24 Jul, 2025
With FM 26 release date speculation building, we’ve enlisted the help of an expert to shed some light on when we can expect Sports Interactive’s next game
Football Manager 2026 is Sports Interactive’s big chance to get everyone back on side. After the cancellation of the last game, the talented team at SI will be under a lot of pressure to deliver a more complete FM than ever before.
The future of the franchise, their credibility, and the hopes and dreams of every Football Manager fanatic are all on the line! So, when can we expect it? We’ve enlisted the help of our resident expert Billy Reid to get the low-down on when to expect FM 26.
Football Manager has finally returned with an official update on the highly anticipated and long awaited Football Manager 2026. The Football Manager X page updated their banner and bio which got fans stirring. Pretty clear that as you can see below, an FM26 update was coming.
And the update came not long later with the first official trailer from Sports Interactive for the new Football Manager 26 game. The wait if finally over…
Sports Interactive have finally confirmed, with a new 30 second official trailer/announcement video, that the long awaited next FM game, Football Manager 26 is on it’s way. This is huge news for all FM fans who have been questioning Sports Interactive’s desire and ability to produce what fans want since they cancelled the last game. The FM community’s questions have now been answered; at least the biggest question of “are we getting FM26?” has been. FM released the trailer on YouTube and all social media including their X page.
We get some early, and as stated, “not final” shots and snippets of FM26’s improved game day / match day experience. We get to take a peek at some of the changes that come with FM having official Premier League license, which was supposedly going to be in FM25 also before it was scrapped. The trailer also gives fans a small taste of what they can expect with Sports Interactive and Football Manager’s move to the new Unity engine for FM26. We get to take a look at the new 3D Match Engine which was also supposed to be a part of last years scrapped game, which comes with improved graphics and animations.
And there is also now a pretty exciting question fans are now asking after this new trailer from Sports Interactive…
Could we possibly be getting a historic collab between the two biggest football games in the world?
Throughout Sports Interactive’s new Football Manager 26 trailer, we are shown numerous game footage shots of of the new promotional deal with EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA). EA FC is an official sponsor of the Premier League so it is not a complete shock to see their logo feature in FM26, but could it mean more?
Could FM and EA FC fans be getting some kind of career mode collab? With FM’s player database and some new features to EA’s more simplistic career mode that fans have long been asking for, and FM in return gets some cool player modeling data / improvements to their Match Engine for a more realistic 3D match day experience? Who knows for now, but I’m sure we will find out more soon so be sure to check back with us here for more updates in real time!
“We’ve officially entered the time of year where Football Manager fans start pacing their living room,” said Billy. “FM26 still hasn’t been announced. There’s no trailer. No teaser. Not even a cryptic tweet from Miles. Naturally, that’s left the community with questions.”
Is this normal? Has Sports Interactive forgotten we exist… again? To find out if this radio silence is worth panicking over, we looked back at the timelines of the last five Football Manager releases to see if we can spot any patterns. Here’s what we found:
| Football Manager | Release date |
|---|---|
| FM 2020 | Nov 19, 2019 |
| FM 2021 | Nov 10, 2020 |
| FM 2022 | Nov 8, 2021 |
| FM 2023 | Oct 20, 2022 |
| FM 2024 | Nov 6, 2023 |
| FM 2025 | Cancelled |
Football Manager 2020 (FM20): Nobody complained
Announced: August 27, 2019
Release Date: November 19, 2019
Football Manager 2021 (FM21): Bang on Brand
Announced: September 24, 2020
Release Date: November 24, 2020
This one was delayed slightly due to COVID-19, and as a result the announcement came even later, the end of September. Only two months before launch. That means that by this point in August, SI still hadn’t said a word about FM21. “They dropped everything… release date, teaser, feature roadmap… all in one go at the end of September,” said Billy. “So again, the current silence from Sports Interactive? Bang on brand.”
Football Manager 2022 (FM22): Spot a pattern yet?
Announced: September 8, 2021
Release Date: November 9, 2021
Football Manager 2023 (FM23): Following the playbook
Announced: September 8, 2022
Release Date: November 8, 2022
FM23 followed the FM22 playbook almost exactly. On September 8, the team confirmed the release date, mentioned the new platforms (PlayStation 5, Apple Arcade), and promised more feature reveals soon. “Before that, there were no press releases, no hints, and no major news updates,” said Billy.
Football Manager 2024 (FM24): A bit of spice
Announced: September 12, 2023
Release Date: November 6, 2023
“FM24 had a bit of spice. It was the last game on the old engine, and it let players carry over their saves from FM23, a first in the series,” said Billy. That feature was teased in June 2023, but the proper announcement… trailer, release date, platform rundown… didn’t come until September 12. So even when SI did something truly new, they didn’t budge on the timeline. No major info until the second week of September.
After cancelling the last game, not only will FM want to deliver but they should really be delivering fans a new game as early as possible. The track record says November, so, is it worrying we haven’t heard anything official yet?
“In a word? No,” Billy tells us. “If Sports Interactive had announced FM26 already, that would be the weird bit.” Across the last five versions, FM20 through FM24, every single one was announced between August 27 and September 24. Most hovered around the second week of September. None were announced before early August. Not a single one. So the silence isn’t new, or ominous. It’s the norm. And even this year’s unique circumstances don’t really change that. FM25 was cancelled (RIP) and the studio promised that FM26 would mark “a new era” for the series, hinting at big changes under the hood. In February 2025, they issued a statement saying they’d update fans “as soon as we are able to do so.”
It looks like we now may have that update, and the new era of FM is upon us with some of those big changes under the hood potentially being revealed. FM Console (@fm_console) with the help of Bekim Sejdini (@bekimxd) have discovered through the SEGA 2025 Management Report that FM is set to be released in “Fall 2025”. This likely means the games release will be some time between October and December, which could mean a slight departure from the routine early November release date we have had for the previous games.
Why the potential earlier release date? SEGA sites the reason being “Significant improvements of the quality compared to previous titles in the series” which is great news, and may be true, but the cancellation of FM25 also probably has something to do with this years potential earlier release.
A big change that was discovered by FM Console in the SEGA 2025 Management Report, is that FM is expanding across even more platforms for FM26! This is a huge change, bringing wider accessibility for FM26 that allows you to manage on any platform you have available to you at the time.
FM26 looks to be expanding to availability on PC and Mac, Mobile and Tablets, PlayStation and PlayStation Plus, Xbox and Microsoft Game Pass and possibly even other cloud type platforms.
Below are some other new features our expert Billy hopes to see in the long awaited FM26:
In the meantime, we’re still having a lot of fun with last year’s game. For example, we ranked every Premier League clubs transfer windows so far, looked at Football Managers 25/26 season predictions as well as asking 110 experts to give their pre-season predictions! We’ve also used FM to bring us the best PL wonderkids who could provide great value in FPL this upcoming season!
