M.C - Comments

Sorry for the slow reply - but I don't think this fault is going to be caused by the Data Update from this site. Are you, perhaps, using it in addition to other custom database files?

Was there something specific that you wanted to ask/comment about? Just in case you didn't realise, you've just posted the word ‘Hi’ along with originally attaching a version of our Data Update to your post.

At this stage, there is no scientific way to answer that question - right now, FM26 is in Early Access and the Pre-Game Editor tool is yet to be released.

The creation of custom databases relies on (a) the release of the Pre-Game Editor tool and (b) creators to do the work to create those custom databases.

That being said, given the popularity of the English football league system, alongside the fact that every year there have been Lower League Databases produced, I think it is highly likely that once the Pre-Game Editor is released, custom databases will follow…and amongst those, it's very likely an English Lower League DB will be produced.

No problem at all - take your time and enjoy the process. If, when you come to start, or at some point in the process, you become unsure, please feel free to continue the conversation in here and pose any questions you might have. Alternatively, you can also DM me.

I have done a fair amount of the nation files that are part of the Data Update, so feel at this stage I know my way around these things and always happy to assist the community in their own endeavours.

I flagged this post on my mental to-do list but haven't had a chance to get around to replying until now. In terms of the ‘best approach’ to this, the devil is in the detail. So I'll ask a few questions first just to absolutely clarify the scenario you want.

1. Do you want the baseline data to be the updated 2025/26 league structures that are part of the SortItOutSI Data Update? That is, you want to take the 2025/26 English leagues and then adjust the make-up of the divisions so that there are some teams from Scotland in some of those divisions?
    
2. Alongside this, do you intend to also play with the Scotland leagues active and, again, if so do you want to use the SortItOutSI Data Update file for Scotland, which reflects 2025/26?

The reason for these questions is that the structure of the SortItOutSI Data Update comprises of a number of files. Broadly speaking, there's one file that contains transfers/contractual changes (i.e. player movement). There are then a set of other files - one for each nation - that provide updated league structures, with up-to-date promotions/relegations and that kind of thing.

Assuming you want to start from the ‘full updated 2025/26’ position and you want to have both England and Scotland as playable/active leagues in your games, as a minimum you will need to make some adjustments to each of the England (League) and Scotland (League) files. Or, technically, account for the changes made within each of those files - but trying to account for those changes without having the file open to append your changes into would be quite tricky. An added layer of complication is the fact that each of these files have Advanced Rules, so adjustments to the contents of the files will need to be validated against those rules to be usable.

Therefore, my recommendation would be to:

1. Open the Scotland (League) file and adjust it to remove the Scottish teams, from being in any Scottish divisions. Don't put them into English divisions - just take them out of all divisions. This will, of course, result in the wrong number of teams being in each division from within the context of that file. So you'll also take the opportunity to replace those teams, in that file, however you see fit. The goal of this step is to rearrange Scotland's divisions so they are as you want them. At the end, you'll want to use Save Editor Data As and give it a new name - just so you know which version yours is.
   
   At this point, you'll have something like “My Scotland League File.fmf” and the contents of this file will be a playable Scotland nation with the teams you want to move to England not competing in any Scottish divisions. If, for example, you activated Scotland - on its own - this would be the experience.
    
2. Open the England (League) file and adjust it to inser the Scottish teams into the relevant English divisions. As above, there will be some re-shuffling of teams needed to accommodate those Scottish teams.
   
   Please note that when you're working in a custom database file you'll only see the changes (in the Pre-Game Editor) that are made by that file. So when loading the England (League) file, when you look up one of your Scottish teams destined for England, you will see they are in their original (vanilla database) league. This is expected.
   
   At the end, you'll (again) want to use Save Editor Data As and give this file a new name. What is very important is that this file has a name that is alphabetically second to the first file you created. For argument's sake, let's call it “zzMy England League File.fmf”. Following this approach, we need this second file to load after the new Scotland file you've created. This way, the game will first read "My Scotland League File.fmf", which includes changes to put some Scottish teams in no divisions. It will then read “zzMy England League File.fmf”, which will put those teams into the relevant English divisions.

