Football Manager 2025 might be buried, but we can just make our own

Sports Interactive’s unsurprising murder of Football Manager 2025 has put even more pressure on the next entry to succeed. But what are we supposed to do until the day we’re finally graced with a new FM game? Well, as many of us already are, we’ll just have to deal with another year of FM24—what a shame. (That’s sarcasm.)

Thankfully, modders are always up to something. Just like Tony Stark in the MCU, Football Manager modders can’t rest, but that only means that we can nab some fantastic mods to give us some version of Football Manager 2025.

Make your own Football Manager 2025

Thanks to amazing modders The Notorious Pr0 and FMTU, we can already experience some form of Football Manager 2025 within FM24. Released earlier this month, the FM24 Transfers and Data Update Packs mod brings a massive load of changes to the game that lets you play through the 2024/2025 season.

The mod, available to download here, adds in real-world transfers, agents, ability changes, new staff, new promotions and regulations, wonderkids and even entire leagues. You can now play through the Indian Super League as well as Cypriot Leagues and Cups—it’s pretty damn great.

Combine this with the updated physics and graphics of the game’s Chinese-made overhaul mod released this month, and we have a huge upgrade. It might not be as stable and full-fledged as an actual FM25—RIP, Sweet Prince—but it’s something new to play until Sports Interactive releases FM26 later this year.

How to do it

Of course, making your own Football Manager 2025 also means you need to have the PC version of Football Manager 2024. Not Console Edition, Not FM Touch (which is mostly for addicts anyway) but the actual PC version of the game.

Once you have that, download the mod file and follow these instructions:

• Uncompress the downloaded file with WinRar/7Zip
• Select all .fmf files in the folder and copy them
• Navigate to “Documents/Sports Interactive/ Football Manager 2024/editor data”
• If the “editor data” folder does not exist, create one
• Paste the files inside that folder

Once these steps are completed, you’ll have to make sure that you start a New Campaign within FM24, select the “24.3.0 Update” database and all of the associated mod files. Afterwards, just choose your game mode—TheNotoriousPr0 suggests playing Original—and get going.

Every cloud has a silver lining

While FM25 may be cancelled, fans are always ready to step up when things go wrong. We see it in every game: modders bring missing features to new releases or add in weapon balancing. Hell, in the recently released Stalker 2, the fans modded in the game’s AI system before it was properly fixed.

FM fans are a unique bunch—they’re talented and dedicated, and now we have at least some version of Football Manager 2025 to play through. After all, it’s not that long until Football Manager 2026… right?