Developer: Cyanide Studio
Publisher: NACON
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Pro Cycling Manager 26 – Review
Heat wave or not, 2026 is the summer of sports. While the main attraction is undoubtedly the ongoing FIFA World Cup, fans are already gearing up for the Tour de France, which kicks off in just a few weeks. In the slipstream of those real-life events come sports video games, of course. We’ll be looking at the official Tour de France game soon, but in the meantime, we have (probably) the next best thing for cycle enthusiasts: Pro Cycling Manager 26. If you’re returning to the series from a previous entry, you probably already know if you should put those pedals to the metal, but for everyone else (including us), the question is whether or not PCM26 makes it across the finish line.
Story
As PCM26 is a professional sports management sim, it does not feature a traditional narrative campaign or plotline. Instead, the premise centers on the inner workings of the competitive cycling world. Budding managers can choose between two main modes. The first of these is Career mode, where they take over the leadership of a professional cycling team and handle long-term squad planning, sponsorships and race tactics. The other option is called Pro Cyclist mode. Here, players can either create a custom character or control an existing real-world cyclist to guide their personal career development. Cyclists appearing in the game range from leading forces in the form of Remco Evenepoel or Tadej Pogačar to budding young talent like Paul Seixas. The inclusion of their likenesses adds a sense of credibility to PCM26, and provides the game with some much-needed immersion.
Graphics
It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, then, that the in-game models of cyclists don’t resemble their real-world counterparts, especially since NACON put a lot of emphasis on the appearance of specific people on PCM 26’s key art. In-game, cyclists look virtually identical aside from their team outfits. That’s not the only gripe we had with the game’s visuals, either. Landscapes lack details, textures are very basic, and the game’s live 3D race mode suffers from a complete lack of collision detection, causing riders to clip through each other and creating bizarre visual occurrences within the peloton. At least the menus feature a clean, minimalist design meant to preserve overview clarity.
Sound
Unfortunately, PCM26’s soundscape doesn’t help either. While the game’s soundtrack is enjoyable, that’s all there is to say about it. The tunes aren’t particularly memorable. The main offender when it comes to PCM26’s audio, though, is the in-game commentary. In theory, it is supposed to mimic the excitement of live sports commentators, but in practice, it’s almost laughably bad. The commentator sounds like he’d rather be doing anything else than watch a race unfold. It doesn’t help that the audio quality itself is poor, though this could be the result of a misguided attempt to make it sound like a realistic live radio connection.
Gameplay
The thing with sports sim games like PCM26 is that it’s very difficult to make them sound appealing to anyone outside of a very specific niche. Playing PCM26 feels like managing an elaborate spreadsheet. However, if you happen to have caught ‘cycling fever’, then said spreadsheet feels like a playground where you’re part of the action. And let’s be honest: with the Tour de France on the horizon, plenty of us will be catching cycling fever, so what better way to deal with that than to indulge yourself in statistics and predictions? PCM26 excels (pun not intended) at this. Players manage a cycling roster by setting seasonal goals, recruiting staff, researching equipment and assigning race calendars. They then progress through the season, deciding whether to skip races using quick-simulation options or directly manage race-day tactics live in a 3D engine.
Your roster is divided into a clear hierarchy, separating primary leaders, important riders, and domestic servants, all structured around a season planning system. By organizing your athletes into specialized squads, focused on climbing, sprinting, or time trials, PCM26 automatically populates the optimal race calendar for the season, a massive quality-of-life feature that takes the guesswork out of mapping out a grueling competitive year. Day Form metrics dictate how consistently a cyclist maintains his physical peak across multi-day tours versus high-stakes, one-day classics. You can then opt to run these races visually or in the background. The former shifts PCM26 to a 3D mode where you direct your team’s real-time tactics on the fly. Here, you then issue critical commands to navigate the pack, directing riders to protect their leaders from the wind, maintain the pace of the peloton, or force a sudden breakaway. Meanwhile, background races can simulate everything in mere seconds, utilising a calculation tool running that generates highly realistic results and logical time gaps that accurately mirror real-world cycling data.
We’ll admit that the sheer volume of stats, races, and mechanics overwhelmed us initially. Fortunately, PCM26 features a handy automated assistant that drastically lowered the barrier of entry by guiding us to which material to invest in and how to best allocate our roster. While this was undoubtedly a very welcome inclusion, it did feel like we were playing PCM26 with training wheels. As such, we probably didn’t experience PCM26 in the ‘full’ or ‘right’ way compared to players returning to PCM from previous entries, but to be fair, they already know what to expect. For newbies like us, the sheer density of mechanics and overall low pace make for a game that we’re not sure we’d be returning to any time soon. That’s not to say that PCM26 is unsuccessful in what it sets out to achieve. On the contrary, this is a game that is perhaps too good at what it wants to do in terms of realism. If this is your cup of tea, you’ll find limitless replay value here… at least until PCM27 comes out.
Conclusion
What PCM26 lacks in audiovisual presentation, it more than makes up for with its hyper-detailed and realistic gameplay… provided you happen to be in the very specific niche of professional cycling enthusiasts that the game targets. The inclusion of a digital assistant will help newcomers find their footing, but PCM26 isn’t going to convert non-believers. Being passionate about the sport is a definite prerequisite. We’re casual enjoyers at best, and if you happen to be a die-hard fan of professional cycling, you can easily bump up our score of the game by a point or two.
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