The reason for doing it this specific way is that this enables the use of each nation independently from the use of the other, as well as together, in a save. If you only make the changes in one file, or the other, you won't be able to use both files because something won't line up.

As mentioned, you can make all of the changes in a completely separate file (i.e. not starting with either of the files in the Data Update as your base), but in my opinion that would be very challenging as you'd need to be accounting for the changes those individual files are making without actually being able to ‘see’ those changes in the PGE. Moving the six Scottish teams to England would be easy enough - but it's the re-shuffle of all the teams in all of the English and Scottish divisions to account for that which would be very unintuitive…as the whole time you'd be looking at data in the Pre-Game Editor that doesn't actually show you what the changes made by those other files are.

I appreciate what I'm suggesting may sound complex. The reason I'm confident on the approach is that I have previously assisted someone with advice on an equivalent topic and having thought through the options, I don't see any other way to do it whilst being able to make use of the updated 2025/26 structures.

This was resolved and confirmed via the other thread in which you posed the question.

I'm not sure about the reason at this stage - but I can confirm that I can replicate the issue.

I have spot-checked a few players for whom changes have been submitted/approved and I can see that those changes are not reflected into the FMF file.

The following are the ones I checked:

https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-data-update/new-person/2100050468

https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-data-update/new-person/2100015207

https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-data-update/new-person/2100010645

I suspect there may be some issue with recent processing of changes to newly-created players. I don't think it relates to you, individually - I think it is equally impacting any changes approved recently (how recently, I am not sure).

I am flagging it to the Site Admin to investigate. In terms of the front-end that we can moderate, all looks normal. But the changes are not reflected in the FMF file - hence there must be some processing issue of some kind. We'll get it sorted, no doubt, and just to confirm: no need to re-submit any such changes.

The structure of the files has changed a bit since you last downloaded, I think.

Have a look here - it should explain the differences and answer your question: https://sortitoutsi.net/content/74544/our-data-update-just-got-a-huge-upgrade 

That’s absolutely correct - it can be done via the Pre-Game Editor.

But the context of the question was in terms of submitting the information for inclusion in the website’s Data Update. So I was replying with that context in mind.

I think your issue may be different - if you are using the current/latest version of the Enhanced Data Update (which I believe you are).

At present, there is an issue with the Enhanced Data Update presenting a download of a single file named sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Live.fmf. In reality, this is supposed to be a .zip file and the contents are, in fact, a valid zip file.

As a workaround, anyone downloading the Enhanced Data Update should rename the file to a .zip file. This will then allow it to be extracted and you'll find all of the contents of the Data Update inside (multiple .fmf files), which should be installed as normal.

We are working on getting this resolved ASAP and this is just temporary guidance for the short-term.

I can replicate this. This is an issue with how the file is being presented for download and is something that is a new bug - I've reported it to the Site Admin to resolve.

In the meantime, the actual file you receive is in fact the .zip file with all the contents. If you rename the downloaded file to .zip from .fmf it'll then work as expected, allowing you to extract and install correctly.

Thanks for flagging and sorry for the inconvenience. We'll get it fixed ASAP.

Our ambition is to update all playable nations - and for those playable nations, the playable league levels - to reflect 2025/26 as the initial priority. That is a process we're still working through - it is, genuinely, a fair amount of work. Those of us that do it are volunteering our time, so inevitably it can be a bit stop-start.

As an example, we have updated Czechia, on the initial basis of the top two divisions being playable. I also updated the league assignments for one level below the playable divisions (CFL/MSFL) to provide compatibility with files that make this third tier playable…but it appears to me that the CFL side of that third tier has been expanded to 34 teams ( two divisions of 17), versus at the time I was aligning teams it was expected there would be two divisions of 16. Interestingly, even where you've posted that there would be 18 teams (i.e. the constitution announced), the actual participants appear to be 17.

Naturally, keeping pace with these sort of changes can be tricky. There is a desire to get everything correct - and even expand the playable leagues in our files - but all of these things take time and I think, rightly, the priority should be on playable nations/divisions that are currently out-of-date. Good examples include Greece and some of the Scandinavian nations. Genuinely, it's hard to put a timeline on it for me.

