Football Manager 2026 confirmed for this year as Sega cancels FM25

They think it’s all over… it is now (Sega/Quentin) The ‘new era’ of Football Manager is not going to arrive for several more months, as FM25 is cancelled and pre-orders refunded. After multiple delays, Sega has announced the inevitable: there will be no Football Manager 25 and the entire game has been cancelled. Although the good news is that there will be a Football Manager 26 and it will be out this year as usual. The problems started last year, when the game was twice delayed and ended up with a release date of March 2025, instead of the usual November launch. That didn’t seem to make any sense, even just in terms of the football season being mostly over by then, but there were also doubts amongst fans as to whether the game would end up being rushed. All the issues stemmed from the fact that the game was meant to be a major overhaul for the series, with a new game engine and new features such as support for women’s football and touchline shouts – all of which were gradually cut from the release as it was delayed again and again. In that sense, today’s annoucement has come as no surprise and has, in fact, been welcomed by many fans, even as they’re still worried about how Football Manager 2026 will turn out. ‘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,’ reads the official annoucement. ‘For the large numbers of you who pre-ordered FM25, we thank you enormously for your trust and support – we’re very sorry to have let you down.’ No one’s cheering this news (Sega) ‘We can only apologise for the time it has taken to communicate this decision. Due to stakeholder compliance, including legal and financial regulations, today was the earliest date that we could issue this statement,’ reads the explanation. ‘Whilst many areas of the game have hit our targets, the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be. As extensive evaluation has demonstrated, including consumer playtesting, we have clear validation for the new direction of the game and are getting close – however, 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.’ All work will now be moved to Football Manager 26 (Sega) Although developer Sports Interactive is keen to imply that by skipping ahead to Football Manager 2026, presumably this November, everything will fall back into line there is, of course, no guarantee of that. The next release is essentially a brand new game, rather than just an incremental update, and that’s a difficult thing to create given that the studio has been trying to make its usual yearly sequels at the same time. That means there’s no guarantee there won’t be further problems as autumn approaches and it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if features remained cut, just to get it out the door. The new game is switching to the Unity engine (Sega) The online reaction is relatively understanding but, as you can imagine, nobody is happy. ‘They swapped engines and thought it would be a seamless transition. Turns out it wasn’t even close lol,’ said Agreeable_Cheek_7161 on Reddit. ‘This might be a blessing in disguise. Give the devs time to actually do a leap forwards’, says a slightly more optimistic Predicted. ‘I find it astounding that they opened up pre-orders knowing full well it was looking like a car crash. I know that was the capitalist side of the company talking though and I’m glad they’ve realised that releasing a bad game would have been way more detrimental to the long-term brand of FM than just skipping a year and taking a short-term financial loss,’ adds another fan. How to get refunds for Football Manager 25 Because the games usually come out on such a regular schedule, a lot of fans will have pre-ordered Football Manager 25 a long time ago, but Sega has insisted that everyone will get refunds. According to them pre-orders for the game will happen automatically if you paid for the game via an ‘official Sega-approved retailer.’ Although that won’t necessarily happen today, with Sega only saying that it will take place ‘in due course’. There’s a list of approved retailers here, which includes Steam and most online retailers. Since the vast majority of people play the game on PC it should be relatively easy to claim your refund, but Sega suggest contacting the retailer themselves – not them – if you have any problems. The year that never was (Sega) Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s F