FM27 Newgen Faces: Why They Look Generic and How to Fix Them

The short answer: FM27 still generates newgen faces from an internal pool, and the result is functional rather than photoreal. Sports Interactive has not published a face-generation specification, and community testers describe the FM27 improvement as modest. You can replace the generated portraits with a fan facepack such as NG_Regens or FranklyFM84's 200-face pack. Both are cosmetic: they change portraits, not attributes, potential or development.

Newgen faces matter more in FM27 than they used to because the game leans harder into presentation. A youth intake is now a visual event, and a 16-year-old with a 40-year-old's face breaks the illusion faster than a bad scout report. This guide separates what the game actually does from what facepacks can fix.

What a newgen actually is

A newgen is a player who does not exist in real life. The game creates them to fill youth intakes, lower leagues and future seasons. The term covers two related things:

• The player record: attributes, potential, personality, nationality and a unique ID.
• The portrait: a generated face image tied to that record.

The record is simulation data. The portrait is presentation. Changing the portrait does not touch the record, which is why facepacks are safe for saves and why a facepack will never make a wonderkid better. If you are still learning how intakes work, the FM27 youth academy guide explains the dates and facility rules first.

FM27 generates newgens at intake and as the database rolls forward. The exact size of the face pool is not published. What players see is repetition: similar jawlines, similar haircuts, and a narrow range of ages that makes teenagers look older than their birth date.

What FM27 changed, and what it did not

Sports Interactive's FM27 feature page, "More Personal, Accessible and Yours", presents the game as more personal and more accessible. It does not publish a technical breakdown of newgen face generation, and it does not promise photoreal portraits.

The community verdict after the Launch Preview is more useful than the marketing. The r/footballmanagergames thread "Newgen faces in FM27" calls the result "an improvement" but not a transformation. The faces are less uncanny than the worst FM24 examples, and the variety is still narrow enough that two intake classes can look related.

Why the generated faces look generic

Three things drive the effect.

1. A shared base mesh. Generated faces come from a common model set. Small texture and hair changes do not hide the shared structure, especially in a squad screenshot where ten faces appear at once.
2. Age compression. The generator produces adult-looking faces for players who are 15 or 16. The game knows the birth date; the portrait does not consistently reflect it.
3. Low resolution at display size. Portraits are shown small in most screens. A face that looks acceptable in a profile card can look flat in a comparison table, and the reverse is also true.

None of this is a bug in the save. It is the cost of generating thousands of unique people without scanning thousands of faces.

Your options, compared

If you only want the worst cases fixed, a manual pack is enough. If you want every intake covered, use a tool that reads the save and assigns faces in bulk.

How to install NG_Regens

NG_Regens is the most complete option for FM27 because it supports the current game natively. The current release is NG_Regens Manager 26v2, which reads your save file directly and supports FM27 saves, including careers migrated from FM26 or FM24. It covers 60 men's nations and 32 women's nations and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Steam Deck.

The older memory reader is Windows-only and supports FM26 and FM24, not FM27. If you follow an old tutorial that tells you to attach the tool to the FM27 process, you are following the wrong guide.

A safe install order:

1. Back up the save. Copy the save file out of the Sports Interactive folder before any tool touches it.
2. Download from the official NG_Regens site. Avoid reuploads; facepack archives are a common vector for bundled junk.
3. Point the manager at your FM27 save. Let it read the file and generate the assignment list.
4. Write the faces into the game's graphics folder. The tool handles the path; if you do it manually, the Windows default is Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2027\graphics.
5. Reload the skin. In Preferences, clear the cache and reload the skin so the new images are picked up.

If the faces do not appear, the usual causes are a wrong graphics folder, a cached skin, or a pack built for a different game version. Check those three before reinstalling.

How to install a manual facepack

FranklyFM84's NewGen Facepack for FM27 was published on 30 October 2026 and contains 200 AI-generated faces. It is a manual pack: you choose a face and assign it to a player, usually through the editor or a config file.

The manual route is slower, but it gives you control. It is the better choice if you only want to fix your first-team wonderkids and do not care about the rest of the database. The FM27 wonderkids guide lists the players you are most likely to want to fix first.

Manual packs use the same graphics folder. Each image needs a filename that matches the player's unique ID, and the config file tells the game which image belongs to which ID. If the ID is wrong, the face will not load, even if the file is in the right folder. The FM27 editor guide covers where to find IDs and which editor you actually need.

What facepacks cannot do

Facepacks do not change:

• attributes, potential or injury proneness;
• player development or training outcomes;
• the regen dates or the size of an intake;
• the match engine or tactics.

They also do not fix the underlying age mismatch. A facepack can give a 16-year-old a younger-looking face, but it cannot change the model the game uses when it generates the next intake. You will be maintaining the pack as the save rolls forward.

FAQ

Are FM27 newgen faces better than FM26? Community testers report a modest improvement, mainly in variety and texture quality. Sports Interactive has not published a comparison or a technical specification, so the honest answer is that they are better but still recognisably generated.

Is NG_Regens compatible with FM27? Yes. NG_Regens Manager 26v2 supports FM27 saves, including saves migrated from FM26 or FM24. The older memory reader does not support FM27.

Will a facepack break my save? A facepack that only writes image files and a config file does not touch the save database. Back up the save anyway, and avoid any tool that offers to edit attributes or potential.

Do I need the in-game editor to change a face? Not always. Bulk tools assign faces by reading the save. Manual packs usually need the player's unique ID, which you can find in the editor or in some squad views.

Official source: FM27 features Official source: FM27 on Steam Facepack source: NG_Regens Facepack source: FranklyFM84 NewGen Facepack