Sports Interactive has announced that the upcoming title, Football Manager 25, has been delayed once again—this time until March 2025. Initially scheduled for release in early November 2024, the launch date was previously pushed back to late November 2024.
Here’s what Sports Interactive has to say about the delay and the reasons behind this tough decision.
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.
Thank you for reading and your patience. It means the world to us as we continue to work on creating a new era for Football Manager.
As you can imagine, this news isn’t sitting well with fans of the series, especially since the game has been delayed so far into 2025.
Releasing in March 2025 raises concerns about its potential impact on the development of the upcoming Football Manager 26. At that point, one has to wonder if there’s any reason to release Football Manager 25 at all. While this is disappointing for fans, it’s important to recognize that developers who take the time to ensure their games are of the highest quality are ultimately worth the wait, despite the frustration.
In the meantime, consider playing other titles in the Football Manager series if you haven’t already. Be sure to check out our reviews for Football Manager 2023 and Football Manager 2024.
Football Manager 25 will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and will also be available on Xbox Game Pass.
