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A lot of players ask how to remove women’s football from Football Manager 26. Most of the time this is not about the leagues themselves, but about improving performance, reducing database size, and helping the game run a little smoother, especially on lower-end PCs.
If you want women’s football completely excluded from your save, it has to be done correctly during the setup process. Simply deleting leagues in the wrong place can cause issues with the men’s competitions as well:
- When starting a new career, choose Advanced Setup rather than the quick start option. Once the setup screen loads, go straight into the Leagues section.

- As you scroll through the list of nations in Add Nations +, you will notice that some are highlighted in a green or turquoise colour. These are the countries that include women’s football. England and Germany are good examples to use here.

- After selecting one of these nations and confirming, you will see both men’s and women’s competitions listed. The men’s side will show leagues such as the Premier League or Bundesliga, while the women’s side will include competitions like the Barclays Women’s Super League or the Frauen-Bundesliga.


💡 At this point, many players make the mistake of setting the women’s leagues to View Only or deleting them outright. Doing this can also remove or interfere with the men’s leagues, which is obviously not what you want.
- To remove women’s football properly, on the main Advanced Setup screen head to the top right and switch the selector from Men’s to Women’s. Once you are on the women’s side, change the League Selector option to None.

Even though the nations may still appear in the list, you will notice that the text now reads Active women’s nations: 0. Meanwhile, the men’s leagues you selected will remain fully active. This means women’s football will not exist in your save at all. It will not be loaded, simulated, or processed in the background, which helps reduce load times and overall system strain. That is the correct and clean way to exclude women’s football from your FM26 save without breaking anything else. Ideally, this is done purely for performance reasons, especially if you are running a large database or playing on older hardware where it doesn't make sense to load a league you are not planning to play.
Comments
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seano4884
Very good thank-you!
Richardooo7
Amazing thanks. Despite no interest in womens leagues, my current save still pops up with news from womens leagues and comps. And when i search a team using the search function, 2 exact same results will appear for 1 team, 1 being women, 1 being men. But no distinction until you click it and find you are looking at the womens version of the team. Doh.
Riccid
Ahhh the mod for the fragile man.
SolC
The highlighted in “blue” is women's club
Grimnir
Ahhh the bait reply.
“You don't load a league from every nation? You must be racist.. duh hur”
EverydayNormalGrEEK
I didn't know that I'm fragile because I don't want to load leagues I don't intend to play with in a save. Seriously guys, get a life and a spine.
JamesLaosinsky
Ahhh the comment for virtue-signaling keyboard warriors.
SaintWhitt2211
/ Sigh
matg56
matg56
Get real….absolutely no interest in the women's game and that makes me no less of a man. Woke bullshit
kamalchaneman
Wasted my time to include the women's league. Don't force your BS agenda.
Anyway thank you for this