Football Manager 25 has been cancelled

Put your red and white scarf back on the coat rack, football friends. The match has been called off. The entire season, in fact. Football Manager 25 has been cancelled because it has not met a high enough standard in time for its intended release next month, according to developers Sports Interactive. Anyone who pre-ordered the game will be given a refund, they say.

“Following extensive internal discussion and careful consideration with SEGA, we have made the difficult decision to cancel Football Manager 25 and shift our focus to the next release,” said the developers in a statement. “Whilst many areas of the game have hit our targets, the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be… we’re too far away from the standards you deserve.

“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.”

This other game is a reference to the next instalment, Football Manager 26. The devs are now just working on that one instead.

Sports Interactive have previously hyped up the now-binned sideline shouter, pitching it as a fresh start for the series. It would be “for the first time in decades, a true sequel” with a new graphics engine, revamped UI, women’s football, better animations, the works. It announced a short delay to its release date in November 2024. But just one week after that it was delayed again until March 2025.

Now, it’s not happening at all, and that fresh start will have to kick off next football season. It’s a surprisingly late cancellation, and a somewhat last minute announcement. Sports Interactive couldn’t tell fans the bad news until now, they say, because lawyers said so.

“Due to stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations, today was the earliest date that we could issue this statement,” they said.

As for getting your money back, if you pre-ordered you’ll get automatically refunded in full through whatever platform you bought it on, so long as it’s an “official SEGA-approved retailer.” That list includes Steam, Epic, Humble and a bunch of other places. It’s only bad news if you bought your tickets to this big game from a CD Keys tout. Either way, take off your red and white bobble hat and come back inside for a cuppa. No, I don’t know what team you support. It’s the red and white one. They’re all red and white, aren’t they? That’s the colour of football.