WE ARE FOOTBALL 2027: Facepack & Logo Install Guide

Club crests and player faces are the fastest immersion upgrade in the game, and the official manual dedicates its entire fourth part to swapping them. This page covers the graphics side only: which files the game reads, how it recognises them, and where packs come from today. Real club names are a database question — our real name patch guide owns that — and subscribed Workshop items install through the editor, which our mods and Steam Workshop guide walks step by step.

Which graphics can you replace in WE ARE FOOTBALL 2027?

Part 4 of the manual (“Modifications”) is the game’s own modding charter: it promises “an overview of all the ways in which you can customise WE ARE FOOTBALL 2027 … you’ll learn everything about the necessary user directories and file formats” (EN p. 179 / DE S. 191). It also carries one legal line worth quoting before any download: “If you share customisations, you must not infringe any third-party rights (e.g. by sharing photos from the internet)”.

The directories live in your Windows user profile, not in the Steam installation: “The directories must be copied into the game directory under ‘Saved games’ (next to the game scores)” — the folder is “\We Are Football” (EN p. 179 / DE S. 191). The editor chapter prints the full root form once: Saved Games\We Are Football… (EN p. 215). And one sentence explains why older packs keep working: “WAF, NT, WAF2024 and WAF27 all access the same graphics directories and use the same formats” (EN p. 179).

The manual’s directory table (EN p. 179-182 / DE S. 191-194) fixes the formats for everything graphics-related:

One vocabulary note: the manual never says “facepack” — its word is “player pictures” (Spielerbilder). The community word for a bundle of those PNGs is what this page is named after.

How does the game know which file belongs to which club or player?

This is the rule the whole page stands on, and it is not what most people expect: “Names or associated dates of birth are used to identify the graphics, not IDs” (EN p. 185 / DE S. 197). There is no player-ID alignment step in a facepack install because the game never looks at IDs for graphics. What it looks at is your file name, normalised: “All special characters must be ‘normalised’. Example: ä => a. é => e. ‘ß’ is converted to ‘s’. Characters that cause problems with filenames are filtered out” (EN p. 185).

In practice:

• Club badge: derive the file name from the club name with spaces, hyphens and dots removed — “Example: 1.FC Düsseldorf => 1FCDusseldorf” (EN p. 204 / DE S. 215). Reserve teams get a “-2” suffix (1FCDusseldorf-2); national teams use flag files.
• Player picture: surname, the first two letters of the first name, then the date of birth — the manual’s worked example is “Thorsten Müller, born 1 May 2000: MullerTh01012000.png” (EN p. 201 / DE S. 213). Apostrophes and hyphens are permitted in player names.
• Two extras for pack authors: above HD resolution the game automatically swaps in “Players big” (EN p. 185), and the number ranges 1-10,000 in the generic-image folders are reserved for the developers — your own generic images must start at 10001 (EN p. 191 / DE S. 204).

How do you install a logo or badge pack?

Four steps, each traceable:

1. Prepare the file: 160×160 pixels, transparent background, PNG (directory table, EN p. 182).
2. *Copy it to Saved Games\We Are Football\Badges* — the directory table establishes the folder; the full user path in this form was posted in the Steam thread “Eigenes Logo” by Opa Glatze spielt (18 September): C:\Users\DEINNAME\Saved Games\We Are Football\Badges\, consistent with the manual’s own root (EN p. 215). Community report — the thread’s opener Sero confirmed the same day: “Logo hat endlich geklappt.”
3. Name the file after the club, normalised per the rules above. The same thread adds the operational details the manual leaves out: no spaces in the file name, and a game restart afterwards (community report).
4. Check the result in game. If you founded your own club, the manual has a dedicated note: copy the logo “into the ‘\Badges’ directory … As soon as your club name and the file name match, the logo will be displayed when creating the badge and will also be adopted in the game” (EN p. 87 / DE S. 183).

How the game chooses between sources is documented as a fixed search order — for clubs: “1. Badges from the user directory ‘Badges’ under ‘We Are Football’. 2. Badges from our DLC directory ‘Badges’. 3. Badges from our normal ‘Badges’ directory” — and the order of the first two is switchable in the options (EN p. 214 / DE S. 226). Your own files always sit at the front of that queue.

How do you install player pictures (a facepack)?

