Why Football Manager 26 has improved its graphics... with the help of VAR

Football Manager 26 launches next month, graphics greatly improved from the last release two years ago.

But while most games will use motion capture to get the most realistic gameplay, the team behind Football Manager have gone leftfield when it comes to replicating the real world.

And it's all with the help of VAR…

Football Manager studio director Miles Jacobson: 'Some of the passing movement within the game is beautiful, it adds that extra element of realism'

“We’re getting closer: we’re not there yet with the way we’re doing animations now, both with men’s and women’s football.” studio director of Sports Interactive, Miles Jacobson, tells FourFourTwo.

While Video Assistant Referees may be loathed by the average fan though, Jacobson and the team leant on the data captured by VAR to produce something realer to life for FM.

“It’s all well and good going into a motion capture studio with ex-footballers, kicking a ball around and getting that motion capture but that doesn’t really reflect the pace of the game.

“It doesn’t reflect the natural actions on the ball – the feints, the looks up and that sort of thing.

“So this year, we’ve been able to work with Hawkeye Technology who are a name that aren’t known by many people but they’re the people behind VAR. They have loads of cameras in stadiums to be able to do VAR and they work by looking at the skeletal structure of players rather than the person, like a camera would do.

“Our partnership with them means that we can take matches from competitions and take all of their motion data capture – even though that’s not what it’s there for – and put it into the game. That’s why in this game, you see players looking up before they look to cross, which is something that’s certainly never been in FM before but it makes a fundamental difference to how things look.

“There’s still a lot to do graphically before we get to the point where it looks like a real match. But some of the passing movement within the game is beautiful, it adds that extra element of realism.”

Football Manager 26 is out on November 4, 2025.