Sports Interactive and SEGA Officially Cancel Football Manager 25 Ahead of Official Release

The yearly Football Manager entries have been going for quite a while, as avid fans of the game and the sport join SEGA with each new release with excitement. Last year, however, there was a substantial delay with the upcoming Football Manager 25, and players were promised an update in late January for the upcoming March 2025 release.

In January, however, there was also radio silence, and Football Manager content creators started to panic about the lack of comments and reveals. As it appears, everyone was right to fret, as just on the 6th of February 2025, SEGA announced in a blog post the official cancellation of Football Manager 25.

Of course, this comes as shocking news to many, as players were expecting a gameplay reveal just last week (at the time of writing). Despite that, due to stakeholder compliance, the team was unable to share news about the cancellation until the date because of legal and financial regulations.

The team states the official reason for cancellation as FM25 being too big of an undertaking, hoping it would be the "biggest technical and visual advancement in the series", which would "lay the building blocks for a new era". However, the challenges that arose from such an undertaking was the thing that led to the delay and ultimate cancellation of the title.

The cancellation is also in large part due to the March release being the final deadline the team was willing to delay, as the new football season would be too late, and it would be too much to expect players to buy another title later in the year.

We could have pressed on, released FM25 in its current state, and fixed things down the line - but that’s not the right thing to do. We were also unwilling to go beyond a March release as it would be too late in the football season to expect players to then buy another game later in the year.

All of the resources from the cancellation will be refocused into the next yearly release, the untitled Football Manager entry for 2026's football season. Users who had pre-ordered the title back when it was first opened for pre-order last year will receive their refunds on all platforms, including third-party retailers like Fanatical, without any additional steps from players.

As it stands, Football Manager 2024 will not be updated with data from 2024/25 season due to the resources it would take, and SEGA is working to keep the latest title available on subscription platforms as more development goes into Football Manager 26.