How many times have you wondered whether that striker really performs better than the other one, or whether the new formation is worth it? In FM, the answer is usually to play and see. FM24 Match Harness changes that: it is a free tool that takes your next match and simulates it thousands of times with FM24’s own match engine. So instead of one result, you get a statistic.
The tool is by Philip Armstead and was born out of a small grudge. Recently, someone showed on Reddit that they had the FM26 engine running outside the game, but did not share the tool. So Philip made his own, for FM24 (he does not own FM26), and released it as open source. Version 1.1.0 came out on 22 October 2026.
(Image: Philip Armstead)
What FM24 Match Harness does
With FM24 open and a save loaded, the program exports your next match. Then you can change the context and simulate. In practice, it lets you:
- Look inside the match. It shows both squads, stored tactics, players’ condition and morale, and venue details. Version 1.1.0 also shows each player’s familiarity with the selected tactic.
- Change the conditions. Swap players or whole teams, change the pitch, stadium and attendance, or max out morale, condition and sharpness with one button.
- Simulate in bulk. In the Simulation tab, run the match thousands of times, with several simulations in parallel.
- Save the results. Everything goes into CSV files, with player and team statistics if you want them.
One detail makes this serious: each simulation uses a fixed seed for the game’s randomness. In other words, the result of a seed is exactly what you would get in the game with Instant Result under the same conditions. So if you change just one player and repeat the same 10,000 seeds, the difference really comes from that change.
(Image: Philip Armstead)
Who it is for
First and foremost, it is for people who like testing. You can compare two goalkeepers, see how much fitness matters or measure home advantage. One Reddit user has already used it to test goalkeeper attributes, and another wants to use it to find tactics beyond the usual gegenpress.
If you like coding, everything is also available from the command line, so you can write a script that runs hundreds of experiments in a row. If you just want to play your save, you probably do not need this.
Requirements
- 64-bit Windows 10 or newer. There is no Mac version.
- FM24 on Steam or Epic Games, with match engine 24.2. Support for Steam version 24.2.4 is still experimental.
- The game open, with a save loaded, one of your matches coming up and the game idle, not processing.
Download FM24 Match Harness
The download is a single file, fm24ctl.exe, about 500 KB, straight from the author’s GitHub. It is free and open source (GPL-3.0 licence).
Download – FM24 Match Harness 1.1.0 (FM24)
- First, open FM24, load your save and stop before one of your matches. Do not touch the game while the tool is working.
- Open fm24ctl.exe. It exports the next match and opens the app window.
- Save the match to a file, make any changes you want and go to the Simulation tab.
- Choose the seeds (for example, 1 to 10000) and simulate. The results go into a CSV next to the match file.
If you want to compare with the real match, export it after submitting your team and before continuing to the match, and the author recommends keeping FM at that point during your experiments. The author is documenting the fields of the match file one by one, so anyone who wants to change everything can edit the JSON by hand.
Warnings before you use it
- It touches the running game. To work, the tool injects a DLL into FM24 and calls the match engine directly. Some antivirus programs may distrust an unsigned .exe. The code is public on GitHub, but use it at your own risk and back up your saves first.
- It is not official. The author says he has not extracted any SI code or intellectual property. Even so, on Reddit, a user who presents himself as an intellectual property lawyer expressed doubts. We do not know whether SI or SEGA will say anything.
- It depends on the game version. Each FM24 update can break compatibility, and unsupported versions are refused.
- It moves fast. Seven versions came out in just over a week, so it is worth checking GitHub for a newer one.
What about FM27?
The author says he might make an FM27 version during the week the game is free, from 29 October to 3 November. If that happens, we will tell you here.
Credits
FM24 Match Harness is by Philip Armstead, who makes it available for free and accepts support on Ko-fi. The code, instructions and issue list are on the project’s GitHub. Looking for more tools? See our FM24 editors and tools.
The files are hosted by their original authors. FMPortugal only points to the official download page — all credit goes to their creators.
