Introducing Women’s Football

Embedding Women’s Football into the FM Experience

From the outset we never wanted a separate game for women's football, we wanted a single ecosystem where you could switch seamlessly - just as real managers can manage a men's or a women's team in their career. 

When you start playing FM26, your game world is yours. You have the option of selecting either a men’s team, a women’s team or starting unemployed. From there, you can create your save database with a mix of men’s and women’s leagues, just men’s or just women’s. It’s entirely up to you. 

In FM26 Console, FM26 Touch and FM26 Mobile, loading the men’s and women’s leagues from the same country will count as 2 nations towards your save limit. 

Where will your career begin?

Our FM26 women’s football database consists of more than 36,000 players and a further 5,000 non-players.

For launch, there will be 14 playable leagues across 11 nations and three continents, including the following licensed competitions: 

• Barclays Women’s Super League (England)
• Barclays Women's Super League 2 (England)
• National Women’s Soccer League (USA)
• Google Pixel Frauen-Bundesliga (Germany)
• WE League (Japan)
• Serie A Femminile (Italy)
• OBOS Damallsvenskan (Sweden)
• Elitettan (Sweden)
• A-Liga (Denmark)
• A-League Women (Australia)
• Adran Premier (Wales)
• UEFA Women’s Champions League (Europe)

The top division in France and top two divisions in Spain will also be playable in FM26.

Building the database

FM26 is just the start of our ambition to build the biggest and most accurate women’s football database out there. Our women’s football Research team now numbers 40 and we already have our sights set on new playable competitions to further capture the global scale of the women’s game. 

Our men’s database has taken more than 30 years to build but we started from scratch with women’s football. We needed to maintain the levels of the depth and detail FM is renowned for, so after capturing all the factual data about players, we began the process of rating them. We did a deep dive into how every in-game Attribute is assessed and whether we needed to change that process for women’s football. 

Ultimately, we’ve retained the same 20-point scale for every Attribute for every female player in our database. As it’s not possible to play matches between men’s and women’s teams in FM, we’ve made the 20-point scale relative to each side of the database. What that means is that a female player with 20 for Pace would be at the peak of speed in the women’s game, just as a man is in the men’s game in FM. 

Accounting for the unique landscape of women’s football

A lot of your core experience within an FM26 career will be similar between across men’s and women’s football. However, there are differences in the women’s game that we’ve worked extensively with our contacts in the professional game to reflect. 

Some of the most significant differences are contracts, finances and the transfer market. In the women’s game, contracts are typically shorter than in the men’s and release clauses are far less common. Both of those things have been reflected in FM26, as has the fact that the transfer market is dominated by free transfers. End-of-contract compensation fees have been matched to real-life levels. We’ve also adjusted club revenues and average wage expenditures they lay out to make them as accurate as possible. 

Elsewhere, we’ve used real-world data to accurately reflect the prevalence of, and recovery rates for, certain injuries where there are differences between the women’s game certainly compared to the men’s. 

Changes to Newgen generation and Matchday

Our goal as a studio is to build the most realistic simulation of football possible. That means making sure the here-and-now of your games is accurate and maintaining your suspension of disbelief as you progress deeper into careers.

To that end, we adapted the Newgen generation process. Some of the staff generated in FM26 will only work in the women’s game and vice-versa, while some will work across both. We’ve also added data for existing owners and Newgen ones to reflect their likelihood of hiring across men’s and women’s football. 

With more movement of coaches and managers between the men’s and the women’s games in FM26, you’ll experience more depth and originality in every career. 

That depth is also reflected on Matchday. Aware of the differences between how men and women move, we’ve run a series of bespoke motion capture sessions with female footballers. Those animations are incorporated into FM26, alongside new character models, hair textures and styles, and kit settings. There are further differences too that you’ll learn more about in our forthcoming Matchday Experience deep dive.

We're thrilled to finally integrate women's football into our games with FM26. 

With new players to discover and teams to manage, the inclusion of women’s football in FM26 gives you more options and opportunities to test your skills in every career. 

There’s so much more to come from the integration of women’s football in FM as we expand our offering and the real-life women’s game continues to grow. Get ready to change the game.