Esports Manager 2026 Key Art
Image: Neurona Games & indie.io

Sure, you could be playing Counter-Strike right now. If not, you could watch any of the countless matches being streamed right now. But if your ambitions stretch to running your own competitive FPS team? Well, I hope you have very deep pockets and ethically questionable foreign sponsors. That, or you could pick up Esports Manager 2026, which launched onto Steam this week, courtesy of developers Neurona Games and publisher indie.io.

In short, it's Football Manager but without the athleticism, and a lot more dubiously greebled Gamer-brand hardware with far too many LEDs. If you're familiar with sports management games, you'll be right at home, allocating budgets, hiring promising players, panicking as your crew injures themselves the day before a match - you know the drill. But it's all in service of playing an off-brand version of Counter-Strike (seen from a bird's-eye perspective) and working your way up the rankings, giving your orders in real-time during their matches.

While Esports Manager 2026 appears to be selling decently, user reviews are currently middling. While the earlier demo version caught flak for the game's use of AI-generated photos of your fictional crew of head-clickers, the full game appears to be drawing more criticism for its more traditional use of artificial intelligence. Many report their teams frustratingly ignoring orders and making questionable decisions in matches. Nothing that can't be patched (I'd personally like to see the AI portraits replaced with real people, too), but the question is whether Neurona can right their ship before interest in the game wanes.

Esports Manager 2026 is out now on Steam for £16/$20, with a 20% launch discount available until July 20th. Plus extra discounts if you own any of the games on this page. And if you're still on the fence, the demo is still available.