In a development update on the Football Manager Website Sports Interactive announces that Football Manager 25 is cancelled, and the developer is turning its focus towards Football Manager 26. There's a thank you to preorder customers for their trust along with an apology for letting them down and word that purchases should be automatically refunded. In the meantime, while there will be no update for FM24 with data from the latest season, there's word of "discussions with our various platform partners and licensors and hope to extend our FM24 agreements" so players can keep playing on streaming platforms. The post acknowledges added disappointment since the release was delayed twice prior to the cancellation, but says it could not announce this latest decision prior to now due to regulatory compliance. Here's word on the state of development: "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." Here's the summary implying ambitions to advance the game's technology is what led to this:

We have always prided ourselves on delivering the best value for money games that bring you countless hours of enjoyment, that feel worth every moment and every penny you spend. With the launch of FM25 we set out to create the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation, laying the building blocks for a new era.

Due to a variety of challenges that we’ve been open about to date, and many more unforeseen, we currently haven’t achieved what we set out to do in enough areas of the game, despite the phenomenal efforts of our team. Each decision to delay the release was made with the aim of getting the game closer to the desired level but, as we approached critical milestones at the turn of the year, it became unmistakably clear that we would not achieve the standard required, even with the adjusted timeline.