DAVEINCID'S
INCREASE REALISM MEGAPACK
The Most Realistic Way to Play Football Manager 2026 – With Monthly Updates
Increase Realism Megapack explained
More realistic, authentic, and more detailed gameworld
Increase Realism Megapack for Football Manager introduces comprehensive changes that make the game more realistic and authentic in numerous areas. A major focus is on balancing long-term saves, particularly in terms of player abilities and finances, to ensure a realistic long-term development of players and clubs.
The mod is updated monthly and expands across various topics – from player attributes and ticket prices to financial re-balancing, new wonderkids, more complete club data, and much more. Additionally, transfer and financial systems are adjusted more precisely to reflect real-world football conditions.
Early access to updates is available exclusively via Patreon.
FM26 SEPTEMBER Update
ALTERNATIVE YOUTH RATING + GAME IMPORTANCE & OTHERS
This file changes the “youth ratings”, the “game importance” and the “development status” of many countries. The main purpose of the changes is to make both the quantity and the potential maximum quality in long-term saves more realistic. However, this file is not solely responsible for the quality of players, the file „youth & training facilities“ is also very important.
BRIEFLY SUMMARISED
- The global distribution of talent has been slightly increased
- The development potential was calculated individually for each nation based on more than 15 different criteria. For example, the HDI (Human Development Index), national and international audience average, population size, financial resources and much more!
REALISTIC INJURIES
This file increases the probability of injury by approx. 20% and further increases the number of injuries caused by sprints. The injury probability in the base game is traditionally always about 20% lower than in reality.
The advantages of this file:
• Better squad rotation (as there are more injuries)
• Young players reach their potential less often (important for the overall balance)
• Intensive counter-press tactics are less effective (as significantly more muscle injuries will occur due to sprinting 
)
German version:
The German version can be found in an extra folder “German Version”. If you play the game in German, delete the English version and replace it with this one.
SALARIES, MARKET VALUES AND SPONSORS
This file changes the financial behaviour in all nations in the 3 main areas “salaries”, “market values” and “sponsorship income”. The February update includes changes which especially lowers the too high wage-demands for top players in top leagues.
Salaries:
Salaries are based much more on real existing data. A player from Cameroon no longer earns €500k per year, but perhaps €30k.
Market values:
Market values have been adjusted globally so that the actual transfer fees paid (!not the market values shown!) in nation XY are more realistically represented. The market values in some larger nations have been lowered (e.g. England). The reason for this is that otherwise, talented players in particular won’t get transferred often, as the club demands are far too high. In the July update there was a change that the AI values talent more realistically, so signing wonderkids for cheap is much harder now.
Sponsors:
The sponsor values have been adjusted worldwide to better balance the finances of the clubs. In addition, I have calculated individual maximum values for each nation. This should improve realism, especially in smaller nations, and thus make “Build a Nation” saves more realistic.
NATIONS AGREEMENT
This file adds 24 agreements between nations. You can find this information in the nation tab overview.
CURRENT ABILITY /POTENTIAL ABILITY ADJUSTMENTS + NEW WONDERKIDS & OTHERS
WINTER UPDATE:
3’500+ players adjusted
U17 World Cup players adjusted
34 of the biggest leagues worldwide are done
INCREASED DIFFICULTY
I have increased the difficulty for signing wonderkids for cheap/for low reputation clubs. Wonderkids will be more expensive/demand higher salary and/or are unwilling to even join you depending which league you’re playing. The same counts for high CA players. It’s now more difficult to just buy high CA players for you mid-table club and win everything in 3 years 😀 Skeptical? If you have the in game editor, load a save with my files vs. without my files, go to the same club and see which wonderkids you can sign in vanilla vs my modded version;)
INCREASE REALISM MEGAPACK (WOMENS VERSION)
Women’s Football received it’s own “Increase Realism”-Megapack (over 38k changes in total):
– 92 nations were balanced in terms of player development, club finances, transfer preferences, transfer fees, market values, salaries
– Current/Potential ability adjustments and new wonderkids
– Fixed issues with ageing national teams and a massive drop of player quality in longterm-saves
-injury behaviour adjustments
– several other bug fixes
TRANSFER PREFERENCES
I have researched all nations on transfermarkt.com that have a preference for players with a certain nationality and adjusted them accordingly. Over 200 nations have been edited!Not only the nationalities have been adjusted, but also the age preferences. There are certain nations that clearly stand out as “development leagues” based on various data. (Very high proportion of players under the age of 24). For example Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia or even obscure nations such as Kyrgyzstan.
