Football Manager 26 3D Stadium Megapack - Suited and Booted!

Hey everyone!

It's been about two months since 3.0, and I've not been sitting still. After last week's news of my layoff from my other work I bunkered down and pulled through with a few really solid updates and fixes. This one's built around two new bits of kit on the players - 3D boots and proper 3D tracksuits on the bench - plus a solid pass of bug fixing on the crowds, lights, stadium loading and more. There are some new in-game tools, and more stadiums added and tidied up.

If you're jumping in from an older build, read the 3.0 notes too so you catch everything in between.

This time the download link is at the very bottom due to BepInEx related issues that I NEED you to read!

3D BOOTS

Players now wear actual 3D boots on the pitch. Not a flat texture - real modelled boots that have high resolution textures and a custom shader.

What you get:

• Over 30 boots across 9 real brands: Adidas, Nike, Puma, Joma, Lotto, Mizuno, New Balance, Pantolola and Under Armour.

• They animate properly. The boot follows the foot through the whole match, no floating and no sliding.

• By default the game hands out a mix of boots across the squad so everyone isn't wearing the same pair.

• You can assign a specific boot to a specific player and it sticks - that player wears it every match from then on.

How to use the boot picker:

• Press I during a match to open the picker window. You can drag it around the screen to wherever suits you.

• Click a player's name in the window and you'll see the available boots laid out with thumbnails.

• Click a boot and it changes on that player straight away, so you can see it before you commit.

• Hit the Randomize button to shuffle boots across the whole squad if you'd rather not pick each one by hand.

• Assignments save automatically per player, so once you've set someone up you're done.

Fine-tuning (optional, for the picky):

• Each boot can be nudged into place if it's sitting slightly off. Press X to open tune mode, B to cycle the axis, G and J to nudge (hold Shift for bigger steps), C to reset, V to save, Y to reload. Most people will never need this - the boots ship pre-fitted.

3D TRACKSUITS ON THE BENCH

The substitutes warming up on the touchline now wear proper 3D tracksuits in their team's colours, instead of generic ones.

What you get:

• Subs on the bench and warming up down the touchline wear a real 3D tracksuit, top and bottom.

• It's team-coloured. Each club can have its own tracksuit top and bottom textures.

• A team without a custom tracksuit just wears the standard FM one - nothing breaks.

• Shows up in replays and highlights, which is where you actually see the bench.

For the kit makers among you: tracksuits work the same way as the 3D kits - drop your top and bottom textures into the graphics folder against the team ID, and they load in. Templates are included so you can paint straight onto the right layout. It's the same system, so if you already make 3D kits you already know how this works.

CROWD FIXES

A few crowd bugs got hunted down and killed this cycle:

• Wrong-kit crowd. Some of you saw the whole crowd wearing a random other club's shirt when the home team didn't have a custom kit made. That's fixed - a team with no custom kit now shows clean solid club colours instead of borrowing someone else's shirt.

• Away crowd wearing the home kit. Related bug: when a team you hadn't made kits for played away at a stadium that DID have kits, the away fans inherited the home team's shirt. Also fixed - away fans now wear their own club colours.

• Stray white choreo cards. Choreographies sometimes left blank white cards floating in areas that weren't part of the image. Those are gone now - empty areas stay empty.

• Choreos now rotate. If a team has more than one choreography authored, it now cycles through them across matches instead of showing the same one every game. Play three home games, potentially see three different displays.

OPTIMIZATION

There's also new folder support behind the scenes: your CustomStadium, boots, seat and crowd files can now live in subfolders instead of one giant flat folder. You can sort your stadiums into league folders (or however you like) and everything still loads. My own stadium library is now organised into league folders, which is how the pack ships.

A huge bug was in the lightinginject where it caused the game to stutter every so often. I managed to patch that out! Gameplay should therefore be smoother!

STADIUMS

The rolling stadium overhaul continues - bench placement, lighting and camera presets - and there's a big batch of new grounds this cycle. Over a dozen new individual stadiums went in and were redone! Including;

Basel, Blackburn, Burnley, Copenhagen, Derby County, Gil Vicente, Legia Warsaw, Malaga, Newell's Old Boys, Palermo, RB Leipzig, Sampdoria, Sanfrecce Hiroshima, Sapporo Dome and Sudtirol - plus the dedicated World Cup update is now in from the start!

The whole library is now sorted into league folders as mentioned above.

NOTE!

Since Dale has released his own version of his stadiums I have opted to not include them in this pack. Should you wish to use his stadiums too, check them out here;

Dale's Stadiums

BALLS

This update includes a new match ball for the Jupiler Pro League

SMALLER FIXES

• General polish passes across the plugins that aren't worth their own bullet.

• Continued compatibility work with the latest FM 26 game updates.

INSTALLATION

This is a FULL VERSION. Full reinstall is required - especially given the failure of the BepInEx for many users.

BEFORE YOU INSTALL:

1. Back up your custom kits if you have them. Anything you've placed in the Kits folder of earlier crowd plugins should be saved aside. Reapply them cleanly after installing.

2. REMOVE ALL FILES FROM EARLIER VERSIONS. Open the Football Manager 26 folder and delete the BepInEx folder you installed from previous versions before dropping the new ones in! Old leftover folders WILL conflict with the new layout. Easiest way: delete the entire BepInEx folder (after backing up your crowd kits!), then drop the new files in clean.

3. With FM closed, drop the new files into the install path below. All subfolders go into the directories below. If you don't place all of them it will not load.

Installation paths:

• Steam: Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Football Manager 26

• Xbox Game Pass: XboxGames\Football Manager 26\Content

• Epic Games: Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\FootballManager26

Steam Deck (Desktop Mode):

- Download the Linux version of BepInEx

- Download r2modman and extract it

- Navigate to: home-deck-config-r2modmanplus-local-fm26-profiles-default-

- Add the files to that path

- Make a shortcut on your homescreen of the r2modman app image and click execute

- Search game: -fm26 and select profile

- Find bepinexpack-footballmanager26 and install

- In the top left click "Start modded", not vanilla

- Game will load

If you have extraction issues, try winrar or winzip.

The first boot after this update will take a long time. IT HAS NOT FROZEN, IT IS LOADING. DO NOT INTERRUPT IT.

Anti-tamper message: remove the plugin files while FM is closed, boot the game and play a match, close FM, reinstall the files while FM is closed. Then you can play.

Thanks as always to everyone testing builds and flagging bugs in the Discord and on the Patreon. The feedback keeps it going and the continued support is very valued!

DOWNLOAD:

DOWNLOAD LINK (Click the text)

IMPORTANT UPDATE!

BepInEx seems to be kicking up many issues for many of you. Please download the attached BepInEx installation and install it AFTER the megapack!

IMPORTANT UPDATE 2:

The update broke something in the StadiumInjection plugin. If you have issues with the regular FM26 stadiums, download the second attachment named "Stadium Hotfix" and place that in your Football Manager 26 installation folder. Overwrite if asked!