Sports Interactive and SEGA have announced Football Manager 2025 has been cancelled. 

The live date for this year’s iteration of the popular simulation video game had already been pushed back twice due to challenging development updates. Those who pre-ordered Football Manager 2025 will be entitled to a full refund after the cancellation was announced in the early hours of this morning. 

Fans had already begun to speculate about the game’s arrival, when a scheduled update on its live date didn’t arrive last month. 

FM25 was due to be the first edition of the series to use a new Unity game engine, promising a range of upgrades to the game’s visuals and interface, with the inclusion of women’s football also being introduced for the first time, too – a challenge in itself as a new stats database, and record new motion-capture sequences, were created for specifically for female players. 

Sports Interactive outlined they were unwilling to push back the game’s release beyond March “as it would be too late in the football season to do so”. And due to financial regulations and obligations to shareholders, the company could not announce the game’s cancellation any sooner.

“Every effort is now focused on ensuring that our next release achieves our goal and hits the quality level we all expect” explained Sports Interactive in their joint statement with SEGA. “We will update you on how we are progressing with that as soon as we are able to do so.”