CLUB FINANCES FIX
“Club finances fix 25/26 season” adjusts the account balance to the 25/26 season (win/loss transfers). The sums were not always taken over 1:1 but were left in a comprehensible ratio.
CLUB DATA FIXES
This file completes various missing data of over 1500 clubs of the 1st and 2nd division in over 150 nations:
Nicknames of clubs
missing city coordinates
89 new stadiums
missing club rivalries
missing club foundation dates
club colours
CLUB REPUTATION FIX
Adjustments to improve club reputation behaviour and other factors such as sponsorship behaviour.
LEAGUE REPUTATION CHANGES
Adjustments were mainly made to better balance several aspects of the game.
TICKET PRICE ADJUSTMENTS
This file fixes wrongly ticket prices due to missing values, currency converter mistakes or general balancing reasons
YOUTH & TRAINING FACILITIES IMPROVEMENTS
This file improves the balance of the current ability of newgens when they are created. In some cases/nations it was generally too high and in others too weak. The adjustments to the training facilities then ensure that the subsequent development speed is realistic.
WORLDWIDE AWARD FIXES
Winning awards actually matters now and is rebalanced worldwide
WORLDWIDE DERBY FIXES
New derbies added and fixed existing ones
GEOGRAPHICS AND LANGUAGES
Geographical data:
The whole world is now covered with real data. From the population of a small village in Ghana to the correct altitude of small villages in the mountain peaks of Peru:
5500+ edited cities
1800+ local regions edited
Missing coordinates of over 1800+ cities
Missing elevation data of over 4200 cities
All cities now have a „attraction“ value added
These changes may have an impact on:
The distribution of newgen birthplaces
Travelling costs
Sponsorship deals
Contract negotiations
Fitness/Injury frequency of players
Languages:
• 100+ new languages created
• The difficulty level of all languages has been increased by 30% to prevent players from learning the language too quickly
• 181 Nations have been edited
• 1800+ local regions
• Many individual cities edited
With those changes, the linguistic diversity of all nations is represented in much greater detail. In addition to the official languages of a nation, the unofficial languages are now also taken into account. These are intended to represent those people who speak a second or even third language without having the nationality of that nation.
German version:
The German version is located in an extra folder “German Version”. If you play the game in German, delete the English version
CLUB TRANSFER PREFERENCES
Over 90 teams from 50 nations have a special preference. This can either be players from a certain nation or age preference.
REAL PLAYER AGENCIES
I’ve re-invented how Football Managers parameter uses player agents and replaced them with player agencies. The 200 biggest player agencies have been created, representing around 4,000 of the best players worldwide.
Each agency comes with its own personality traits, which directly influence contract negotiations – some are aggressive, some efficient, and some just want the money 😀
For example:
Gestifute (Jorge Mendes)
ROGON
Stellar Group
Lian Sports
Wasserman
Unique Sports Group
WEATHER CHANGES
I have integrated climate change into the game. In concrete terms, this means that there is a small probability (approx. 5%) that temperatures in all regions of the world will be higher than those entered by default. In London, for example, temperatures of up to 42 degrees can be reached in rare cases. Previously, the maximum was 32 degrees. This can have an impact on the fitness of the players. It is therefore definitely worth taking a closer look at the weather forecast for the next match.
TAXES FIX
Missing, outdated or incomplete taxation fixes for 20 nations
PLAYER SALARIES ADJUSTMENTS
Around 1,800 players have had their salaries adjusted.
