What Really Happened to Football Manager 25?

Why Football Manager 25 Will Never Release – The Full Story ⚽

For a game known for its consistency, Football Manager 25 broke tradition in the worst way possible—it just didn’t show up. Year after year, Sports Interactive has delivered its football sim like clockwork. So when FM25 missed its November 2024 launch window… and then its delayed March 2025 target… fans started asking: What happened?

Spoiler alert—it wasn’t just one thing. FM25 was supposed to be the biggest technical leap in the series’ long history. But when ambition collides with reality? Sometimes, the game doesn’t make it off the bench.

🏆 The Expectations: A New Era of Football Manager

Football Manager 24 had already hit incredible milestones—14 million players, a fanbase that included Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembélé, and even Premier League coaching staff. The hype was real for FM25, especially after Sports Interactive promised it would be a “generational leap.”

What made this release so special?

1. Premier League Licensing – For the first time ever, FM25 would include official Premier League logos, kits, and player images across all versions.
2. Women’s Football – A long-awaited addition that would finally bring women’s leagues into the Football Manager universe.
3. A New Game Engine – Say goodbye to the legacy tech from 2004—FM25 was moving to Unity, a modern engine known for powering games like Fall Guys and Cities: Skylines.

It sounded like a dream package, and honestly, it still does.

🧠 The Technical Challenges Behind the Scenes

Each of these innovations brought huge development hurdles. Let’s break them down:

✅ Premier League Licensing

Sounds simple, right? Slap a logo on a kit and call it a day? Not quite. Every licensed asset had to be implemented manually. UI design, kit textures, player portraits—it all needed a developer's touch.

👩‍🦰 Adding Women's Football

This was massive. It’s not like you can just copy/paste names into a spreadsheet. Women’s football required entirely new research from the ground up. Hundreds of scouts were sent across the globe to compile data for over 4,000 players and 3,500 coaches from 500 competitions.

Even more work went into motion capture, with real-life players like twins Molly and Rosie Kamita filming animation assets. And don’t forget the 4 million+ words and phrases in the game—all of which needed to be gender-proofed to match the new inclusivity standards.

🧱 Switching to Unity Engine

This was the big one. Sports Interactive had been using their own in-house engine since Football Manager 2005. Switching to Unity was like rebuilding a football stadium during a match.

Unlike porting over a file in Photoshop, moving to Unity meant rewriting core code, converting assets, adjusting UI scaling, and reworking animations—basically starting from scratch. One gaming exec put it best: “It always looks easier on paper. In reality, it’s a mountain.”

⏳ Delays, Radio Silence… and Then the Cancellation

FM25 was originally slated for November 2024, then pushed to March 2025. But when no footage or meaningful updates appeared by February, fans knew something was wrong.

This wasn’t the first time Sports Interactive had run into trouble. Championship Manager 4 (the game’s spiritual predecessor) also missed its release window in 2002 before becoming the UK’s fastest-selling PC game the following March. So some fans still had hope.

But this time? No comeback.

On February 7, 2025, Sports Interactive officially pulled the plug on Football Manager 25. In a public statement, they explained that the game just wasn’t where it needed to be in terms of quality, performance, and polish. Rather than repeat past mistakes and release a buggy mess, they made the tough call to skip this year entirely.

💸 The Fallout

The cancellation didn’t come cheap.

• Millions of pounds in lost revenue
• Sega’s stock dropped nearly 4% immediately after the announcement
• Thousands of fans vented their disappointment on forums and social media

Still, there was a weird sense of relief. Nobody wanted FM25 to be a broken mess. And with FM26 now in focus, fans are cautiously optimistic that the long delay will pay off.

🥅 What Comes Next: All Eyes on FM26

So where do we go from here?

Sports Interactive has promised that all the innovations planned for FM25—Premier League content, women’s football, and the new Unity engine—are now being redirected toward Football Manager 26. The goal? Deliver a polished, next-gen experience that actually lives up to the hype.

With extra development time and lessons learned from the FM25 debacle, FM26 could end up being a triumphant comeback. But hey, no pressure.

As longtime players of the series know… patience is just another part of the game.

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