The route is the same file copy, into Players instead of Badges:

• Name each PNG after its player: surname + two letters + date of birth, MullerTh01012000.png (EN p. 201). This is the step people get wrong — a generic player01.png matches nobody, because the game compares names and birth dates, not IDs.
• Big and hero variants are optional: Players big (512×512) is picked up automatically at higher resolutions and for end-of-season honours; the hero pose (472×712) appears in the player profile (EN p. 201 / DE S. 213).
• Staff images accept four mood variants numbered -1 to -4 (normal, celebrating, angry, sad), with the plain name as fallback (EN p. 188 / DE S. 200). Presidents have been displayed since WAF27, on the same pattern — and the editor prints the required file name under ‘Club’ (EN p. 183).
• Youth players are the one place the editor helps directly: leave their birth year at the default 2000 and it stays dynamic, which per the manual means “you can assign a player image straight away” (EN p. 183).

What no source describes — manual, Workshop or forum — is any kind of facepack installer. Every route in this game is: copy the files in, name them exactly right.

Do kit packs work the same way?

Almost, with one fork between the 2D and 3D layers:

• UI kits (the shirts on profile and table screens) reuse the badge naming: same file name as the club’s badge, plus “_1” for home and “_2” for away (EN p. 203 / DE S. 215). National teams use flag_COUNTRY_NUMBER files.
• 3D match kits are built on the templates template_1.png to template_3.png that ship in the game directory; since Update 1 they integrate “via the ‘Kits’ folder under ‘Saved Games’ and … ‘We Are Football 2027’” (EN p. 203 / DE S. 215). One detail decides the shirt numbers: “The pixel in the top-left corner of the image (0,0) determines the colour of the shirt numbers”. Up to eight kits can be selectable before a match, numbered consecutively in the file name (EN p. 184 / DE S. 196).
• Without any files, kit colours can be changed in-game at the season start and in the club info screen (EN p. 86).

Where do facepacks and logo packs come from right now?

This is the honest part: as of 1 October 2026, no dedicated facepack or logo pack for the 2027 game has been released. What exists today:

Steam Workshop — three items, three different graphics policies. The Real Names Database ships club names only; its author explicitly invites others to build on it (“Wenn jemand daraus z.B. zusätzlich echte Spielernamen, weitere Grafiken oder andere Daten ergänzen möchte …”, 25 September). The WAF Reality Mod v0.5 is the only launch item that ships graphics at all — its description: “This mod includes real club names and crests, correct names of leagues and competitions along with logos” — arriving as a database through the editor flow, not as loose files. And the newest item, WAF27 Originalvereine & Spieler (posted 30 September), states the opposite extreme verbatim: “Wer zusätzlich Originalwappen und Spielerbilder nutzen möchte, kann den Grafikbestand des FM-Zocker-Patches separat herunterladen … Die Grafiken sind nicht Bestandteil dieses Workshop-Datensatzes.”

FM-Zocker on modDB — the graphics stock those authors point to. The WAF2024 Database 2026 v1.0 (4.01 GB, added 17 March 2026) belongs to a mod family self-described as “original club names, sponsors, player images and much more” for the predecessor. Why a 2024 pack is the 2027 answer at all is the manual sentence from the top: all versions of the game “access the same graphics directories and use the same formats” (EN p. 179). The Real Names Database’s author has been running exactly this combination — his Steam screenshot is titled “Mit echten Vereinsnamen und FM Zocker Grafik Paket” (25 September; community demonstration, not a how-to). The full history and the manual-copy detour for the database side live in our real name patch guide.

One more negative finding, so you do not search where we searched: wasserlasser.com, the long-running German add-ons portal, showed no publicly visible WE ARE FOOTBALL area at all when we checked on 1 October 2026 — its file base covers EA’s NHL, hockey managers and retro German manager classics, with downloads behind registration. If a WAF 2027 section appears there later, it will be new.

What the manual does not cover

• No installer exists in any official source. Every install route above is copy files, name them right, restart. Anyone promising a one-click facepack tool is beyond the documented material.
• “Badges big” is explicitly unfinished: the directory table marks the 512×512 badge row “PLANNED, no guarantee” (EN p. 182 / DE S. 194). Do not build a pack around big badges.
• The manual contradicts itself once on sizes: its search-order section prints 320×320 for the big-picture special cases (DE S. 226) where its own directory table says 512×512 (DE S. 193 / EN p. 180). We follow the table.
• Two user packs matching the same club have no documented resolution. The fixed order only decides user versus DLC versus vanilla files (EN p. 214); what happens when two graphics sets both match one club name is not specified anywhere.
• The weeks-long badge delay one player reported in an ongoing save (community report above) has no manual explanation — the manual only promises graphics changes apply to started saves (EN p. 39).

If your install is really a database change in disguise — real names, league structures — that is the real name patch guide’s territory, and the editor behind both worlds is documented in our external editor guide.