This was necessary because many salaries were either missing entirely, which caused them to be calculated unrealistically, or were simply incorrect.
Players from leagues in 38 nations were adjusted.
The main focus was on players with a CA of 130 or higher. There are now almost no players left in this range without a salary entry.
This leads to:
✅ More realistic transfers
✅ More realistic wage negotiations
✅ Better balanced club finances
✅ Improved balance especially in the 2nd and 3rd divisions of Spain, France and Italy
STAFF ATTRIBUTE ADJUSTMENTS
Managers tend to be more aggressive and offensive in general to achieve a bigger challenge against the human manager, CA/PA adjustments of hundreds of managers aswell and preferred tactic adjustments
PLAYER CAREER PATHS
Some players where a transfer to a specific league or club is very unlikely (mainly due to their market value/reputation/current salary) won’t happen anymore. Neither the human manager or AI clubs will do these transfers. I’ll give you some examples:
Worldclass players at a worldclass club which are on a heavy contract won’t move to Bayern Munich. The same goes to worldclass talented players which are already on a contract at another worldclass club.
For example (there are many more) :
Jude Bellingham
Pedri
Declan Rice
Ousmane Dembélé
Bukayo Saka
Cole Palmer
Desiré Doué
Pau Cubarsi
Kenan Yildiz
These players won’t move to clubs in the Bundesliga due to historically, worldclass players won’t move to the Bundesliga when they are already at their peak (in terms of transfer value or current salary). Players like Harry Kane (was a Tottenham) or Michael Olise (Crystal Palace) were either not at worldclass level yet when they moved to Bayern or weren’t at a club which wer «on par» with Bayern Munich in terms of international standing (Tottenham). These types of players are still possible and will happen on a regular basis. You can check the custom save-game (Patreon) I’ve uploaded and check Bayern Munich’s transfer history. (Bought Carlos Baleba or Samu Agehowa).
Furthermore I’ve added many career plans of wonderkids which were either confirmed in social media «my dream is to play for club XY or in league XY» or do make sense from a simulation perspective.
In total, over 240 players were edited.
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
Database clean-up has increased weekly simulation speed by approximately 5%, without removing important realism-related data.
PLAYER PERSONALITY IMPROVEMENTS
Keeping the entire squad happy is now more challenging again.
Player development speeds now vary more noticeably, creating less predictable and more realistic career paths.
REFEREE ADJUSTMENTS
Referees have been rebalanced so that the number of yellow and red cards across leagues worldwide is closer to real-life values.
Update Calendar
FM26 OCTOBER update public version (final FM26 update)
FM26 OCTOBER Early-Access Version FINAL UPDATE
FM26 OCTOBER Beta-Version FINAL UPDATE
FM26 OCTOBER Alpha-Version FINAL UPDATE
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FAQ
How to install "Increase Realism Megapack in FM26?
PC:
Place all files (not the folder) in “Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2026/editor data”.
Mac:
You need to copy the downloaded files to this location:
/Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2026/editor data
You may find it difficult to find this exact location, to make it easier, use the following instructions:
1.) Open Finder
2.) Click “Go” from the menubar and select “Go to Folder” (alternatively press Shift+CMD+G)
3.) Copy in the following: ~/Library/Application Support/Sports Interactive/
4.) Open the “Football Manager 2026” folder
5.) Open the “editor data” folder (or created it if it doesn’t exist)
6.) Move the downloaded files into the ”editor data” folder
How do I know that I installed it correctly?
Simple, if you selected the files when you create a new save game, and the files are ticked then its working
Can I install this mod in an existing save game?
No, a new save game is needed with each update.
Can I use only parts of the Megapack, or does it need to be installed fully?
I highly recommend to install all files. Many files are dependent on each other. A partial installation often leads to major issues.
Is your Megapack compatible with other mods?
The Megapack is in most cases compatible with transfer updates and all possible graphical adjustments. All mods which cover the same topic aren’t compatible.
