Football Manager 25 is set to launch globally on 26th November 2024 Sports Interactive have announced, marking a new era for the series as it transitions to the Unity engine. This upgrade brings significant technical and visual enhancements, including the long-awaited introduction of Women’s Football, a revamped game UI, and a more immersive matchday experience.
In addition to the main PC and Mac release, FM25 Console (for Xbox and PS5) and FM25 Mobile will launch on the same day. Meanwhile, FM25 Touch (for Nintendo Switch) will be released digitally on December 3, with further updates to come.
Among the new features is an overhauled tactical system that aligns more closely with modern football, and a redesigned manager setup that allows for more personalised gameplay. Players can also carry forward their save games from FM24 across all platforms, with save compatibility being introduced to the Mobile series for the first time.
Read the full announcement from Sports Interactive here.
Update October 2024
After this update was announced by Sports Interactive, since then news followed in October 2024 that the launched date had been pushed back to March 2025. The 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.
Football Manager 25 will be the first game of the series to feature women’s football, whilst the game will also have an upgraded match engine which runs on the unity engine.