Women's soccer is coming to Football Manager 26. Since there are no restrictions on managers switching between disciplines in real life, Sports Interactive added no such barriers either, allowing players to freely decide how to start their career and which leagues to add into their career database for each run.
This means that players can start campaigns with a mixed set-up or purely include men's or women's leagues in their current save.
FM26 will feature 14 women's leagues from 11 nations, including several licensed leagues such as the United States' NWSL, England's WSL, Germany's Frauen-Bundesliga, and the UEFA Women's Champions League. National competitions from Italy, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Wales, and Australia are fully licensed as well.
Since it won't be possible to play matches between men's and women's teams in FM26, the developers were able to use the men's rating system and scale for the new additions, so the players won't have to spend time learning the ropes: An athlete with a rating of 20 in any stat needs to be considered world-class in that regard relative to their peers.
Managing a women's team will come with its own challenges. Women's contracts are shorter than men's on average, the transfer market is dominated by free transfers and there is overall a good deal less money available to work with. The developers used real-life health data to ensure that injury types and recovery rates are accurately reflected where they are different.