There's no method to populate the career history, unfortunately - so you should just submit them based on their current status/team affiliation, please.

Just to acknowledge - I can replicate this as well - it does seem that the last update to the file itself is 8th October 2025. I've reported it internally and it'll get taken care of as soon as possible.

I can’t see any reason why he would no longer be in the Data Update.

The setup of your save game is a factor here, too. Are you loading enough data from that country to make him show up? What size database are you using?

Just to revert back to this again - it could be an issue with load order of files, at your end. The Data Update has been restructured a few times, recently (in terms of filenames, for various, valid reasons) and there was a period of a couple of days (albeit some time ago now) where the default load order was causing an error to contract lengths.

If you get a chance, please share a screenshot of how your enabled Editor Data looks in-game (the step where you choose the DB to use and, underneath that, tick the Editor Data files you want to use). Seeing this order will tell me whether your files are in a certain order which is causing the ‘short contracts’ issue.

The fix would be an easy one - which is just to conduct a clean install of the Data Update. But I appreciate depending on what else you might be using alongside, that may not be as easy as ‘deleting all files’ so I'd rather provide that advice once I have a clear view on what you're using.

Just to underpin all of that: there is no fundamental issue in the Data Update, nor has there been at any point (other than that two-day period I mentioned that happened some time ago). But it is possible that reinstalling over the top of a previous version, at a specific time, may mean there is something we need to troubleshoot to get you up and running.

Can you provide some examples? Contract durations are driven by the updates submitted by the community.

We would expect contract durations to reflect real-life contract lengths…unless you are playing with the ‘no date changes’ update. What I mean by that is that a player whose contract expires in 2026 in real-life will expire in 2024 in the Data Update, by default…because this reflects a ‘one-year contract’ from the point we are in right now. As I say, examples help.

If it is these two-year-offset contract lengths that are the thing that disrupts your immersion, you should disable the +2 years file in the Data Update or use the ‘No Date Changes’ update. However, there is an argument to say that a player with a contract until 2026 who signed for a club (in real-life) in 2025 shouldn't have a three-year contract at that club…as that is not realistic. Indeed, that is the argument behind the way the Data Update works.

There is nothing specific about the way contracts for players in the Turkish leagues are configured versus other countries.

I've replied to you via this thread: https://sortitoutsi.net/content/71243/this-data-needs-to-be-tested-and-verified-in-the-database-before-it-can-be-used-data-has-been-tested-on-database-2400#comment_843553 

Any further discussion, let's continue in that thread please - just so there isn't a loose end over here.

Can you please confirm, for sure, which file you're having issues with? Because I note in another thread you seem to be citing issues with the paid version of the Data Update.

The original poster in this thread was referring to files from another, third-party creator which we couldn't (easily) support.

In your other thread, I note you seem to be having issues with the England (League) file reporting it is not verified against your 24.3 game version. This would suggest that, perhaps, you haven't installed it as you believe you have…or that you've ended up with an old version of that through some means.

In our Data Update, the file that appears as England (League) in the edited data files list in-game has the filename sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - England (League).fmf. I'm mentioning this so you can look in your ‘editor data’ folder and see what the file details are (e.g. modified date). If you're unsure, browse to that folder, set up a view that shows various details, take a screenshot and share.

In terms of the file's integrity, I can assure you the Data Update has contained the same version of the England file since 4th June 2025. Of course, England being a very popular league, this would have been reported many times over if it was a problem. As such, I think we should focus troubleshooting on your local installation.

Currently, the Data Update has no mechanism to include these kind of changes to individual players who are in the vanilla database, other than by someone manually creating such a file. To this point, it is not something we've been able to establish - as I'm sure you can imagine, this would be a significant and time-consuming undertaking, especially on a global scale.

For newly-created players (that are added by the Data Update), the community can amend their nationality (and declaration) as these values are exposed for submissions.

I always think that these sort of things would be best-managed through community-submissions - but even there, the scale of work to moderate them could get significant (and, even so, this would require development work to achieve). I will suggest it to the site admin to see what the possibilities of this are…but in terms of timing, with FM26 about to launch, I suspect this may not be a good time to look at this.

