A day after showing the first Football Manager 2027 deep dive, Sports Interactive went to Reddit to answer questions from players. The AMA (Ask Me Anything) took place on 23 September, lasted more than three hours and drew almost 380 comments. The community team posted 35 answers.
We went through the thread with a fine-tooth comb. Below you will find everything we learned about the new interface: what changes, what comes back, what goes away and what still needs explaining. For the bigger picture, also read our article Football Manager 2027 News: what we already know.
In a nutshell
- The interface was the big priority this year. The overall goal of FM27 is immersion.
- The menus move to the top of the screen: Portal, Squad, Tactics, Recruitment, Training and Club.
- Back are "Around the World" (now called the Competitions Hub), the attribute polygon, add-ons in transfers, custom keyboard shortcuts and the Reload Skin button.
- The purple will be toned down and the colours will change depending on the club or competition.
- The end of season review and player data exports are not coming back.
- Skins and mods stay as they were in FM26: no official support, but no blocking either.
- The game is also coming to Mac.
- Training, the 3D match engine, match day and newgen faces are left for the next deep dives.
Who was answering
The AMA was led by Chris Groves (SI_CommunityChris), who recently joined to head up the Football Manager community. He was joined by Dan, Zachary and Kyle. SI asked for questions to focus on the interface and promised to repeat the format after every new deep dive.
A nice little detail: Chris said he has been playing FM since 2006, when he was 11 and found a demo in a cereal box. He has an FM26 save that is five seasons in and admits it has not been one of his favourite FMs.
First, what the deep dive showed
To make sense of the answers, it helps to remember what SI showed in the official article and in the video from 22 September.
The most visible change is navigation. Everything now happens through the menus at the top, split into six areas: Portal, Squad, Tactics, Recruitment, Training and Club. Tiles are still there, but they are mainly used to show information. Each area has a control panel at the top with the most used actions, such as calling a team meeting in Squad or adjusting the budget in Recruitment. Many windows became full screens, so you close fewer things along the way.
Messages have changed too. Each topic has its own colour, scout reports appear inside the message itself and offers for the same player all arrive together.
There are also three scaling modes in Preferences (Default, Detailed and Condensed), ultrawide monitor support, named bookmarks you can reorder, editable shortcuts and the option to choose the page you land on in each area. A new system called Tactical Effectiveness appears on the Training and Tactics screens, and it will be explained later on.
SI warned that the footage comes from a development build. The layout of the interface will stay pretty much the same at launch, but the skin and colours are still being worked on.
What SI answered
The interface came first, but gameplay was not forgotten
Some people asked whether this year was all about the interface. SI confirmed it was a priority from early on:
"We acknowledged very early in the cycle that the user interface was a common feedback point both with the community and internally, therefore it needed to be a priority in development."
At the same time, SI said that what was shown in the video is "largely final" and that the next deep dives will show new gameplay features, some of which players have already spotted in the video.
So what is the core idea behind FM27? According to Chris Groves:
"The main focus for FM27 is that concept of immersion, and the invitation for you to discover more about your game world."
SI says that this year it would rather show than promise, and let everyone draw their own conclusions. The next deep dive is about immersion.
FM26 forced a change in how the studio works
SI admits that the interface and navigation were among the most criticised areas of FM26 and that this feedback shaped FM27. It also revealed changes at the studio in processes, software and job roles, so that player suggestions can be turned into features more quickly.
To reach information in fewer clicks, SI points to three things: menus that show what matters first, fewer pop-up windows and tiles you can swap so the things you use most are always at hand.
Why the sidebar is not coming back
Many players wanted the sidebar that FM used from FM15 to FM24 back. The answer was that, over time, the sidebar stopped helping with navigation and became more of a place to show new content. With the menu at the top, primary and secondary navigation sit together, the hierarchy is clearer and the full width of the screen is used, which helps with tables full of data.
