After months of radio silence from Sports Interactive, Football Manager 25 has now been canceled—but it’s good news.
The latest entry in the long-running franchise has had a turbulent development cycle. Significant upgrades to the game, including an entirely new engine, were due to kick off a new era in Football Manager 25, although that has now been shelved.
In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), Sports Interactive announced the “difficult decision” to cancel Football Manager 25 and “shift our focus” to the next release, Football Manager 26, apologizing to those who pre-ordered the title for letting them down.
Football Manager 25’s release date had already shifted twice. The latest announcement of a delay in October pushed the release window into March, followed by a long period of radio silence with only a few updates shared in the months since.
The decision to scrap FM25 is due to “the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be.” While the studio has received “clear validation” for the new direction of the franchise and is “getting close,” it is still “too far away from the standards you deserve.”
It appears the decision to cancel FM25 may have been made earlier than the statement was issued, as it was stated that “due to shareholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations,” the announcement came on the “earliest date possible.”
The news will be a blow to the passionate community of Football Manager fans, but given the situation, it’s entirely understandable why Football Manager 25 will not be released. This is actually good news—the approach is refreshing for the industry.
Sports Interactive could have pushed on and released a sub-par version of the title, with fixes later down the line, but this wouldn’t have provided a positive experience for players and, perhaps crucially, would have required attention to be shifted away from Football Manager 26.
Similarly, the game could have been delayed for a third time, which would have pushed the title further back into the calendar of global football and closer to the time that Europe’s top leagues would have been finishing for the year—and then it would have only been a few months until the next entry in the title.
There’s clearly still a lot of work to be done preparing for the next entry in the Football Manager series, which is expected to return to the standard release cycle for the franchise and release in fall this year, but I’m still encouraged by the changes that are being made.
In a Dot Esports interview with Miles Jacobson last year, I was encouraged to see beneath the lid of the franchise and how advancements in technology are embraced while still remaining focused on providing the best possible experience for players.
Although the wait to start my next adventure in Football Manager has been put on the back-burner for a while, I’m excited to see the end result as the next entry in the series will have had double the attention placed on it.
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