Back in October 2024, SEGA and Sports Interactive announced a delay for Football Manager 25. However, last week, the teams revealed that this new part of the FM series has been officially canceled.
Football Manager 25 would have a new game engine. The game would also have a slicker and smarter UI, promising to deliver key info when players need it. New, volumetric player animations and enhanced graphical fidelity would also aim to elevate the Matchday experience.
It appears that Sports Interactive encountered major issues with the new game engine. These issues are so severe that instead of releasing a buggy game, SEGA decided to simply cancel the game.
Sports Interactive claims that this was the “right thing” to do but let’s be realistic here. If the game was playable, SEGA would have released it (and let Sports Interactive patch it down the line). So, I can’t imagine the state in which the game is right now.
Sports Interactive will now focus on the development of Football Manager 2026. In theory, we should expect it sometime in November 2025. Or at least that’s the month in which all the previous FM games came out.
In a way, this is good news. I mean, take a look at what’s going on with any other annual sports title. Every one of them feels like an expansion and not like a new title. So, let’s hope that Sports Interactive will not – once again – drop the ball with FM26.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email