Fans of every game love to look ahead to the next one, so what do we already know about Football Manager 2025? Thanks to Sports Interactive's comprehensive road map, which they provided in 2023, we know quite a lot.
Football Manager 2025 will be the dawn of a whole new era for the biggest sports management franchise in gaming. From new licenses to a fresh engine and the introduction of women's football, FM25 will be a giant leap forward.
Football Manager 2025 Release Date Prediction
Right now there is no official release date for FM25. However, the game usually arrives at the same time every year.
Because of that, we can safely assume that Football Manager 2025 will arrive in early November.
The beta, or early access, as SI now calls it, should drop two weeks earlier than that in mid-October. This is usually reserved for PC players who pre-order the game through a SEGA-approved outlet such as Steam. In the recent Development Update, it was revealed that we will have an official release date in September, so fans won't have to wait too long.
Welcome To The Premier League
For years now, the biggest league in the world has been called the "English Premier Division" in Football Manager due to a lack of an official license. This meant that Sports Interactive had to use fake badges, unofficial team names, and blanked-out player faces for the Premier League teams.
This situation even led to Manchester United raising a trademark dispute against SEGA and Football Manager in 2020. Players would get around the issue with the use of unofficial badge packs and face packs.
Well, that won't be an issue now, as Football Manager has the official Premier League license, which means there should be badges, faces, and kits from the 24/25 Premier League season in Football Manager 2025.
Detailed replicas of each stadium might be a step too far, but we could get some iconic venues like Old Trafford, The Emirates, and Anfield to appear.
A Whole New Engine
FM25 will be a truly new era for the Football Manager franchise and perhaps the most significant leap forward since the introduction of the 3D match engine in FM09.
FM25 will see the series shift to Unity. This is the engine that gaming giants such as Genshin Impact and Cities: Skylines use as well as thousands of small mobile games.
The big thing that players should notice immediately is an improvement in graphical quality. While graphics have never been crucial to FM's core player base, the poor state of FM's graphics is often cited as a reason why new players don't engage with the game.
But it's not just graphically where the changes will be felt. FM25 will have a "whole new UI which will dramatically improve the ways you are able to interact with the game" according to Studio Director Miles Jacobson.
This means minimum system requirements will be higher for FM25 than for previous versions. The specs are yet to be made public, but it could be quite a leap forward and require players to upgrade old laptops that still use 2D engines to get by.
For the first time, the inbox is also being shelved; now, players will use the portal in between matches. "The Portal will be a richer window to the wider footballing universe. It’ll give you far better tools to develop your story through the Agenda and Messages sections, but also deliver you more insight into what’s happening elsewhere via News and Matches."
The new engine is bringing some of the biggest changes we've ever seen, and ditching the inbox is just one example.
Women's Football
After promising it way back in July 2021, FM25 will feature the women's game for the first time.
Sports Interactive has been pretty quiet about how the addition of the women's game will change your saves. Players should expect the same high standard of player databases and as many official names, leagues, and teams as they have licenses for.
Most excitingly, in the recent Development Update it was confirmed players "will be able to seamlessly move between managing men’s and women’s teams. One game, one ecosystem."
It will be interesting to see what the uptake of the women's databases will be in the long run, but just like the addition of the J-League in FM24, it is great to see Football Manager being a truly global title, for everyone.
Platforms
Despite the greater strain, Football Manager 2025 should still be available on PC and Mac, PlayStation, and Xbox, along with an FM25 Mobile version for iOS and Android.
There should also be Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch versions of the game, as there were for FM24.
This is all unconfirmed, but Sports Interactive has been working hard to bring Football Manager to as many platforms as possible, and that won't stop just because of the move to Sanity.
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