameplay preferences.

This tile swapping system has also been introduced in the Match Day Interface, which you’ll see more of in our Match Engine deep dives, and is the start of a longer-term project on screen customisation.

FM27 evolves the design language we introduced in FM26 combined with ideas and behaviours that recapture the core navigation and user experience flow from previous titles.

Our goal with these changes is simple: for them to feel efficient and intuitive, so you can focus on discovery and exploring the wider footballing world. More relevant information in each screen and more ways to shape how you engage with the game means greater control and depth to your experience.

In our next deep dive we’ll showcase the new, improved, and returning elements that make FM27 a deeper and more immersive football world.