Pro Cycling Manager 26, developed by Cyanide Studio and published by Nacon, arrived on Steam on June 15, eleven days after the game’s original June 4 launch date, but the company will no doubt be happy that it landed well in advance of pro cycling's peak visibility moment at the Tour de France next weekend.
The postponement came after a critical bug in the game’s overhauled planning system was found in beta tests and creator previews. "[This bug] has a significant impact on race registrations and must be resolved before release," the official announcement said. For mod-dependent players, the wait stretched further: Steam Workshop support did not open until June 22, with Cyanide stating that launch bug fixing took priority.
This all matters because PCM's whole ecosystem leans heavily on community-created databases. I use the WorldDB mod, which is probably the most popular. It provides an overhaul of the calendar, team and race jerseys, rider stats, and scouting depth. Without this access to Workshop the game was basically not worth buying from my point of view, so I delayed and bought on June 22. I have played 10 hours of the new game across the team and pro cyclist modes and it is a mixed verdict: the in race improvements are just that and a much smoother, more realistic race simulation, but this overhauled planning system is a mess and a real problem.
The planner problem
The race planner is PCM26's headline change and the feature most responsible for delaying the launch. Cyanide describes it as a complete redesign, with races categorised by importance, rosters organised into leaders and domestiques, and fitness peaks mapped underneath each event. The old system let you select a race you wanted a rider to focus on through objectives. The new one asks you to manage fitness peaks under each race individually, and the rider objectives page feels cluttered as a result. Cyanide's marketing promises better readability and control; my verdict is that the new layout is very messy. The new rider and race ranking pages are pretty pointless and messy with the having to manage fitness peaks below the races put into the rider's race planner as just fiddly and irritating.
Stepping away from this irritation, the improvements elsewhere are easier to enjoy. Sprinting and sprint leadouts feel much smoother and more realistic. Slipstream is key with no more riders basically stopping as soon as you get them out of your leadout man's wheel. It is now easy to set up and execute your sprint or climber leadout compared to the problems in PCM25. I did have to upgrade my laptop last year for PCM25 among other things to a gaming laptop due to the new graphics engine. But with the engine in its second year the loading time is rapid.
There is a new option for simming races with the addition of the detailed simulation. This basically appears to create a more detailed and real to in-game form result rather than the sometimes utterly random quick sim settings that also still exist but have also received a bit of an overhaul as well. One trend that seems to have appeared is that much more breakaways get the win in detailed sim than anywhere else with a large variety among stage winners. Which feels real on one hand but on the other, you would expect Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) to win more than he does.
The Pro Cyclist mode now allows you to start a career with a real life rider as well, something that was available on the old FIFA games (it may still be, I haven't played one since FIFA16). You can still create a rider from scratch like before as well. I decided to test it out by briefly starting a career with Lorenzo Finn, a Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Rookies rider, who starts at level 6 with attributes reflecting his current ability. Two new rider ratings for Grand Tour focus and Classics focus have also been added, graded A to E, though their long-term impact on gameplay needs more time to assess.
Just looking at the whole view of the game, however, it is very similar to PCM25. I have been running careers with Picnic-PostNL on extreme difficulty, where no wins have arrived yet, and with Mini-Castrol, a WorldDB custom team filled with British, American, Canadian, and Irish young talent competing at continental and ProTeam level also on extreme. Multiple wins have come from the latter, though this may be because my main rival is Alexis Guérin and not Jasper Philipsen so far.
The super-user perspective
Now, you may not know me as a PCM player. I'm no Benji Naesen or Joe Timms, but I probably play the same amount if not more than them. From seeing their videos, I believe I play the game at least as well if not better than they do. That may be because I play more aggressively and take more risk with my tactics, something the game appears to reward. Hopefully, I won't get dragged into having to appear on any YouTube channels after saying that...
I think 10 hours of gameplay has allowed me to get a feel for the game. I am looking forward to seeing how the careers develop and how things look when I get to the year 2038, and where everything is at that stage. I haven't seen any of the new crash graphics yet and haven't really fully experienced the Classics yet, so I am looking forward to seeing how the game evolves and how the AI responds over multiple year careers.
PCM26 remains a game I play way more than I should but it has taught me a great deal about young up-and-coming riders as well as how tactics may work in the real world. For seasoned PCM players that have been holding off buying, WorldDB is now fully up and running as well as other databases so well worth investing now. I do think that the planner needs to be looked at in the next patch or maybe another redesign in PCM27 as, for me, it isn't good to use so far.
You can purchase Pro Cycling Manager 26 from Steam.
