Status & Updates

Open Beta: Franchise Architect: Football is browser-playable today and in active development — the notes below ship straight from the build.

Found something broken? Use the in-game Tell the Commissioner button or email [email protected].

Release Notes

2026-10-01 — Your franchise survives the return trip

Browser play now preserves your chosen franchise across page navigation and reloads. If an action succeeds but its recovery checkpoint cannot be saved, a persistent warning lets you retry saving without repeating the action. Manual saves wait for storage confirmation, and failed replacements protect the previous save. Save a slot or export your franchise before closing the tab.

Trades containing draft picks now judge the value of the whole package for both clubs, and the same asset cannot be offered twice. The Front Office Advisor distinguishes choices it observed from weeks with no scored action. Your First Season Contract credits a free-agent signing only after your offer wins and the player joins your club.

Advice panels, charts and buttons are more readable in light and dark themes, including disabled controls while a franchise is opening.

2026-09-29 — A league that trades around you

Rival clubs can now trade with each other during the season, within the same roster, cap and deadline rules that govern your deals. Their moves enter League News, so the league can change even when you hold your own roster steady. The Team menu now opens one workspace for your roster and depth chart; a lineup call keeps its exact destination and keyboard focus. Your club crest also follows you into the League and trade market. The site’s engine count now comes from the build instead of a hand-edited number.

2026-09-28 — The front office talks back, rivals price you, and the game stops freezing while it simulates

The Overview is now the Desk, and it carries less: standings, results, leaders, the news feed, story threads, charts and long sims moved to a League tab beside it. On the Desk, a Front Office Advisor argues one call each week with the numbers behind it, and keeps score of how often you went against the room. New franchises get a First Season Contract, five things a first-year general manager gets judged on, ticked off from what you actually do. Your club has a crest.

Rival front offices now price trades by who they are: a win-now club accepts a wider band than a rebuilding one, a player at their real need carries a premium and a surplus position a discount, and the offer says so. The simulation now runs off the page thread on browsers that support it, so tabs answer while a season is simulating. Trophies, the season epilogue, the development report and a first-round pick can be shared as a card. The site has an About and FAQ page, a press kit, and a release-history archive. And the standings now show from week one: they used to read "No rows" for a franchise's entire first season, and last year's table after that.

On a phone, the front office now opens as six clear sections with the same destinations inside them. The First Season Contract can credit a trade you initiate yourself, then closes at the season review with an owner verdict based on the objectives you actually met.

2026-09-14 — You can now see who developed, and the draft board stops giving away the answers

Every offseason the game has always moved every player's overall, and then told you only how many retired and how many contracts ran out. Now the retirements stage says who on your club rose and who fell, the news feed carries it, and the History tab has an Offseason Development Report with each player's before and after, the change, and how much room he still has under his potential. Nothing about how players develop has changed; what changed is that you can finally see it.

Two smaller things follow from that. A player's profile outlook now reads his own potential and development trait, so a player with no room to grow no longer reads "surging" because his club has a nice facility, and the profile says how many seasons he has left to reach his ceiling, not just how many points. And the draft room's list of available prospects no longer prints every prospect's true overall and true potential beside the scouting board you spend points on: it prints your scouts' read of both. The engine still knows the truth, which is what the reveal you pay for gets you closer to. Your saved franchises are unaffected by all of this.

Earlier notes — 18 more, back to 2026-07-01 — live in the full release history.