Empty space, ultrawide and screen control
Wasted space in the menus was one of the big complaints about FM26. SI says it worked to make better use of the screen and suggests watching the video from 2:50, where the interface adapts to different formats, including ultrawide. Even so, it admits it cannot guarantee a perfect result on every screen size and tile combination.
If you were hoping to freely resize or pin panels, you will only get part of the way there. There is more freedom than in FM26 (swappable tiles, scaling modes, bookmarks and shortcuts), but nothing was said about freely changing the size of panels.
And the text that seemed not to fit inside some buttons? SI says this has already been fixed in internal builds made after the video was recorded.
What comes back
This was the part long-time players liked the most.
- Competitions Hub. The most upvoted question of the AMA asked about the return of "Around the World", the view with the tables of several leagues at once. The answer was a straight "yes". It is now called the Competitions Hub and shows the leagues of the nations you selected as active.
- Attribute polygon. It appears on player reports, next to the attributes, in the Detailed and Condensed modes. In Default mode you can swap the numbers for the polygon and the game remembers your choice.
- Add-ons in transfers. The transfer history once again shows add-ons in brackets next to the base fee, just like before FM26.
- Keyboard shortcuts. You can set your own again, including the classic F3 to go to your squad.
- Reload Skin. The button is back in Preferences.
What about the purple?
Lots of people asked for an end to the purple and for the light and dark themes to return. SI explained that the base skin will still change before launch, with more variety in the colours, partly because of feedback from testing. The colours will also change from screen to screen, for example depending on the club or competition you are looking at. The return of light and dark themes was not confirmed.
Skins and mods: nothing changes
It was by far the most asked topic. The official answer:
"There are no notable changes in FM27, compared to your existing ability, to mod and/or skin the game."
SI explained that it cannot officially support changes made by the community because of intellectual property rights, both of the partners it has licences with and of those it does not. Even skins that only change the look of the interface are sensitive, because they change the context around official content. Even so, SI says it tries not to get in the way of people who create this content.
There was also a fun fact: SI follows the work of skin creators, has invited some of them to the studio to talk about design, and its very first interface designer came from that community.
In practice, anyone who uses kits, logos, facepacks and skins, like the ones we collect in our Downloadssection, should be able to do the same in FM27 as they do today.
What does not come back
Not all the news was good. SI confirmed that the end of season review is not coming back in FM27 and that player data exports are not planned either. SI says it will keep logging these requests for future releases. These were the worst received answers in the thread, with dozens of downvotes.
Unity and the team behind the interface
SI has its own in-house team of interface and user experience designers, who work side by side with the game and narrative designers. On Unity, the engine that debuted in FM26, SI says it has made the work more agile and that now, with the first game done, it has a foundation to build on year after year.
Platforms and communication
Mac is confirmed. SI also promises to stay in touch with the community throughout the whole cycle of the game, even after the final update. As for the First Look programme, the emails for people who signed up and were not selected are being sent, but they may take a while because of the number of sign-ups.
What is left for later
Many questions were saved for the next deep dives, which do not have dates yet. We already know they will cover:
- immersion (the next one);
- training, which looked the same as in FM26 in the video;
- the 3D match engine and match day, on and off the pitch;
- newgen faces and presentation;
- the new tactical effectiveness system.
Chris Groves also said that some questions need internal confirmation and will be answered at future events. According to FM Scout, popular topics that went unanswered include transfer deadline day, live cup draws, Create-A-Club, staff attributes as numbers, international management at launch, pre-orders and pricing.
Our take
We liked seeing SI answer directly, even when the answer was "no". After a difficult FM26, it is a sign that communication is changing. The interface changes tackle the biggest complaints from last year (confusing navigation, too many windows and wasted space), and the return of the polygon, the Competitions Hub and shortcuts will please plenty of long-time players.
But the interface is only one part of the game. The match engine, training, AI and performance are still to be shown, and losing the end of season review and data exports will hurt for many. We will follow the next deep dives and tell you all about them here on FMPortugal.
