Football Manager 2025 release date delayed – here's when FM25 will be released

The annual Football Manager release has been delayed massively, with Sports Interactive claiming that "things have been moving slower than we had predicted".

Sports Interactive has announced that the Football Manager 2025 release date has been pushed back, with a new release date confirmed.

Football Manager is one of the most successful football games around, with Football Manager 2024 – the most recent instalment of Football Manager – becoming the most played title in the series' history since its debut in 2005. Sports Interactive and Sega announced last year that Football Manager 2025 would mark the start of a new era for the Football Manager series, but fans of the game will now have to wait even longer to experience the new beginnings, with the Football Manager 2025 release date delayed.

This is why the Football Manager 2025 release date is delayed, and when the game will officially be released.

New Football Manager 2025 release date confirmed

Sports Interactive has confirmed that the Football Manager 2025 release date has been delayed, with the game now being released in March 2025 instead of the planned release date of November 26, 2024. Sports Interactive released the following statement with its reasons for the delay, which was posted on the Football Manager website.

"After careful consideration, Sports Interactive have made the tough decision to further delay the release of Football Manager 25", reads the statement. "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."

FM25 marks the debut of women's football in the game, while it was also confirmed earlier this year that the Premier League will be fully licensed in FM25, with the game now the official football management video game of the Premier League. The biggest change of all is being made to the FM match engine, with Sports Interactive moving to Unity.

This means that the old-fashioned, underwhelming graphics that we've all learned to love in Football Manager will be no more in FM25, with Unity giving the match experience more realism from overall graphics to in-game animations.