In the meantime, if this is something you want to do for yourself, my recommendation would be to simply make these sort of changes in your own, new file rather than editing any existing part of the Data Update.

You would simply need to load the Pre-Game Editor, go to ‘People’, search the relevant players and adjust them as you see fit. When you're done, you save your changes and this will create a new FMF file. Put that into your ‘editor data’ folder and you should be good to go. Because the Data Update doesn't make these kinds of changes, your extra file should work alongside the update just fine.

@decio luz - I have had a scan through your installed ‘editor data’ files.

It looks like you are only using some parts of our update (presumably, favouring using individual nation/league updates from other creators). Or perhaps you have renamed some of the files from our update to start with _RR. Which is fine. I think, in terms of compatibility, it broadly looks like your fileset should work.
 

I do think you may have some overlapping content, though.

Specifically, I think Daveincid's CA_PA ADJUSTMENTS NEW WONDERKIDS & OTHERS.fmf is likely to include newly-created players. I'd be amazed if that doesn't have some ‘content overlap’ with the SortItOutSI Data Update's content that you are using.

In our files, sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - No Date Changes Contracts.fmf is the file that contains newly-created players (as well as transfers/updated contracts). It's the ‘main file’ of the update, as it were. My recommendation to you would be to stop using the Daveincid file I mentioned above because it is bound to cause duplicates.

Also, in your file list you still have an old version of the ‘main file’: sortitoutsi.net FM24 No Date Changes Update - Changes.fmf. You should delete this file. It is the same file as the one I mention above, but just a version from a few weeks ago.

I would not be surprised if attempting to use those two instances of the ‘main file’ could be the cause of your ‘no name’ problem. It may not be but, in any case, no good can come from having those two files both enabled.

As with any scenarios like this, my recommendation is always to start with a completely clean installation of just our Data Update. I am not suggesting you should stop using the other files you want, but for troubleshooting, it's good practice. The practical way you could do this is:

1. Create a folder elsewhere on your machine and move everything you have in your ‘editor data’ folder into there.

2. Get the latest SortItOutSI Data Update and install it into your (now empty) ‘editor data’ folder.

3. Start a new game and check things are working.

4. Carefully move back the specific extra files you want from your backup folder to install them alongside the SortItOutSI Data Update. Of course, as part of this step, you would not move anything back that is part of the SortItOutSI Data Update, because you've already reinstalled the latest version under step #2.

Are you using the now-obsolete ‘dynamic’ files by any chance? These would be available to you if you use the enhanced Data Update.

There were issues with no-name players because of some structural changes a few weeks ago - the data update structure has been further altered since then also.

My recommendation would be to perform a clean installation of the Data Update: meaning delete all of the files you have and reinstall from the latest version. I have a feeling this will sort things out for you.

If you’re unsure on exactly how to do this, or you’re worried about interfering with other custom data you might also have installed, just reply and share some screenshots of your ‘editor data’ folder and I’ll provide step-by-step advice. 

At the moment, the Dynamic CA/PA are built in to the Enhanced Data Update; there is no method to use the update without them.

Those dynamic variations, however, are small offsets designed to present a little bit of variety between saves. They are modest variations to keep things unpredictable - not something that will randomise the footballing world entirely.

Of course, there have been very recent advances to the automation behind how the Data Update is built - so the Enhanced Data Update is now re-published every 20 minutes. I do know that the site admin has plans to develop a ‘build your own update’ / modular approach and I believe amongst those developments will be things like being able to choose whether to use the randomisation or not. It is not ready yet, though, and I am not in a position to suggest a timeline.

Thanks @Joe5p - right, that explains the nature of the ‘error’ page that you arrive at when you try to browse (through search) to the one that's now been deleted. It's effectively the same scenario we talked through (I think with @elsa micano, on another thread) about a different player a day or two ago.

Yes, very likely to be a duplicate. Both of these come from the community-created new player pool.

There are currently a fair few duplicates and we have tools that we are in the process of using to tackle all of them. Unfortunately, right now, we're suffering some issues with page-load errors that are preventing us from working through these as quickly as hoped.

