Arabic
Ant Farley, Design Director at Sports Interactive, has revealed that the decision to cancel the development of Football Manager 25 last year was the key factor behind the high quality of Football Manager 26 today, saying the move was painful but necessary.
The upcoming game, due out on November 4, 2025, marks a significant turning point in the series’ more than two-decade history, moving from Sports Interactive’s internal development engine OS to Unity for the first time, requiring systems to be rebuilt from scratch and repeated delays last year.
In an interview with Football Gaming Zone, Farley explained that releasing FM25 as it was at the time would have been detrimental to the reputation and quality of the series:
“We wouldn’t have reached this level of quality in FM26 if we had released FM25. Some of the decisions we changed later would have been forced on us at the time and once the game is released, it’s hard to undo or rethink them.
He added that if the team had continued to develop FM25, they would have spent most of their time fixing technical bugs instead of building a complete experience, while canceling the project allowed them to completely restructure the game.
Farley noted that the decision to cancel was initially frustrating for the team, but quickly turned into a strong motivation to deliver an experience worthy of the series’ fans:
“We were disappointed at first, but it quickly turned into positive energy. We said to ourselves: Now we have a chance to make something we’re really proud of. We weren’t satisfied with FM25 and didn’t see it as offering real value to the players and that was the real motivation behind FM26.
Thanks to the extra time the team had, the developers were able to improve the graphics and AI and deliver a more realistic experience thanks to the new Unity engine. Players will be able to experience the open beta on October 24th with the possibility of transferring progress to the full version later.
Sports Interactive seems to have learned from its previous decisions to deliver in Football Manager 26 a version that represents a quantum leap in performance and realism with the promise that the new experience will be the most complete and innovative in the history of the series.
