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Disappointment for football fans: "Football Manager 25" cancelled

7.2.2025

Translation: machine translated

Is that surprising or not? Every year, a new instalment of the "Football Manager" series was reliably released. Now work on "FM 25" has been discontinued. What does this mean for the future of the series?

Sega and Sports Interactive (SI) have recently announced that the development of "Football Manager 25" has been cancelled. This decision was made in order to fully focus on the next version of the series, "Football Manager 26".

Football Manager 25 was originally scheduled for release in November 2024, but was postponed to March 2025 due to a number of technical problems. The November date was already a few weeks later than the traditional release date. The developers had set themselves the goal of achieving the biggest technical and graphical leap in the history of the series. This included switching to the Unity engine. A challenge that proved to be too great.

Reasons for the cancellation

The cancellation is not entirely surprising at this point in time. Last November, the first gameplay videos were announced for this January. However, there was neither a video nor any other news. Instead, there were numerous concerned YouTube videos from fans and content creators of the series.

According to Sports Interactive, the general gaming experience and user interface in particular are not yet at the level they should be. This has also been shown in playtests so far. At the same time, they emphasise that the new direction of the game is still the right step. Therefore, after extensive internal discussions and consultations with Sega, the decision was finally made to discontinue the project and focus directly on the next version: "Football Manager 26".

What happens next?

This should then usually be released again in October or November of this year. In addition to the new Unity engine, it will also include the integration of women's football and other new and revised features. Incidentally, there will not be an update for "FM 24" with the data for the 2024/25 season.

In the FAQ within the official announcement, Sports Interactive also addresses a few other questions. In particular, they address the topic of refunds. If you have already pre-ordered the game from a retailer recognised by Sega, you will receive your money back from the retailer in due course, according to SI. If you have any further questions, you should otherwise contact this point of sale.

What do you think about the cancellation of Football Manager 25? Have you played any of the previous games? Let me know in the comments.

Header image: Sports Interactive

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