Staff team are on the case and all of these duplicates will get tackled ASAP.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so I won't respond/get involved in that part of the discussion. Naturally, it's a shame you feel disappointed in the content. Of course, everyone is free to use whichever third-party/community editor files they wish to.

Just to confirm, the file that is part of the Data Update download that contains the newly-created players is the one named: sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Contracts.fmf.

I can 100% confirm that this file contains the players that have been added to the database by the update. I can only assume that following Joe5p's reply you have checked the contents of another similarly-named file called sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Contract Changes.fmf.

sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Contracts.fmf contains a total of 2,000,000+ database changes. Amongst those, it includes 19,000+ newly-created players, all of whom have Unique IDs starting from 2002042189.

In the Pre-Game Editor, if you go load the sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Contracts.fmf file, ensure you set the Maximum Records for Search to ‘Unlimited’ and then set up a filter on Database → People that shows records with ‘Unique ID’ ‘Is At Least’ ‘2002042189’, it will present you a list of every newly-created player added by the Data Update. Naturally, this is just one way to get to ‘all’ of the newly-created players. You can search for specific players, or groups of players, using whichever filters you wish. I just wanted to illustrate a way to see for yourself that all of the data is there.

Just for a visual reference, here's what that filter looks like when set up in the editor:

From there, you can edit them as you see fit, if that is what you wish to do. I can assure you there is no need to use any other tools to achieve that sort of editing and if you wanted to go ahead and edit the 500 or so players you've identified, or even all 19,000+ that the Data Update does add, then that is entirely doable.

Of course, it is worth noting that editing an instance of this file with your own changes will prevent you from using a subsequent instance from a newer version of the Data Update (e.g. the next day's, or one from the following week), unless you are willing to accept losing the changes you want to make - because when you download a later version, to use the latest version you'll be overwriting the previous version (which contains your manual changes).

I can't be certain, but I think this case is a bit of a nuanced one.

I have a feeling he is visible when you search him because he once existed as a newly-created player. For reasons of which I'm unsure, he doesn't exist anymore. However, the searchable database is a cached/older version (maybe) which is why it returns a result.

When I look at the club page (https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-data-update/team/80001277), there is no sign of him.

Perhaps this disappearance is caused by your attempted edits (not saying it is your fault). Perhaps it is unrelated.

In general, we do have an issue with some newly-created player records showing errors on the website (despite them existing in the data). It is being investigated in general and we'll get it solved as soon as we are able.

The Enhanced Data Update, when downloaded, results in a download of a file named ‘sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Live.zip’. As per your history of downloads, this would be the one at the top of the list, which shows you last downloaded it at 17:50 (per your screen snippet).

A good differentiator to know whether you've got the ‘enhanced’ update is to look to see if the zip file contains a file named ‘sortitoutsi.net FM24 Data Update - Player Attributes.fmf’. If it does, then you can be confident that is the Enhanced Data Update.

In reality, the fact the zip is appended with the ‘Live’ suffix is a good indicator. The free version produces a download with a different naming convention.

Just acknowledging - there is an issue with the URLs associated with some of the newly-submitted players for creation. It is something the site admin will need to resolve.

If it helps: I can see your submissions for this (and other) players and I'm able to approve them…so I am hopeful the approved ones will still make it into the Data Update, even if the website visibility means the pages are broken (at the moment). We'll get it fixed.

I would expect the data that FM 26 releases with to be ‘up to date’ on launch and certainly for it to include the activity of the recent transfer windows. To that end, I don't think the desperate need for a SortItOutSI Data Update will exist immediately.

Of course, until the game is released, much is unknown about the structure of the data/files/modding and so there will certainly be some delay. I would expect that the mods that people are most desperate for in the very initial days will be ones that fix licensing issues and provide official graphics. The ‘data’ part is something that will become more required as time goes on.

Typically, I think the SortItOutSI Data Update pauses from the new game's release until about December - this allows a few months for that first round of official hotfixes/changes. It will also allow the staff team here to understand the data structure if it has changed. I expect for FM 26 the timeline will not be any shorter.