Football Manager 2025 New Features

Sports Interactive first announced Football Manager 2025 on June 29th 2023, signaling a new era in the FM franchise.

FM 2025 will be the first Football Manager release to use the Unity game engine, which powers many of the best-known games in the world.

This really is the biggest change since moving from Championship Manager to Football Manager and the biggest tech change in more than 20 years.

FM25 is the starting point for the studio’s next 20 years.

Buy FM25 from FM Scout Pre-purchase and save up to 25%, as well as get a verified buyer badge for your FM Scout account!

Updated: 5 September 2024

FM25 signifies the next major chapter in journey to provide the most true-to-life football management game on the market.

So here are some of the biggest features to expect from the latest edition of the award-winning football management series.

Significant FM 2025 Highlights

✔️ Premier League License
✔️ Vastly Improved UI
✔️ Introducing Women's Football
✔️ More Real-Life Animations
✔️ Overhauled Matchday Experience
✔️ Removed Screens & Modules
✔️ New Tech for Newgens
✔️ Import Your Existing Career from FM24

Football Manager 2025 Screenshots

PREMIER LEAGUE LICENSE

Key new addition



On June 10th 2024, the Premier League and Sports Interactive signed a multi-year licensing partnership that will bring official logos, kits and player photos in future FM releases.

This deal starts at beginning of 2024/25 season and will be valid for at least 4 years. As a result, all 20 Premier League clubs will be fully licensed across all versions of Football Manager.

Whether you’re attempting to win the Premier League Trophy, chase European football, or maximise a newly promoted club, you’ll be immersed in English top-flight action like never before.

The partnership also provides the opportunities to help with things that the Premier League and their clubs do off the pitch, such as community and charitable work.

FM25 Gets Full Premier League License

VASTLY IMPROVED UI

Key improvement



A whole new User Interface will dramatically improve the ways you interact with the game, both inside and outside of a matchday. Navigating through screens and accessing all the information available to you as manager is at another level.

Introducing tiles and cards. The tiles are a way of building curiosity by providing a snapshot of information, while clicking through into cards rewards your interest with further detail. This reduces the volume of screens in-game, making navigation easier.

The old-school Inbox has been replaced by the Portal which will give you far better tools to develop your story through the Agenda and Messages sections.

The design team has crafted a design that’s platform agnostic, enabling ease of play whether you’ve got a mouse and keyboard, a controller, or even a touch screen.

With the new UI every future addition will strengthen the UX without compromising consistency in the UI.

INTRODUCING WOMEN'S FOOTBALL

Key new addition



First announced in 2021, women's football will finally make it into FM 2025. It took some time to build a comprehensive global database.

There’s a lot more than simply replacing the male players with female players. This includes attributes, female 3D models, different transfer system, unique league rules, level of detail, in-game text.

Motion capture sessions ensure that women's body shapes and animations will be accurately represented in the 3D match viewer.

You will be able to seamlessly move between managing men’s and women’s teams. One game, one ecosystem.

Some key people from inside the women’s game are part of this project and helping to deliver the most authentic experience possible.

Women's football to be included into FM

MORE REAL-LIFE ANIMATIONS

Key improvement

Through new integrations with a new partner from the professional world of football, you'll notice a big jump with animations.

The first part of a multi-year shift happened in FM24 with a particular focus on ball physics and player locomotion.

This lays the foundations for the bulk of improvements to come alongside the graphical upgrades in models, stadiums and the surrounding scenes that will be introduced in FM25.

The way everything looks and moves will be far more true-to-life than ever before with FM25.

FM25 Full Rewrite in Unity Engine

OVERHAULED MATCHDAY EXPERIENCE

Key improvement



FM25 will have a significantly better looking matchday experience - both on the pitch and the supporting stadium environments.

The switch to Unity is going to give a lot more power graphically, and that includes all aspects of the 3D match.

You can expect better-quality graphics across all supported devices, however the minimum system requirements will become a bit more demanding.

There's a new screen that you’ll see between your match highlights utilizing the new tile and card system.

More information will follow during the gameplay rollout in September.

REMOVED SCREENS & MODULES

Minor improvements

The developers reviewed every single feature and screen in FM and made some cuts. Certain features and modes won't be available in Football Manager 25.

Touchline Shouts is one that won't be back for the foreseeable future. The dedicated social media screen and the data chalkboard on player profiles have been removed and a possible return seems unlikely.

Create-A-Club goes away but will make a return in Football Manager 26 with lots of changes and improvements.

The same applies to International Management (not a playable mode on FM25), but it shall remain playable on FM25 Mobile as that’s on a different codebase.

Versus mode might return one day (possibly not for FM26) in a different form, while Challenge mode is scheduled to be fully revamped in either FM26 or FM27.

Fantasy Draft will return much-improved later in the cycle alongside the Main Data Update.

NEW TECH FOR NEWGENS

Key improvement

New technology for Newgens and manager creation is one of the benefits of switching to the Unity game engine.

Early tests of this new tech from the summer of 2023 already looked really promising, so expectations are high for the end-result after a further year of refining.

That probably means abandoning the FaceGen tech which powered 3D faces of generated players and managers, which hasn't looked great in recent iterations.

More details on that are expected towards September.

FM24 SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY

Introduced in FM24



Anyone who is not ready to step away from their existing save in Football Manager 2024, will be able to continue that career into FM25 and benefit from this year’s new additions in the process.

When you load FM25 for the first time, you'll see a panel directly above 'Start a New Game' that reads 'Load FM24 Saved Games'. This panel contains details about how transferring saves works and allows you to begin the process of bringing a game forward from FM24.

All of the relevant new features in FM25 will be present in any saves you bring over. In some cases that will result in certain items or tutorials triggering immediately after you convert your save, while you'll need to set some other things up from scratch.

The panel won’t appear again on subsequent launches but don’t worry, you’ll still be able to load FM24 games into FM25. To do this, go into the Load Game menu and follow the instructions explaining where you’ll find old saves and how to bring them across.

---

For the first time in decades, FM25 is going to be a true sequel.

The switch to Unity game engine enabled the developers to deliver a vastly improved UI, new tech for Newgens, new and more real-life animations, as well as graphical upgrades everywhere.

We can't wait to see all that in action.



Pre-Purchase FM25 from fmscout.com to save up to 25% off, have a chance to win a key of Genie Scout 25g, earn a unique buyer badge on our site, and our gratitude for supporting our community financially.