Sports Interactive has released a development update for Football Manager 25, sharing significant changes and progress on the upcoming game. Originally slated for a September release, FM25 has now been delayed to late November due to the complexity of switching to the Unity engine. The transition has been more challenging than expected, pushing back the official announcement and game launch to ensure the quality of the first game in a new era for the Football Manager franchise.
A key decision in the update is the removal of international management as a playable mode in FM25, FM25 Console, and FM25 Touch. Low player engagement and quality concerns prompted this decision, allowing developers to focus resources on other critical areas. However, international management will remain playable in FM25 Mobile and return in a feature-rich form for FM26, coinciding with the 2026 World Cup expansion.
Another major change is the removal of player weight from all profiles due to the complexities of tracking weight, especially in women’s football. This comes as part of a broader effort to introduce women’s football in FM25, where managing men’s and women’s teams will be fully integrated into one ecosystem.
To accommodate these updates, the testing phase has been slightly delayed, but fans who signed up for playtesting will be contacted soon. While these adjustments push back FM25’s release, the developers remain focused on delivering a high-quality experience for players as they navigate this transition into a new era for the game.
FM25 is shaping up to be a crucial milestone, setting the foundation for future developments in the Football Manager series.
You can read the full update from Sports Interactive here.
Update October 2024
Since the announcement, SI released another update in October 2024 that the launch date had been pushed back to March 2025. The full statement read:
After careful consideration, Sports Interactive have made the tough decision to further delay the release of Football Manager 25.
Following discussions with SEGA, our licensors and partners, we have agreed the best course of action is to delay the launch until March 2025. Specific platform release dates will follow once confirmed.
In our last Development update in September, we explained that we needed to push FM25’s original release back to give ourselves more time to deliver the best possible experience for this first instalment in a new era of Football Manager.
This additional time has not been sufficient to ensure the game quality and experience meets your expectations and our very high standards.In the previous blog we explained that it has been a difficult development cycle for the studio. Many things have been moving slower than we had predicted – despite everyone in the team working at an incredible pace to try and get everything done.
Timelines were already tight and, as rightly pointed out by many of your recent comments, we were simply rushing too much and in danger of compromising our usual standards. This has put an enormous amount of pressure on everyone working across the studio, who are all passionately committed to delivering the best game possible.FM25 is the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation. We simply cannot compromise the delivery of this crucial juncture in Football Manager’s history by rushing to release it in November.
Of course, this is not where any of us expected to be seven weeks out from our release but, in the spirit of our studio values, we always consider the bigger picture – and the bigger picture here is that we need this additional time to deliver a game that we can all be proud of.For the large numbers of you who have already pre-ordered the game, we thank you very much for your trust and support. Given the delay, however, should you wish to claim a refund, please contact your retailer.
Something you noted as missing from our announcement on 30 September was mention of Advanced Access on PC/Mac. We can confirm Advanced Access will be available ahead of the new release date and, when we are confident on how long that period will be, we will update you at the first opportunity. The new gameplay reveal will also now move to the end of January 2025.We are intensely aware that this will be massively disappointing for you. We share that disappointment and are extremely sorry.