For the first time in its two-decade-long saga, the beloved soccer management simulation game, Football Manager, is taking an unexpected break. Football Manager 25, which had already experienced two delays, is now officially canceled just before its anticipated March 2025 debut.
The developers at Sports Interactive, alongside publisher Sega, have released a statement outlining their decision to focus on the next installment in the series. They felt that FM25 couldn’t meet the high-quality benchmarks without further delays—which they saw as unacceptable.
Originally, Football Manager 25 was billed as a major overhaul of the franchise. Sports Interactive had promised “the most significant technical and visual enhancements seen in a generation,” setting the stage for a new era. The ambitious plan for FM25 included better animations, an improved user interface, an enhanced match day experience, and the introduction of women’s soccer for the first time.
However, it seems the scope of this overhaul proved to be quite a challenge. The developers had already taken the unusual step of delaying the game past its usual fall release to March, meaning it would miss a significant portion of the soccer season. To add to the uncertainty, no gameplay reveal had been made public and a development update promised for January wasn’t delivered.
Acknowledging the numerous challenges, both expected and unforeseen, Sports Interactive expressed their dedication to meeting their goals. They said, “Despite the incredible efforts of our team, we haven’t achieved what we set out to do across enough areas of the game.” With critical milestones approaching, it became increasingly clear that even with the adjusted timeline, the game wouldn’t meet the required standards.
The studio determined that releasing an unfinished game and relying on patches to fix it wasn’t the best course of action. Extending the release date further wasn’t feasible either, as it would come too late in the football season to warrant players purchasing another game later in the year. Consequently, they chose to skip this release entirely and concentrate efforts on the next version, which is likely to hit shelves in fall 2025.
“In canceling this edition, we’re directing our focus on ensuring our next release meets the high-quality standards we all expect,” the studio stated.
Sports Interactive also apologized for the delayed communication regarding the game’s cancellation, citing legal and financial restrictions linked to Sega, their publicly traded parent company. Players who had pre-ordered were assured of automatic full refunds. However, updating Football Manager 2024 with the current season’s data was ruled out due to the significant resources it would divert from developing the upcoming version.
Football Manager has consistently followed a strict annual release schedule, never appearing later than the end of November since the release of Football Manager 2005. The roots of Sports Interactive in soccer management games trace back even further, going back to the 1992 launch of Championship Manager.
